Roasted duck breast

I love duck.  I think I always have - I have memories of eating duck even as a little kid, and enjoying it. So when Tiffany came by Boston and we had a dinner date at home, I was pretty sold when I saw the duck breast in Savenor's.  I believe that the trick to perfect duck is that you need to render out most of the fat from under the skin, first, so that you can actually eat the skin, and it's delicious and crispy.  The meat is pretty damn good even if you don't eat the skin, but crispy duck skin without any of the gross fat is my idea of heaven.  *drool*

But first things first - we needed appetizers.  And that's where Formaggio's comes in.  The fact that we only walked out of these with one hunk of goat cheese, some sopressata, rabbit pate, and sourdough bread showed amazing self restraint, on the part of all of us.  The three of us managed to eat nearly this entire board of deliciousness before dinner, and still have room for dinner - that's what Eating Buddies are about, I guess!  The sopressata wrapped around a pear slice with a bit of hard aged gouda was pretty awesome, fyi.

We also had some pickles - carrots, turnips, garlic, ginger, and spicy kohlrabi.

The eating buddy thing - Tiffany, Ed, Chris and I were eating buddies in highschool.  I don't even know what this means, except that we really liked to eat good food.  Some things don't change...

Back to the duck.  First I salted the meat and skin.  Then (not pictured), I scored the skin in a cross-hatch pattern, with a very sharp knife.  You want to cut through nearly all the fat, but not into the meat. That lets the fat render out better.

Next comes the rendering part.  In a cast iron skillet, I put the duck skin-side down on low heat, and left it there for the next hour.  Meanwhile, we devoured cheese, meat, and fruit.  mmmmm.

Also, we had an interesting foamy rhubarb rosemary cocktail.  Not my favorite, but an interesting drink.

Anyway, after the fat has rendered almost completely out (you may have to pour it off a few times - save that fat, it's delicious for cooking potatoes), you can think about cooking the meat.  I hit the oven at 350F, and toasted up some spices: cumin, cardamom, sumac, pepper, and fennel seeds, in a dry pan.  Grind those up, add a pinch of salt, then rub both the meat and skin with generous amounts of toasted ground spices.  Flip the duck over so that it's now meat-side down, and transfer to the oven for ~10min.  15min yields medium cooked duck, which is overdone in my opinion.  

Take it out, let it rest for 5min or so, then cut across the grain into slices.  Serve on top of something that'll soak up any juices.  In this case, we had a moroccan flavored salad of orzo, tomatoes, cucumbers, mint, parsley, cilantro, and pomegranate seeds.  

This was delicious.  I really want to go cook a duck breast now.  The spices don't matter, because most of the flavor comes from that perfect, crispy, drool-inducing skin.  mmmm.