Malabar duck

I’m back! after a week or two not really doing much interesting cooking (possibly as a psychological result of gnocchi and ITV…) I though I’d make a come back with a recently discovered but already firm favourite recipe.  It comes from Gordon Ramsay's Great Escape: 100 of My Favourite Indian Recipes

(the one with gratuitous pics of him on every other page, thankfully mostly fully clothed…). I'm not a huge Ramsey fan, but he does do some great stuff, and this recipe combines two of my favourite things - duck and curry! As you probably would expect by now, i’ve made a few amendments to better reflect my own tastes.  Trina loves this dish, and it went down well with her folks too.  It’s a really nice blend of spice and sweet, which has a lot in common with Thai and Vietnamese food - and i guess quite similar to the Kerelan flavours I love too, particularly in use of coconut.


Ingredients (for 2 – or 4 if you’re not as piggy as we are!)
Two good sized duck breast fillets, skin on, whole
2 tsp of curry powder
1 tsp fenugreek
1 inch of root ginger, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 tsp ghee or butter, or 1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 medium onion
1 tsp chilli powder
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp garam masalla
seeds of 1 cardamom pod, crushed
5-6 curry leaves, crushed
50g raisins
1 can coconut milk


Method
Rub the curry powder, fenugreek, ginger and garlic on to the duck breasts, including skin side, and leave to marinade in the fridge for an hour or two. 

Heat a heavy bottomed frying pan on a medium heat, then place the duck fillets skin side down – let them cook pretty slowly, you want the skin to crisp up but not burn.  Reserve the garlic and ginger for adding to other pan.  You don’t need any fat in this pan – the fat from the duck skin should render down anyway.

In another pan, heat the ghee until liquid, then throw in the onion, and the garlic and ginger from the rub/marinade.  Let it brown a little (make sure it doesn’t burn) then throw in the coriander, chilli and garam masala.  In many recipes, you add the garam masala last – if you want to do this, it’s fine – it just means the spice doesn’t cook out for as long, so you get more of the powdered flavour.  However, Gordon says, to add this here, and in this instance I agree!

Let the spices fry for a minute or so then add the curry leaf, cardamom seeds and raisins, and stir in for another couple of minutes, then add the coconut milk, mix thoroughly and bring to a gentle simmer.
The duck should by now be pretty crispy on the skin side.  Flip the fillets over to seal them, no more than a minute.  Then, keeping the skin out of the liquid, lay the fillets into the other pan.  Cook them on a lowish simmer for about 5-6 minutes, no more – you want the lovely pinkness of a rare duck breast.

Remove the breast once done and leave to rest – bring the liquid to a quick boil for a minute or two reduce it and thicken.  Serve on a bed of plain basmati rice (see my earlier missive) – duck breast sliced thinly on top, then the sauce around the sides.

Pretty damn good i think!!