Duck Salad

This is the biggest duck breast either of us have ever seen. The thing weighed a pound and was only one half of the breast. To give one a sense of size, the picture below is of a ten inch pan. We picked up this monster piece of meat at an Amish store at the Reading Terminal Market along with some veggies for dinner. In addition to being huge, the duck had such a dark color that it looked almost like liver. Actually, when cooked, it tastes a bit like liver too.

Determined to get a crispy skin, we decided to render out the fat slowly in a nonstick sauté pan. I made a network of incisions into the skin and cooked it skin side down over the lowest heat the stove would sustain. After about ten minutes, most of the fat had melted into the pan and the meat had not really been cooked that much. I cranked up the heat to high to try and finish the meat quickly while leaving it medium rare. I wasn't entirely successful as the meat came out more on the medium side, but the duck was delicious just the same. The skin, while still retaining a bit of its fat, did get a nice crisp edge. We served the duck, sliced into medallions, over a bed of lettuce and sautéed leeks with fig balsamic vinegar drizzled over all.