By Simone Beck and Michael James
Published 1979
I have planned this menu to entertain food-loving friends who deserve rich and elaborate dishes, and for whom you love to cook. At first glance the duck recipe might appear formidable, and my immediate advice is first to thoroughly familiarize yourself with the procedure for preparing this tasty dish. It contains no very difficult steps, and is frankly an excellent exercise in many techniques of French cooking: the preparation of a brown stock; the braising of the dark meat, which gives a very tender result; then the careful refinements to the sauce. The duck breasts are roasted separately at the last minute to keep them pink, and the fatty skin is discarded (although if you wished it could be sautéed until crisp, sliced and served with the dish); the breast meat is then sliced and served with the legs and thighs. This is a satisfactory treatment for duck, since all of the meat will be tender and juicy, and not at all fatty. So while in a sense the canards are an ambitious dish, something for the more experienced cook, if you proceed carefully nothing can fail. The flavoring for the ducks is a departure from the classic orange, which can be so tiresome. With the lemon, the brown sauce is rather more tart than sweet, and the whiskey gives a heady perfume.
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