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Roast Duck with Braised Chestnuts, Cranberry and Port Sauce

This dish almost always finds its may onto the menu both at home and in the restaurant at this time of year, the ingredients are festive, the flavours rich and warming and it just puts me in the mood for Christmas...

Serves 4

4 Duck Breasts 16 Chestnuts
50ml Olive Oil 1 Packet of Spinach
100g Butter 16-20 Brussel Sprouts
100g Butter
Port Sauce 6-8 Rooster Potatoes
Salt and Pepper 1L Double Cream
1 Packet of Cranberrys

For the Dauphinoise potatoes, peel and slice thinly.
Mix with double cream, season with salt. Place in an earthenware dish or roasting tray, cover with tin foil and bake in the oven for about 2 hrs on a low heat, pressing every 20 minutes during cooking with a tray.
When serving you can either cut out into rings or serve in the earthenware dish.
Reduce some cream then spread over the dauphinoise and glaze under the grill.
Take duck breasts and trim excess fat and sinew then score the fat (this helps break the fat down and crisp the skin). Put in fridge until you are ready.
Pick and wash spinach, peel and score Brussel sprouts then cook in boiling salted, then refresh in iced salted water. Drain the water as soon as cold.
If big cut in half then fry until golden brown all over.
Take the pre cooked chestnuts and put in a wide port and bring to the boil then add a little stock and reduce until it becomes sticky then add a little more. Don’t flood as you are trying to make a glaze.
When dressing plate make sure the Dauphinoise are very hot, season the duck then place skin side down into a hot pan until nice and gold then turn over until sealed then place skin down again and put into oven for six to eight minutes. Rest for a few minutes.
Fry off the spinach in a hot pan with a little butter and season then put at the bottom of the plate with the duck on top, place the dauphinoise at top left, Brussels Sprouts top right with the chestnuts in the middle. Add the cranberries to the sauce and drizzle all over.

Enjoy!

What to drink with it?

There are plenty of wines that will go well with this dish, anything that will match the deep gamey flavours of the duck and still have some nice vibrant acidity to pick up the high notes of the cranberries in the sauce will serve us well.

A new wine on the list this month comes straight to mind and the best thing about it is the value, so if you are having a few people around you can impress without preaking the budget.

2010 Câlusari Pinot Noir, Ville Timisuli, Romania
‘Romania actually has a long history of wine making, around 6000 years compared to Frances 2600 and as the economy improves and modern techniques are employed we are starting to see very well made attractive wines.
This Pinot Noir from Banat in Western Romania lends its spicy aromatics and dark juicy fruit to quite an earthy savoury duck dish playing a high counter note to the deeper earthier tones of the chesnut and rich potato’

We get it from Alliance Wine and you should be able to order direct from them at www.alliancewine.co.uk

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