Magret de canard aux mogettes (et aux navets)

This is a duck breast filet (un magret de canard) that I roasted in a pan in a hot oven. In other seasons, Walt would cook this morsel on the barbecue grill. Whether you plan to roast it in the oven or on the grill, the first thing to do is to score the duck breast's skin and fat using a sharp knife.

The term magret is related to the French word maigre, meaning lean or meager, because the duck breast is less fatty than other parts of the duck. Still, the magret is the breast of a duck that has been fattened to produce foie gras, which is a holiday treat in France.

First I heated up a heavy pan in a very hot oven, and then I put the magret in the pan skin-side down so that the skin would be seared. I slid the pan back into the hot oven. At high heat, the magret cooked in about 10 minutes. Then I took it out of the oven, put the meat on a platter, and covered it with aluminum foil and a kitchen towel to let it rest for 10 to 15 minutes. That way, it continued cooking, but slowly. Magret de canard is good cooked rare or medium-rare.

Letting the meat rest once it comes out of the oven allows residual heat to spread from the outside toward the inside of the roast, so it will be evenly cooked through and the outside won't be burned.

To accompany the magret, I heated up some big white beans called mogettes, which are grown in the coastal Vendée area where we spent a week back in October. The beans were put up in a jar and we bought them at the supermarket here in Saint-Aignan. Beans, water, and some salt — that's all there was in the jar.

Beans, white or green, are a classic accompaniment for duck. I also had a few already-cooked Italian flat green beans in the fridge, so I cut those up and added them to the mix. And I had some left-over sauteed turnips in the fridge too. Turnips are another classic side dish to have with duck, so I added those. As you can see, the duck was cooked fairly rare — medium-rare, anyway — and was very juicy. Searing the skin, which covers a generous layer of fat, produces a lot of melted graisse de canard, which is perfect for seasoning beans and other vegetables (including potatoes). Besides duck fat, all I needed to add was a grinding of black pepper.