Duck Breast with Date Purée | Recipe by sousvidetools.com

Duck breast cooked sous vide, glazed in soy with date purée, pickled shiitake, fried walnut, pumpkin seeds

COOK TIME: 1 hour
PREP TIME: 1 hour
DIFFICULTY: Medium
SERVES: 4

Ingredients

Duck breast

2 duck breasts, corn-fed

Shiitake

8 shiitake mushrooms, large, stalks removed
100ml of sunflower oil
50ml of white wine vinegar
20g of sugar
20ml of water
salt
black pepper

Soy glaze

200ml of soy sauce
100ml of red wine
1 tbsp of honey
100g of brown chicken stock, reduced

Date purée

200g of dates, stoneless
400g of water

Raw fennel

1 fennel bulb
lemon juice
sea salt

To serve

8 walnuts
100g of pumpkin seeds
50ml of sunflower oil
sorrel leaves
mustard seeds
linseed
sea salt

Equipment

Method

This delicious sous vide duck recipe by chef Paul Foster has been recreated for our website with kind permission from Great British Chefs

Method

Fill and preheat your water oven to 60°C whilst you prepare the duck breasts
Use a blowtorch to torch the skin and then remove all excess fat and sinew. Place the breasts in a vacuum cooking pouch and seal
Submerge the pouch in the water oven and leave to cook sous vide for 40 minutes
Once cooked, remove the pouch from the oven and allow it to chill. Take the skin off the breasts before cutting each one in two, length ways. Place the breasts back in the pouches, seal and then set aside in the fridge until required later
Next, move on to making the soy glaze by combining the soy sauce, red wine and honey in a pan. Heat until the liquid has reduced to a syrup. Add the chicken stock and stir. Finally, pass the mixture through a chinois and leave to one side
To make the date purée, simply add the water and dates to a pan and cook until the dates are soft. Blend until smooth before passing through a chinois. Set aside
To make the shiitake, add the sunflower oil to a pan and use this to sauté the mushrooms. Drain and season. In a separate pan, combine the vinegar, water and sugar and heat until boiling
Pour the vinegar mixture over the mushrooms then allow to cool
Once cooled, transfer both the mushrooms and the liquid to a vacuum pouch and seal
For the fennel, slice length ways and season with lemon juice and sea salt. Set aside
To prepare the walnuts and seeds, begin by heating the sunflower oil and frying the pumpkin seeds until golden and slightly puffed up. Drain the seeds on to kitchen towel and use sea salt to season
For the walnuts, deep fry until they are golden. Drain on kitchen towel and use sea salt to season
For the linseed and mushroom seeds, simply toast in a dry pan for two minutes
Before serving, reheat the duck breasts by placing them back into the water oven for 5 minutes
To prepare the dish, take the date purée and spread on each plate. Remove the duck from the pouch and use kitchen towel to pat dry. Brush each breast with the soy glaze then sprinkle with the mustard and seeds, linseeds and pumpkin seeds
Take the mushrooms, drain and then cut into quarters. Arrange them on the plates along with two slices of the fennel. Sprinkle the dish with fennel seeds before arranging sorrel leaves on top. Use a microplane to grate the walnut on top. Serve immediately

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Post by Chris Holland

Our Chef Director Chris Holland worked as Head Chef at the prestigious Alderley Edge hotel before joining us. He has a passion for using the best produce and never compromises on quality. Author of our best selling book Sous Vide The Art of Precision Cooking, Chris is a expert on the sous vide technique.During the later part of my school days at Wardle High School Rochdale I always wanted to be a chef . I knew from the very start that my path to work was never going to be academic it was always going to be something practical and hands on.

As a young boy growing up I was inspired to cook with my Grandma who was and still is an inspiration to me . I have memories of helping make the cakes that she always had made for visitors and family alike . She made the most amazing cakes and I loved nothing more than eating the sweet raw cake batter straight from the bowl . We used to fight over who got to lick the bowl/spoon after the cakes were made. My grandma’s philosophy for cooking even on a shoe string budget was always to use fresh and seasonal ingredients either home grown or bought from the market.

School was somewhat of a drag for me as I was itching to learn to become a chef.

I started at Hopwood Hall college as a chef and instantly fell in love with it .To me it was the only real time I excelled in something and this inspired me to really get my head down and put in the hard work. College was the first time I really excelled in something and gave me the opportunity to laugh at the teachers who said I would never make something of my life!!!!

During the three years at college I also took on a part time position in a local hotel working the bar and restaurant first and then the kitchen. These were great days and gave me the opportunity to see how the industry ticks. I learnt a lot from those days both good and bad !! But I have to say I was itching to work only in the kitchen but it was a good insight into the catering world .

After completing college I moved away from Rochdale for a full time roll at one of Cheshire’s most talked about Hotel restaurants The Stanneylands Hotel. This was the school of hard knocks for me as I quickly realised that although excelling at college meant nothing in “The Real World”.

I loved every minute of the 18 hour days 6 days a week on minimum wage . Although difficult I feel that without this grounding I wouldn’t have achieved what I have today. After 18 months of hard graft I left Stanneylands and went with the Head chef to open a fine dining restaurant at Mere Golf and Country Club. The opportunity to work alongside Matthew Barrett was too good to turn down. I learnt so much from the ex-Ritz chef and working in a much slower paced role helped me develop a much better understanding of how to organise and run a kitchen. We were a very small team and teamwork was and still is the only way to go for me.

After 2 years at Mere I got the opportunity to go into The Alderley Edge Hotel as Junior Souschef. The Early days at the Edge were all about learning new styles of cuising which is invaluable in any role as a chef. I got the opportunity to grow and learn all aspects of every section which was inspiring . I was offered the opportunity at the age of 29 (2004) to take the role of head chef. For me this was when I really started to develop my own style of food.

After 9 years at the top winning Cheshire restaurant of the year , Chef of the Year and appearing on GBM amongst many highlights including cooking for many celebrities and famous people I decided to move on into development with Sousvidetools.

The main inspiration for this was to train and educate people . I always had a great passion for education but could never really see myself at a college . The job is super rewarding and I am proud to say we have become the leading light in sous-vide education in the UK . This is something I am very proud of . Food is my biggest passion and this is what keeps me interested the most . I love to travel and try out other countries cuisines. I am constantly inspired by ingredients and the pursuit of getting the best out of them without destroying their natural flavour .It is super important to me to continue to try and be at the forefront of the food scene this is what inspire me and the team to keep driving forward .

Technology is now widely used in the industry and I am super proud to say we have been a big part of spreading that message.

I am very lucky to be in the position I am and the drive to constantly improve our training and links to the next generation of young budding hospitality chefs.

TI feel that my experience over the last 25 years really enables me to get close and educate the “next generation” of chefs .

The industry which I love is really struggling to bring through new recruits and if I can help that process I will be immensely proud.

The food seen in the Uk has improved dramatically over the last ten years and I feel this will continue with the correct education. What happens next only fate will tell us...

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