Magret (or maigret) de canard is a relatively new dish: simply grilled duck breast. You'd think there's nothing more to it than grilling a steak, but there's one issue: the skin is still attached, and ducks have lots of subcutaneous fat. How should it be done? I'm still working on it. The last time round I did:

• Grill the duck with the skin side down on very low flame (maybe even fry in a pan) for about 8 minutes to melt the fat.
• Then grill the meat side on a relatively high flame for about two minutes.

The results were acceptable, but I think I could have done the fat side even longer:

I made a note for the next time to give it 10 minutes on the fat side, after first scoring it, then 3 minutes on the flesh side, but it didn't work out like that. The next time was Friday, 25 July 2008, and I decided to follow a suggestion in “Connaître la cuisine du sud-ouest” by Francine Claustres, in which she suggests baking for 10 minutes and then grilling for another 5 to brown the skin. This isn't optimal: the duck was cooked through. Probably 5 minutes baking and 5 minutes grill would be better.

Magret or Maigret?

An interesting comment in “Connaître la cuisine du sud-ouest” was that the correct French word is maigret, not magret. The latter is Gascon, so the correct description is either “maigret de canard” (French) or “magret de guit” (Gascon).