Braised duck with roast potatoes

(serves 6-8)

Recipe adapted from Taste

In our first year of marriage (last year), Paul cooked something special for me for Chinese New Year. He was very secretive about it all and came out with this amazingly moist duck leg with crispy skin, served with a delightful and very moreish sauce. Every so often i reminisce and salivate about it. This year he promised to show me how to make it so we made it for my family ~ unfortunately the transfer and reheating process left it a little overcooked and dry, but i'm sure if we had done it according to the recipe it would have turned out well!

Prep time: 30 min
Cooking time: 45min

Ingredients
10 duck maryland/legs
1kg chat potatoes
mint, to garnish
shallots, to garnish

Sauce
2x 3cm slices of ginger
6 garlic cloves
5 star anise
1 C xiao xing rice wine
400mL chicken stock
2/3 C red wine
2/3 C soy sauce
3 tsp five spice
3/4 C brown sugar

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180˚C
2. Pan-fry the duck skin-side down on low heat for 15 minutes to crisp the outside and render the fat. Turn as needed to brown all over.

3. Transfer the duck to a roasting pan and drain all but 1T fat from frypan. Bring the pan to medium heat and cook garlic and ginger for 1 minute or until fragrant. Add star anise, rice wine, stock, red wine, soy sauce, five spice and sugar. Bring to the boil, then reduce to medium and cook for 5 minutes. Pour over the duck and cover with foil and roast for 45 minutes.
NB. Reserve the remaining fat for the potatoes

4. Meanwhile, dress the potatoes in duck fat and salt and roast 20-30 minutes until crisp.
5. After roasting the duck for 45 minutes, remove from the oven and strain the sauce into a saucepan. Increase the oven to 220˚C and place the duck back in uncovered for 10min to crisp up the skin.
6. Bring the sauce to a boil on the stove top, then reduce to medium heat and cook for 10 minutes until reduced and thickened.
7. Finely slice the mint and shallots. 
8. Serve the duck and potatoes on a platter. Drizzle with sauce and garnish with mint and shallots.