Young fattened duck from Vierlande

Gourmet-Tip by Thomas Martin, Jacobs Restaurant at the Hotel Louis C. Jacob

• serve with a tomato-bread salad with fresh basil
• Jacobs Restaurant purchases its ducks from the poultry farm Timmann, from Winsen by the Luhe, they are aged 7 weeks and are known as “Vierlande fattened ducks”
• you can purchase them from Hinrich Krohn Wild und Geflügelfachgeschäft, Weidenallee 65, 20357 Hamburg

Here is a simple recipe for you to try at home...

Young Vierlande fattened duck
1 duck, weight ca. 2.3 kg
½ apple
5 shallots
100 g vegetables, cut into large cubes (celery, carrots)
1 Tbsp tomato paste
5 Juniper berries
5 white pepper corns
1 twig rosemary
50 g cold butter, cubed
1 glass of red wine
200 ml dark chicken stock
salt to taste

Preparation:
Remove neck and wing tips from the duck, refrigerate. Also remove heart, liver and gizzards, refrigerate as well. Preheat oven to 200 °C.
Pour some water onto a deep baking sheet, and put it on the lowest rack of the oven. Salt the outsides and insides of the duck well, place it on an oven rack and roast it in the oven for 60 minutes.

The sauce:
Cut the wing tips, neck and innards into small pieces, and fry them in a pot at high heat. Cube the apple and shallots, and add them to the pot along with the other vegetables, tomato paste and spices. Add wine and chicken stock. Let the sauce simmer for one hour, pass it through a sieve and reduce it to your liking, then add the cold butter.

Remove the baking sheet with the water from the oven, and increase the temperature to 220-230 °C. Continue roasting the duck for 40 minutes. Increase the temperature to 250°C at the end, so that the duck will be nice and crisp.

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