Happy Holidays!

All right, there have not been a lot of posts on here lately.  Perhaps we need to make a New Year's resolution to help get us back on track.  I'll get things started with mine and Matt's Christmas (Eve) dinner.  Matt's co-worker generously provided some duck breasts, our local grocery store had a big sale on sweet potatoes, and I put together the meal above.

The sweet potatoes were tossed with salt, chili powder, paprika, brown sugar, and olive oil.  The green beans were tossed with salt, some onion, and a mixture of bacon grease and chicken fat (awesome cooking by-products to store!).  These were roasted together for about 25 minutes at 450.

I sprinkled the duck breasts (four whole breasts on the small side, about 1 pound total) with salt and pepper and cooked them in a cast iron skillet (more bacon grease/chicken fat because these were skinless, otherwise the duck probably would have rendered enough fat itself) on medium-high for about 3-4 minutes per side, hoping for medium or medium-rare, and it worked out well.  Of course, you can always cut into one to see or poke at them repeatedly to see how things are coming along...

Now, time for the sauce!  I have been making cranberry sauce using fresh cranberries the past couple Thanksgivings and I am obsessed with it.  I decided to buy more fresh cranberries this year so as to store away extra sauce for the future and thought they'd be great with this duck.  I moved the duck to a warm plate and put the skillet back on the stove over medium heat.  Sauteed half a minced onion, then dumped in about 1 cup of port, 3 oz of fresh cranberries, and 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar.  I cooked this till the cranberries broke down (watch out for some popping) and it thickened.  I tasted it and realized it was a little too tart so I sprinkled in some sugar (could not have been more than 1 tbsp).  I was really happy with the end result: a little sweet, a little tart, very savoury.  The sauce-making gave the duck a nice rest so I could slice it up and plate.

Tada!  Pan-seared duck breasts with port cranberry sauce!  Hope everyone's enjoying the holidays.  I promise to provide more regular updates in the new year.