Balsamic & Roasted Garlic Glazed Duck

My favourite way to eat this is to serve all the ingredients separately with Chinese pancakes, tortillas or Vietnamese rice paper so that you can roll everything up, drizzle with dressing and tuck into a Summery, zingy “springroll”. An even healthier option would be to wrap everything in fresh and crispy lettuce leaves like Cos, Butter or even the lowly Iceberg.

Preheat oven to 180˚C. Trim the top of the garlic so that the cloves are exposed.  Remove the outer skin and place onto a piece of foil. Drizzle with oil, fold the foil over the top and place in oven for about 45 minutes. Combine all of the other ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, and when it begins to boil, reduce the heat and allow to simmer until reduced by half.

Squeeze the garlic head to extract a heaped teaspoon of roasted garlic paste and mush it into the glaze, stirring well so that the garlic is evenly dispersed. Place an ovenproof pan over high heat. Score the fat on the duck breasts in a tight criss-cross pattern and then sear, skin-side down, in the hot pan, until most of the fat has rendered out and the skin is nice and crispy.

Remove from the heat and baste generously with glaze before turning them over. Glaze the skin, and place into a pre-heated oven for 10-15 minutes, basting every 5 minutes, until the breasts are just cooked but still slightly pink in the middle. To make the salad dressing, combine the ingredients in a bowl and stir to allow the sugar to dissolve and for the flavours to infuse. Serve with greens and wraps as suggested above.  

Serves:  4