Duck & Red Wine - The Double Sequels

Making a sequel of something fantastic is surely challenging.
It kinda reminded me of how I recently fell asleep watching Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, despite loving the first one and losing interest in Gossip Girl Season 2, despite going crazy over the first season. Gosh, I wish I could do a legendary sequel, just like the Dark Knight (sequel to Batman Begins).

Sigh...*pressure pressure*

After doing a fantastic Bebek Kalasan, what else I could do with the rest of my duck?

I remember seeing an episode of Martha Stewart's TV show, where the guest chef did something with duck and red wine...his duck legs looked fantastic, they glued me to my morning TV and I ended up arriving late for work. However, I also remember it for being rather labor intensive...with multiple steps and long period of marinating and braising. So, I decided not to do his recipe, but simply do an encore of my previous beef and red wine, I bet the flavors used on the beef would work well with duck too.

So there you go, double sequels!
Duck and Red Wine

Recipe
(adapted from here)
- duck breast, halved (mine with bones, or half a duck, or duck breast fillet)
- 4 cloves of garlic (peeled, crushed)
- 1 whole onion (cut into large chunks)
- 2 sticks of celery (cut 1 cm thick pieces)
- 1 carrot (cut into 1 cm thick pieces)
- thyme (I used dry)
- 3 bay leaves (I used dry)
- chicken stock (I used powdered version, 2 tsp)
- red wine (the recipe called for 1 whole bottle, but I used just 1-2 cups)
- bacon (I skipped this, cos I didn't have any, but it's still delicious)
- olive oil, hot water (just enough to cover everything), salt (1 tsp), black pepper, sugar (2 tsp)

While preparing the ingredients, I browned the skin of the duck breast pieces. Lightly season the skin with salt and black pepper, then lay them skin down on a frying pan, no oil necessary, until golden brown, set aside. Keep the duck oil if you wanna use it for other purposes later.

Once the rest of the ingredients are ready, saute garlic and onion in olive oil, add duck, I kept the skin side up so it won't get soaked so much, add carrot and celery pieces, add seasoning, stock and wine, cook until meat is tender (again I cheated by using pressure cooker for 20 minutes ^_^).

Once done, crisp skin by quick grilling under high heat (I used 220C oven, in an oven proof bowl lined with foil), include a bit of juices to keep the duck meat moist.

To serve, you can slice the duck breast into thick chunks, but nothing beats gnawing on the tender bits of meat between the bones.

It was quite a successful sequel, but to me, Dark Knight is still one of the best sequels ever. Maybe I should eat this sequel while watching it.