serves
4
prep
1 hour
cook
45 minutes
difficulty
Ace
serves
4
people
preparation
1
hour
cooking
45
minutes
difficulty
Ace
level
I admit, this is not an original dish. It is my recreation of one I had at San Francisco’s Perbacco restaurant, where Swedish chef Staffan Terje makes beautifully simple Northern Italian food. In truth, this dish would be at home anywhere from the Arctic Circle to the Alps, and there is nothing that screams "Italian" about it, especially if you're an American used to Southern Italian cooking. But damn is this a wonderful dish! Perfectly cooked duck breast with rye spaetzle, baby roasted turnips, their greens and a rich duck jus. It was a “shut up, I’m eating” kind of moment.
Ingredients
- 500 g baby turnips with greens (see Note)
- 2 tbsp or other high-quality oil
- 1 tbsp salt
- 125 ml (½ cup) red wine
- 125 ml (½ cup) duck glace de viande or demi-glace (see Note) or 250 ml (1 cup) beef stock boiled down by half
- 750 g duck or small goose breasts, at room temperature
- salt and black pepper, to season
- splash of malt vinegar
Spaetzle (see Note)
- 250 g (2 cups) rye flour
- 1 egg
- 125 ml (½ cup) milk or 185 ml (¾ cup) if make spaetzle with a colander
- 1 tsp salt
- vegetable oil, for coating
Instructions
Start with the spaetzle. Mix the flour, egg, milk and salt together in a large bowl. The batter should be sticky and flow like thick lava. Set aside while you bring a large saucepan of water to a boil. Salt the water heavily; it should taste like the sea.
Load up your spaetzle maker and get a large bowl of iced water ready. Fill up the saucepan of boiling water with the dumplings. Once they float to the top, let the spaetzle cook for 2 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon and dunk in the iced water. When all the spaetzle are cooked, transfer from the iced water to a tea towel and let the dumplings dry for a few minutes. Put on a baking tray and toss with the vegetable oil to prevent them from sticking. You can make the spaetzle up to a day in advance.
Preheat the oven to 220°C. Remove the greens from the turnips and set aside. Toss the turnips in the pumpkin seed oil, add the salt and roast on an uncovered baking tray for 35 minutes or until slightly browned.
Meanwhile, put the red wine in a small saucepan and boil it for 2 minutes. Add the glace de viande and keep boiling the mixture. You need to be vigilant here, tasting every few minutes, because you can get a weird, bitter taste to the sauce if you boil it down too much. When it tastes good to you, turn off the heat. This should take about 5–10 minutes total.
Score the duck skin (but not the meat) in a cross-hatch pattern about 2.5 cm wide; this helps the fat render and will give you a crispier skin. Salt it well on both sides, then let it stand for at least 15 minutes and up to an hour.
Lay the breasts skin-side down in a large frying pan (not non-stick) over medium heat. Let the pan do its job. Cook at a jocular sizzle – not an inferno, not a gurgle – for, it depends. I like my duck medium-to-medium-rare, so about 5–8 minutes. The key is to let the breast do most of its cooking on this side – it’s the flattest and will give you that fabulously crispy skin we all know and love.
Turn the breasts over. When? Follow the guidelines above, but also use your ears: you will hear the sizzle change; it will die down, just a bit. That’s when you turn. Now – this is important – lightly salt the now-exposed skin immediately. Doing this seems to absorb any extra oil and definitely gives you an even yummier, crispier skin. Let the ducks cook on the meat side for less time, about 3–5 minutes.
Tip the breasts on their sides and cook for 30 seconds–2 minutes, just to get some good colour. Transfer the duck to a cutting board, skin-side up. Tent loosely with foil and rest for about 5 minutes.
When the duck breast is resting, add the turnips, turnip greens and half the spaetzle to the pan you cooked the duck in. Cook over medium-high heat for 2–3 minutes or until the spaetzle is hot and the greens are wilted. You can either repeat the process with the rest of the spaetzle or reserve it for another dish.
To serve, give everyone some of the spaetzle-turnip mixture and pour over some sauce. Slice the duck breast thickly and put it on the spaetzle. Splash a little malt vinegar over everything right as you serve.
Note
• Glace de viande and demi-glace are flavoursome sauces made by reducing stock.
• You can buy regular spaetzle in some supermarkets; look in the Jewish or ethnic section.
• If you can find baby turnips, buy them. If not, you can either use radishes – they taste like turnips when cooked and add some nice colour – or smallish turnips cut into pieces. Don’t use large turnips as they are pretty starchy.
Cook's Notes
Oven temperatures are for conventional; if using fan-forced (convection), reduce the temperature by 20˚C. | We use Australian tablespoons and cups: 1 teaspoon equals 5 ml; 1 tablespoon equals 20 ml; 1 cup equals 250 ml. | All herbs are fresh (unless specified) and cups are lightly packed. | All vegetables are medium size and peeled, unless specified. | All eggs are 55-60 g, unless specified.
I admit, this is not an original dish. It is my recreation of one I had at San Francisco’s Perbacco restaurant, where Swedish chef Staffan Terje makes beautifully simple Northern Italian food. In truth, this dish would be at home anywhere from the Arctic Circle to the Alps, and there is nothing that screams "Italian" about it, especially if you're an American used to Southern Italian cooking. But damn is this a wonderful dish! Perfectly cooked duck breast with rye spaetzle, baby roasted turnips, their greens and a rich duck jus. It was a “shut up, I’m eating” kind of moment.
