Sauteed Chicken Breast with a Port Wine Reduction

Picture
Ingredients
4 6oz duck breasts, boneless, skin on
salt and white pepper to taste

sauce
2 tablespoons shallots, finely diced
1 cup port wine
3/4 cup brown stock
2 tablespoon butter





Directions
  1. Remove any excess fat and score the duck breast in a crosshatch pattern with a sharp knife. Season with salt and white pepper and place skin side down in a heavy-bottomed saute pan. Whitout turning the breasts, cook them over a low heat, rendering the fat from their skin, until the skin is golden brown and crisp, approximately 15 minutes.
  2. Turn the duck breast, and cook to medium rare.
  3. Remove the duck breast from pan and allow to rest in a warm place for 20 minutes.
  4. Pour off excess fat from pan. Add the shallots and saute until translucent.
  5. Deglaze the pan with the wine and reduce the volume of liquid by half over medium-high heat.
  6. Add the brown stock. Continue to reduce until the sauce has a glaze consistency (will coat the back of  aspoon).
  7. Add the butter and whisk in. Adjust the seasoning.
  8. Slice the duck breasts. Arrange on warm plates and serve with sauce.

Critique
Chef: cut on bias for better presentation, could have crisped the outside skin more, overall is flavorful and tender meat.

Team Personal: The sauce should have been thicker (just one more minute would have worked), but the port wine reduction was really flavorful and went well with the duck.

Lessons learned: Since duck has such a high fat content, you don't need oil to sautee, you can just slowly render the fat. Scoring the skin helps some of the fat leak out instead of building under the skin and making the duck too fatty tasting.Cooking it longer helps render more of the fat as well.