Christmas Dinner

Christmas Dinner

Roasted Duck with Port Wine Bing Cherry Sauce

Ingredients
2 large ducks
Duck "Stuffing": oranges, celery, carrots and fresh parsley
Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 15-ounce cans of pitted Bing cherries
1/3 cup dried cherries
1/4 cup of port wine
Essence of orange rind

I remember when Emily CC made this for gourmet group and I loved it! My attempt is a more simplified version than Emily's stellar performance (for those of you who kept the recipes) and here are my "learning moments". First, roasting the ducks caused several fire alarms. I knew that there would be a lot of fat rendering in the cooking process but OMG and little Theo was "trying" to take a nap during the process…what a nightmare! Learn from me, you will need two shallow cooking pans on the rack below to fully catch all of the fat sprays that result from cooking this meat at such a high temperature. By "stuffing" the ducks with 1/2 an orange, a stalk of celery and a carrot with a small handful of parsley, the duck remained very moist and tender. I let them rest for a good 15 minutes before carving and placing on a serving tray with some fresh parsley as garnish and then I drizzled the cherries and sauce over with a side dish for extra servings (let's just say my "dry" crowd lapped up my yummy wine sauce). I finished it with a few shavings of orange rind with a micro plane…

To accompany this I had a baby spinach salad with pomegranate, pear and goat cheese and I made a yummy creamy balsamic dressing using a raspberry syrup to sweeten it - delish. I also made sweet potatoes but I also sautéed a few apples and blended them with a dab of butter, brown sugar, a dash of cloves and enough apple cider to give it a good consistency. You can see my fruit theme throughout the meal, which I think made it lighter than a typical Christmas meal, which was necessary for the desert: dark chocolate cake with a raspberry-bourbon filling and homemade chocolate frosting (but I will save that for another post).