Crown roast of duck
This is not like the other kind of crown roast. A crown roast, in poultry terms, simply means that the legs of the bird – in this case a Gressingham duck – have been removed, leaving only the breasts and wings. It took an hour to cook this one, going into an oven that had been heated to 230C and turned down to 190C after five minutes.
As per usual with this sort of thing, I parboiled potatoes, carrots, and parsnips for five minutes before allowing them to dry a little on a plate. They went onto a tray with a little of the duck fat – I didn’t want to cook them in the same dish this time, as there’d be too much fat. The duck came out to rest whilst the vegetables had another half an hour. I skinned it at this stage, returning the skin on a clean tray to crisp up.
I made gravy – by draining the roasting tray into a clean pan, heating till the liquid boiled off and all the scrapings browned, before adding flour to make a paste and then home-made game stock. I thinned it a little with water from the green vegetables – savoy cabbage and peas.
It was good – although the carrots weren’t as crsipy as I’d hoped; the duck was moist and still pink inside, the skin crispy, and the gravy flavourful. With the remaining breast and the trimmings from the rest of the carcass, it’ll make another two meals. Not bad, given the crown only cost me fiver in Waitrose!