Duck breast with apple sherry

Our little Broad Branch Market has a nice meat counter with a consistent array of very good beef and sausages and occasionally other things. For the first time yesterday, I saw duck -- breasts and legs sold separately and both at reasonable prices. (I've been buying a fair amount of duck lately and had a good idea of what the market was.)

So we ended up having duck breast for dinner and using this simple recipe from Susan Loomis's Cooking at Home on Rue Tatin, which I haven't had much occasion to use until now. The "apple sherry" she refers to is pommeau, a mix of apple juice and calvados. She lists tawny port and semi-dry sherry as substitutes.

You heat up you skillet over medium heat and put 2 13-oz. duck breasts skin down and cover for 8 min. Then turn over to flesh side and cook another 2 or 3 min. Remove duck and drain all the fat -- there's a lot of fat rendered, which is why you don't need any other oil. Return the duck to the skillet skin side down, reduce heat to low, cover and cook another 5 min. or so. Loomis emphasizes that you don't want to overcook the breast, which should remain fairly rare, or it will start to get tough.

Remove the duck and pour in 1/2 c. pommeau or substitute, and 2 Tbl of cider vinegar. Reduce 5 to 7 min. until syrupy, remove from heat, stir in a cut up 1 Tbl of chilled butter, swirl till dissolved and pour over duck breast, sliced on the diagonal. I served with rice and Greek salad.

There was not much in our liquor cabinet. Tawny port was gone. An old bottle of Amontillado sherry tasted a little dubious, and some very old Marsala looked a little vile. The white port, which has a tawny color and is semi-dry, seemed OK, so that's what I used. The duck was delicious and tender, but I was not thrilled by the sauce. It would be worth trying again with pommeau, if I ever come across that.