Duck & Roasted Potatoes

January 31st, 2014

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Duck has lovely and sweet meat, which can be prepared in thousand different ways, today I show you a recipe easy to carry-out, using only the Duck Legs and other few ingredients, I love Roasted Potatoes especially when they get the taste of the main course. Usually I prepare Duck with a Fruit Sauce which is so sweet…. but not today, today I feel “wild”!

Ingredients: (4 Persons)

four beautiful Duck Legs

two Lemons – Laurel Leaves

few Garlic Cloves – Marine Salt

one glass of White Wine

two spoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil – two pounds ( 1 kilo) of Potatoes

Let’s start burning the residuals of feathers from the Duck skin (category: “Preparations – How to Get Rid of Chicken Feathers”

we must remove all the residual

wash with water scrub a little bit with your finger nails, just to make sure that the skin is clean, if some skin burnt there is no need to remove it, important is that the skin is clean; do the same for all four legs

put the Duck Legs inside a bowl, squeeze the two lemon spreading the juice….

…on both sides of each leg

you can cover and let to rest for half-hour

Peel the Potatoes

get some Garlic Cloves and few Leaves of Laurel

then cut the Potatoes in Pieces

chop the Garlic and the Laurel Leaves

drop on the Potatoes

add two-three pinches of Marine Salt

add two spoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil

mix with your bare hands! Hopefully you are like me, I wash my hands frequently while I am making food, keeping always my hands clean hygiene is paramount in my kitchen!

Now: if you are so lucky (as myself) to have Laurel tree in your garden, make with the leaves a layer where you’ll seat the Potatoes…if you have not so much Laurel you can use something else like oven-paper, or even the residual leaves from other vegetable that you used for some preparation for example….

the part of Leek you don’t cook!

just cut in slices

and use them!

every edible vegetable is good, when I make Duck I always put a thick layer of vegetables underneath, this is to get rid of the oil coming from the fat of the meat, in particular if you are cooking Duck or Goose…

the potatoes have to be set on top of the Vegetable layer

the remain of the dressing used for the potatoes will be spread on top of them

then we are going to put the Duck Legs on the top: spread Marine Salt on one side…

…and on the other side too.

do it for all the legs

for this recipe I put the part with more skin up so it can roast better

put in the oven: as usual I give you an approximate time and temperature:

250 Celsius (480 Fahrenheit) for 40 minutes

350 Celsius (680 Fahrenheit)for 30 minutes

then open the oven and spread some White Wine on top of each leg

with a fork…

… turn each leg upside down…

…spread some White Wine also on top of the internal part of each leg…

…and as you finish the wine…

…put back in the oven for 5 minutes more!

If you like you can spread more wine as you take the Legs out from the oven, especially if the Legs look too much cooked.

set the roasted Duck Legs in a plate a part…

and in order to complete properly the job grab the Potatoes one by one and set them in another container

here I just use to fill only one of my two oven-pans emptying the first one

you will see oil accumulated under the Vegetable layer

this oil is from the fat of the Duck

I collected the oil just to show you:

a full glass of oil from the fat! we discard this oil.

this oil from the Duck Legs liquefied due to the heat in the oven, wetting the meat and then the Potatoes and, by the end it was collected on the bottom of the oven-pan.

the layer of Vegetables helped us to separate the oil, leaving meat and Potatoes tasty rather than “oily” now it is time to discard the vegetables and the oil.

Treated in this way Duck and Potatoes are more healthy food.

…I was forgetting: the Potatoes! let’s go to make them a masterpiece!

set oven-paper on the bottom of the dry oven-pan

put the Potatoes inside

set the face which is not yet roasted up and the roasted part (brown) below

just like here in the picture

keep some distance between each Potato

if you have too many just set them with the part less cooked up! one on top of the other but giving to each potato the chance to roast properly! (potatoes love to be roasted!)