Roast Duck with foodhaus

The festive season is here-ish and I got in the cooking spirit quite easily. I’ve made roast lamb several times but the time has come to go a step further into something different, something equally (if not more) show-stopping and delicious. The love or hate bird, duck, roasted with all its garnishes. For me it was…love. I may have to warn you that the skin was not super crispy. You may want to marinate the skin with lemon, salt and possibly honey and sherry too and leave it in the fridge overnight before you cook it.

Ingredients

• 1x 2 kg whole duck, giblets reserved from foodhaus
• 1 red onion
• Organic olive oil from
• Chinese five-spice powder
• 1 clementine

GARNISHES

• 4 spring onions
• 4 small carrots
• 1 a cucumber
• 1 fresh red chilli
• 1 mixed bunch of fresh coriander (30g)
• 1 lime
• 18 Chinese pancakes (I got them from a Chinese restaurant as the big supermarkets didn’t have them)

HOISIN

• 2 cloves of garlic
• 5 cm piece of ginger
• 200 g frozen cranberries
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
• 2 tablespoons runny honey
• 2 clementines

Method

1. Get your meat up to room temperature before you cook it. Preheat the oven to 180oC.
2. Peel the onion, cut into wedges and place in a roasting tray with the giblets and a splash of water.
3. Rub the duck all over with 1 tablespoon of oil, 1 tablespoon of Chinese five-spice and a really good pinch of sea salt.
4. Halve the clementine and place in the cavity, then sit the duck directly on the bars of the oven, with the tray of onions and giblets underneath to catch the tasty fat.
5. Roast for 2 hours, or until the duck is crispy and cooked through.
6. While the duck cooks, prep the garnishes. Halve the spring onions, carrots and cucumber slicing them lengthways thinly. Cut the lime into wedges and pick the coriander leaves.
7. Remove the cooked duck to a platter, cover, and rest for 30 minutes. Pour all the fat from the tray into a jar, cool, and place in the fridge for tasty cooking another day.
8. For the Hoisin sauce: I used the tray the duck was in.
9. Using the tray, remove and discard the giblets, leaving the onions behind unless they are burnt (like mine). If they are burnt, add an extra chopped onion. Place over a medium heat on the hob, peel, roughly chop and add the garlic and ginger, add 1 teaspoon of five-spice, then stir in the cranberries, picking up all the sticky goodness from the base of the tray.
10. Cook for 2 minutes, then add the soy, rice wine vinegar, honey, clementine juice and a splash of water. Simmer for 5 minutes, or until thick and glossy.
11. Pour into a blender until smooth, then taste and season to perfection.

Serve with the garnishes and hoisin sauce. I also used plum sauce from foodhaus an extra sauce for people to choose.

The recipe is taken and modified from Jamie Oliver.