[Photographs: Vicky Wasik]
Duck à l’orange is a classic French recipe featuring a whole roasted duck with crispy, crackling skin along with an aromatic sweet-sour sauce known as sauce bigarade. The original sauce bigarade is made with bitter oranges (sometimes called bigarade oranges, sour oranges, or Seville oranges), and it’s finely balanced, with just enough sweetness to offset the intensity of those oranges. Many recipes that call for substituting navel oranges and lemons get the balance wrong, falling too far to the cloyingly sweet side, but this recipe is designed to mirror the original sauce more faithfully (it also works with bitter oranges, if you can find them). The result is complex, fragrant, and lip-smackingly delicious, with a fine-tuned sauce that cuts right through the rich fattiness of the duck.
One whole duck has enough meat for two hungry diners or four less famished ones. If you are serving more people, consider doubling the recipe (you will need to double everything except the gastrique, of which this recipe produces more than enough).
Published at Wed, 12 Dec 2018 10:27:59 +0000
