Duck with Chantrelle Risotto

I don't know why, but when Joe is home for dinner, I go out of my way to impress him. He's impressed by SPAM and teriyaki sauce. I guess I just want to show off a little. So tonight I made an Autumn-y type recipe because there's a little nip in the air and it seemed like a good idea. Full disclosure: I over-cooked the duck. I didn't pay as much attention to it as I should have, since the last time I cooked duck was B.C.: before children. I cook risotto way more often. Fuller disclosure: the risotto was absolutely fabulous and I will be making that again in the near future.

Duck:
some dried porcini mushrooms
1/4 tbsp rosemary
s+p
1 C soy sauce

Risotto:
2 C arborio rice
3 C chicken broth
1 C white wine
minced shallots (I had white onion, I used white onion)
dried chantrelle mushrooms
2 tbsp butter
parmesan cheese
s+p

 

Put dried chantrelle mushrooms in with chicken stock to re-hydrate for about 10 minutes. I thought of this two days ago. Genius.

 

Make a rub for the duck using the dried porcini mushrooms, rosemary, s+p. Put them in a spice grinder and grind. This rub is AMAZING on steaks, btw.

 

Score duck breast in a cross-hatch pattern. See? I scored too deep. Don't do that.

 

Marinate duck breast in soy sauce for at least 10 minutes, up to an hour.

 

1 tbsp of butter in a pan, shallots in the butter.

 

Add the arborio rice and toast it for a good minute, stirring.

 

Add white wine. Keep stirring. That's the thing about risotto, stirring and adding hot broth.

 

There's the broth.

 

I pulled the chantrelle mushrooms from the broth and chopped them up. Then, I added them to the risotto.

 

Add broth every time your pan gets this dry. Stirring. When you've run through all of your broth add a tbsp of butter to it and generous amount of parmesan cheese for flavor and to tighten it all up. S+p.

 

Take duck breast out of soy sauce and dust generously with the porcini mushroom rub.

 

Sear both sides and then put in the oven at 350°. Sear for about 1.5-2 min per side. Oven for 5 minutes.

 

See? The duck should be more of a medium rare, not medium well. Still tasty, just a little disappointed in myself.

 

Once again, OMG the risotto was amazing. Dried chantrelle mushrooms are a little expensive, but I only used half the baggie, so that's about $5 in mushrooms per use. Worthwhile for a little of the good life, no?