Five Spice Duck Breast

Duck must be my absolute favorite meat. If it is on the menu I will probably go for that before anything else... My sister and I recently went on quite binge, having three tasty duck dishes in less than one week. But I had never actually prepared it myself.

So when I found some marked down at my local grocery store I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to experiment.

Since this was a first try I decided to go for the most simple preparation and the result didn't dissappoint. I will be making this more often now for sure.

All you need is duck breast, five spice and seasonings.

1. Preheat your oven to 200°. Score the skin side of the breast and liberally sprinkle both sides with salt, pepper and five spice.
2. Place your duck breast skin side down into a cold frying pan. Turn on the heat to medium high. This way more of the fat in the skin will render out and you will get it more crispy.
3. When the skin has a slightly brown color turn around your breast and sear it on the meat side for about thirty seconds.
4. Flip it back over and place the whole thing into the preheated oven for about four minutes for a medium done duck. If your frying pan has a plastic handle preheat a backing sheet in the oven and transfer your duck to it.
5. Let the duck rest for about five minutes before cutting it.

I served mine with rice and pan fried Chinese kale.

Five Spice Chicken

I love having a wide selection of spices at home... you never know what you want to cook for dinner.
In my opinion the best place to buy these, is a local Asian store of choice. Yes, the presentation may not be as neat as you're used to. But you will find that you are able to get two or three times the amount of the desired product for the same price. (At least this is true for Switzerland.)

If you are put off by the packaging, which in most cases will be little plastic bags, why not make the (modest) investment of buying smallish jam jars or something of the sort. They look good, you can easily see what spices are in them and you will be able to use them for years.

The traditional Chinese five spice powder combines cinnamon, Szechuan pepper, star anise, cloves and fennel seeds. Three of these are most often used in Western cooking for sweet concoctions around Christmas. But I was curious to experiment with it.

This dish came together after a short research on the internet.

Chinese five spice chicken for one

1 Tsp of five spice powder
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 piece of ginger (the size of your thumb), finely chopped
some finely chopped chili to taste
1 Tbsp or to taste of soy sauce
1/2 Tsp brown sugar
1 Tsp red wine vinegar
some olive oil
1 leg of chicken

1. Mix all of the ingredients from the five spice powder to the vinegar. Then add enough olive oil for it to form a loose paste, sort of like pesto. You should be able to spread it onto the chicken easily but it's not supposed to be too runny either.
2. Put it onto you chicken and let it marinate for at least twenty minutes.
3. Preheat your oven to 180-200° and roast your chicken for about an hour. I like to turn it over half way.

This was really serves simply with some plain rice and a good squeeze of lime juice.