For my 100th entry on this blog I add here a special occasion dinner recipe that I came up with on the second day of Christmas this year. I put it up as a complete combination of flavours that should work together. I am happy to report that this dinner idea was a great success that went beyond my expectations. If I were to add sth, it would be some pomegranate seeds to act as decoration that fits with and further enriches the flavour palette.
You'll need:
For the duck:
duck breasts
cranberry jam
red wine vinegar
vodka
brown sugar
freshly ground black pepper
For the pears:
2 hard pears (I used nash pears)
2 glasses of water
1/2 glass of sugar
5cm of ginger, peeled and cut into a few smaller pieces
cinnamon stick
orange zest
6 cloves
For the pumpkin puree:
pumpkin
cream
nutmeg
sweet paprika
salt&pepper
For the gratin:
Potatoes
cream
2 garlic cloves
strong flavoured cheese (I used pecorino, other commonly used varieties include cheddar or gruyere)
butter
1. Prepare the marinade for the duck by mixing in a small pot cranberry jam, red wine vinegar, a pinch of brown sugar and a healthy dose of freshly ground black pepper. Warm the ingredients up until they mix.
2. Make cuts in the fat of duck breasts before putting them in the cooled off marinade. They need to stay in the marinade overnight.
3. Season the marinated duck breasts with salt and them on a pan, starting with the fat side. The fat needs to be well fried to achieve the desired effects, so it will require some patience. Wait till it starts to turn golden brown before turning your duck breasts to the other side.
4. Put the breasts in an oven dish with the remaining marinade and put in an oven preheated to 180 degrees for about 20-25 minutes if you want a pink inside. My family prefers a well-cooked version, so I waited for 15 extra minutes.
5. Use the sauce from the duck to make a bread sauce, simply by mixing it with some bread and warming it up, optionally adding some salt and pepper.
6. For the pumpkin puree, put the pumpkin chunks (with the skin still on, no need to peel it at this point) in the oven set to 180 degrees (no termoventilation) for around 15 minutes or until it gets soft.
7. Remove the punmpkin from the oven, the skin should come off easily now. Cut it into smaller pieces and blend.
8. Add a little bit of cream, a tiny bit of nutmeg and sweet paprika et voila.
9. For the pears, assemble the ingredients in a pot, except of the pears and warm it up until the sugar dissolves. Add peeled pears cut into wedges. Simmer for around 20-25 minutes, or until the pears get soft. You might want to preserve the remaining syrup, for example to make some drinks afterwards.
10. For the gratin, peel enough potatoes to fill in an open oven dish. Cut them into very thin slices before boiling them in salted water just until the moment of boiling, they are not supposed to be fully cooked (this is a shortcut I take to make the cooking time shorter, but it makes it more difficult to makes even layers in the oven dish).
11. Cover the oven dish with butter and then put in the potatoes, putting in some finely chopped garlic and grated cheese in between. Pour over cream and some more grated cheese on top.
12. Put the gratin in the oven for some 30-40 minutes. Start off with an open top, when the cheese on top starts to brown, put some foil or another cover to prevent it from exessive browning.
13. Assemble all the ingredients together on a plate (on Christmas day itself I managed to forget to put the pears on and had to put them on a table separately, thus they are missing from the pictures). Allow the duck breasts to breathe for a few minutes after removing them from the oven before cutting them into slices. The same will be true with cutting the gratin.
Buon appetito!
