If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck.....EAT IT!!

So the newest culinary adventure for us this week is DUCK!! I have been wanting to make a duck for quite awhile and just never knew where to find a fresh one. Well on my recently mentioned trip to our local Asian Supermarket, I noticed that they had them for sale in their meat department and I made a note of it for when the time was right. And that time was Tuesday.

I went to the market and bought the duck and noticed in the store that it did still have its head, an even bigger surprise when I took it out of its bag, was that it still had its feet too. I opted to leave the picture I took of the whole thing in all its headed and footed glory out of this post so those of you who may be squeemish don't have to see it. Feel free to leave a comment though if you want me to text or email it to you. So like the Queen of Hearts, it was off with her/his head and feet and into the bowl as seen here.

To go along with this marvelous bird, I made a stuffing of brown rice, onions, pecans and fresh sage. There is such an amazing smell you get from fresh sage. I recommend that you all run out and buy some. I didn't do much to the outside of the duck, just a little salt and garlic pepper for some flavor. 

I pulled out the trusty turkey roaster which now has a new purpose besides just roasting the Thanksgiving bird and put this fully stuffed little beauty in at 375 degrees for about 2 hours. Once it was done cooking I pulled it out and let it rest under a foil tent for about 20 minutes to let the juices settle so that Richard and I could work on the remaining portion of the meal.

Richard whipped up a wilted spinach and onion salad with some aged balsamic vinegar. This salad has become a staple in our menu because it is so darn easy and so darn tasty. I worked on a sauce for the duck consisting of honey, balsamic vinegar, red wine and cherries. I slow simmered it until it was a little saucy, could have gone longer but all this food looked so amazing that we couldn't wait any longer. 

We plated our salad, pulled the stuffing out of the duck and carved that little bird for all we were worth. Authors note, duck is a horrible bird to carve, the meat on it was certainly less abundant than we were expecting but after some finagling we got enough. Added some of the warm cherry sauce on top and *POOF* we had dinner. All in all a very delicious meal that I would try again at some point for sure. Definitely one worth trying different variations to see what we can create! Thanks for reading and be sure and leave comments!!

Yeah the cherry sauce makes it look really raw but it wasn't