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This meal can be considered a festive one. It is cooked fast and easy, especially if you dispose duck breasts and particularly of French origin.
I did all necessary preparations with the breasts, actually a day before in the evening. I cut slightly the breast’s skin in the form of a grid, without cutting deep the meat. I rubbed the breasts with salt (2% of the meat’s weight). The black and red smoked pepper were also sprinkled (half, only 3 gr). The breasts were ready to go into the fridge.
The cooking process is divided into two parts. First comes the sauce.
We need the quantity of orange equal to 500−600 ml of fresh orange juice. To begin with, we use a fine grater to peel off orange zest. But mind to peel off only the orange color zest, not the white pulp. Then, we squeeze out the juice, pour it out into the stew pan, adding 3−4 tablespoons of good honey (normally I use rosemary honey). You may also add some fresh rosemary needles and pour 2−3 tablespoons of soy sauce.
We need to heat the sauce but not boil it, of course, stirring it well all the time. Later we add the orange zest into the sauce and leave it as that meanwhile we are going to get to the duck breasts.
Really the easiest thing is to cook the breasts.
We put the breasts skin side down into the hot and dry frying pan. The duck’s fat will melt out in a minute. As soon as the skin is covered by an appetizing crust and it begins to shrink, we need to turn it to the other side and fry another couple of minutes. What you strictly need to avoid is over-drying the duck´s breasts. On top of this, we´d better leave the meat inside medium rare (by the way, the Frenchmen serve this dish rare, so to say «with blood»).
Then, we slice the meat nicely and put it into the plate you prefer for serving. We pour the hot orange sauce over the sliced meat and put the plate into the oven preheat at 120 C for 5−10 minutes so that the meat might soak up by various smells and tastes.
You are not likely to cook this meal in advance and it’s absolutely useless as it really takes not long time to cook it. Count that to fry the duck´s breasts you’ll spend 10 minutes maximum, plus 10 minutes to oven it. And the dish is ready to be served. Look, you got a nice festive meal and you’re not exhausted at all to enjoy it at your best.
