Duck! Food "interlood"

I don't do many food or cooking posts any more. I'm not sure why. Is it because the pandemic and the confinement? Or is it that I don't have a lot of new foods or recipes to share. After 18 years here, I guess I've settled into a pattern. I make the same recipes over and over again — plats mijotés (slow cooked dishes) for about half the year, and grillades (grilled meats with side dishes) for the other half.

I guess yesterday's lunch was sort of a combination of the two. Walt seared a duck breast on the gas grill and then let it rest so that it was done but rare or medium rare (rosé), not well done. I cooked beans — haricots blancs et haricots cocos plats — in the kitchen on the stovetop. We had no rain to prevent grilling, but it was certainly not warm enough to discourage indoor cooking.

You can see how rosé the duck breast (un magret de canard) was. For grilling, we take the skin and fat off the breast and just grill the lean meat. That keeps the grill's grease tray from filling up too fast. When you cook the duck breast in a fan on the stove or in the oven, you can leave the skin and fat on it. We seasoned this duck breast with just salt, pepper, and a sprinkle of spicy hot smoked paprika.

I always have duck fat in the refrigerator and I used some of it to season the beans, along with garlic, shallot, a pinch of hot red pepper flakes, and some dried thyme. I really like these flat green beans (cocos plats). I cooked them before adding them to the cooked white beans before warming them up in a frying pan. White beans and duck are a match made in heaven (think cassoulet).

This is fresh duck breast, not confit de canard. Still, confit (slow-cooked duck legs and wings) would be really good with beans cooked this way. Here's a post from a couple of years ago about the different duck parts that we can buy here in France and how we cook them.

To finish the meal of duck and beans, we had a combination salad-and-cheese course. It was a caprese salad of tomatoes and mozzerella cheese with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Instead of basil, we made it with fresh thyme, which we have growing in the back yard. It was a nice change from the classic salad.

P.S. It's raining this morning and according to our outdoor thermometer the temperature is 17ºC (62.6ºF). The predicted high for today and tomorrow is 19ºC (66.2ºF), with steady rain or at least frequent showers. Where is summer? It's not in France, that's for sure.