Duck Breast with Mixed Wine Pomegranate Sauce and Satsuma

The other night I found myself in the kitchen with half the ingredients necessary to make a nice duck dinner.  So I had to improvise.  Earlier that day, on Twitter, Robert Scoble was going on about how if you made bad videos, people would watch them.

So I shot video of our cooking experience from assembly to plating.  It is now my first video blogging effort.

Here's the recipe for :

You Need:

• 2 organic duck breasts good sized
• Dry white wine (we used a Roussanne)
• Dry red wine (we used a shiraz)
• 3 or 4 tbsp butter
• One small orange (we used a satsuma)
• 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses
• Salt and pepper

To Cook It:

• Mix 2 tbsp pomegranate molasses with about a quarter cup of red wine and set aside.
• trim and clean the duck breasts
• score the skin of the duck breasts (i forgot to video this step)
• Preheat oven to lowest setting
• Pan sear the duck breast until about 75% cooked
• Take the duck breasts out of the pan, season with salt and pepper, and place on a plate in the oven
• Clarify the duck fat and remove about 75%
• Using the white and red wine, deglaze the pan
• Allow the wine to cook down
• Add the pomegranate / wine mixture
• Allow mixture to cook down a bit
• Add the butter slowly
• Allow to cook way way down until it's thick
• Add the oranges
• Cook until the oranges are warm
• Add Salt and Pepper to taste
• Remove duck breasts from oven, plate and cover with the mixture from the pan.

The Video:

The video shows my wife and I creating an excellent meal.  But, the video has the following rookie issues:

1. Sometimes the shot isn't quite lined up.
2. The sound is not quite even and quiet throughout.
3. It's bloody long!  About 30 minutes.
4. As a celebrity chef, I haven't quite found my voice.  I'm earnest, but not funny.
5. I shot over an hour of initial footage, my Flip camera only has an hour of memory, so at the end, video is shot on my still camera.
6. My video editor was free and the text feature on it was amazingly bad.  Like, stunningly awful.

Technorati Tags: how-to, duck, duck breast, pomegranate, cooking, cooking videos

Comments

[Nancy white]

LOL, ya making me dizzy!

[Webomatica]

Pretty slick. I like these food posts. I never knew the tip about massaging the citrus fruit for easier peeling, thanks just for that tidbit.

[Jim Benson]

Thanks Jason (um, and Nancy),

Jason, I want to show as much technique in these things as I can. I hate it when I watch food network and they're like, "Now I mix the ingredients."

Um, how did you mix them?

And now I pour it in this pan and look what it looks like when it's done!

So,maybe I should just do a technique series. A bunch of short three minute videos just showing things like, how to open fruit, how to de-vein prawns, how to clean a crab, how to hold a knife, how to sharpen a knife.

This showed me that cooking a complicated meal is a lot of editing. It's just that these things don't seem that complicated when I'm making them. Watching the video seems more complicated.