Page 214 - YC Cooking School

slowly extracting the fat from the skin until the skin becomes that deliciously crispy texture.
It usually takes between 6 and 10 minutes for this to happen.

Use tongs to turn the meat
It’s best to use tongs when turning meat. Besides protecting your digits, you’ll also avoid
pricking the meat with a fork, which often means you lose all those tasty juices.

Test for doneness
Prod and touch your meat as you work to get a feel for doneness. You’ll soon learn what a
piece of medium rare meat feels like as opposed to one that’s cooked to medium. Duck is
best eaten medium to medium rare, so we recommend that for this dish, you cook it on the
skin side for 6-10 minutes and then on the opposite side for 2-3 minutes.

Rest your meat
To make sure that your meat is as juicy as possible, leave it on a plate or board after cooking
it to rest for up to half of the cooking time. We know it’s tricky when your mouth is watering,
but by doing this you’ll retain the valuable juices and your taste buds will thank you.

Serve it French style
Cut the duck breasts into long thin slices, known as aiguillette in French, and arrange them in
a fan pattern on your plate. Voila!

7 tips for a simple gastrique sauce

A gastrique is a classic French sauce that works well as an accompaniment to a wide variety
of meat dishes such as pork, venison and poultry. It’s a really versatile sauce because you

can add a whole lot of flavours such as tangerine, grapefruit, lemon and orange to the
simple syrup base. Lipsmacking. Here’s how to do it:

1. Deglaze the pot
When the colour of the sugar and vinegar mixture changes to what the French call ‘ blonde’,
it’s time to deglaze the pot. To do this, pour a cold liquid into a hot mixture. This detaches

the delicious caramelised bits at the bottom of the pot and adds to the overall flavour.

2. Reduce your sauce
To intensify the taste of your gastrique sauce, let it bubble away on the heat until the
amount of liquid in the pot has begun to reduce.

3. Segment the orange
This requires a dainty touch but it’s well worth it. Peel the orange with a knife so that only
the flesh remains and then cut carefully between the segment lines to remove neat little
wedges of orange. Once you’ve cut all your segments from the orange, squeeze what’s left

out to retain as much juice as possible. You’ll add these segments to your sauce to warm
them just before serving.
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