Anyone coming into the Dwyer household yesterday would have seen, with some wonder, the above scene.
Two ducks, tied on a broom handle inverted over an upside down chair being dried with a hair dryer.
I blame Jane Grigson.

I was having some friends to dinner last night and, as the brief Seville orange season is on us, I decided it was a perfect moment to cook the classic Canard Sauce Bigarade, that is Duck with Seville Orange Sauce.
It is the tartness of Sevilles that makes this dish so special, really cutting through the fattiness of the duck more effectively than sweet oranges do.
When I had the restaurant I used always buy a box of Sevilles and freeze them and then eke them out on duck dishes during the year.

I turned to Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book for the sauce and there I also found her method of cooking them.
Who could resist a statement like this:
“The end result is a wonderfully crisp skin with a good flavour, I now always roast duck in this way”
I was hooked, here is a shortened version of the recipe.

I reckon that for four hungry adults you will need two ducks.(and for this recipe, copious amounts of time)

Ingredients;
2 ducks
3 tablespoons spirit, gin vodka, whiskey, whatever.
1 tablespoon honey

Sauce;

2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons flour
150 ml white wine
500 ml. Duck Giblet (or chicken) stock
3 Seville Oranges
1 tablespoon Honey
Salt and Pepper
A shot of Orange Liquour or Brandy.

Rub the ducks all over with the spirit and then rig up their gallows as I did in the picture.
For this you will need one chair over another, a broom handle and copious amounts of string.
Ideally one should have a fan heater with a cold setting, I didn’t so had to substitute my wife’s hair dryer set on its least warm.
You dry the ducks like this for an hour-I did it for longer because I had to keep altering the position of the dryer to point at each of the ducks.

Then you half fill a roasting tin with water and disolve the honey in it.
Bring this to the boil and while simmering put the ducks in, breast side down, for just thirty seconds each.

Then you bring them back to their gibbet and repeat the drying process as before and for the same time.
You will notice as they are dried that the skin is changing, becoming smooth and shiny.

After all that you just have to cook them.

To cook put the duck on a grill in a roasting tray and pour a little water into the tray underneath the duck.
Then put them into an oven set at 190C (Gas 5, 375F) for 35 minutes, then turned the oven down to 150C (Gas 2,300F) for another hour.

Meanwhile you can make the sauce.

Let the butter turn hazelnut brown in a pot and then stir in the flour to make a brown roux.
Add the stock and the wine and then boil hard until it is your desired thickness.

Peel the skin from the oranges with a potato peeler and slice them into thin slivers, (or use a little lemon zester to do the same job )add these and the juice of the oranges to the sauce and then season with salt, pepper and sweeten with a little honey.

To serve I just cut each of the duck in two and let the guests do the hard work of carving themselves (the next time I do this I will provide finger bowls and towels!)

Was it worth it?

I think so, the skin was superbly crisp, the flesh moist and tender, the sauce delicious.
I would do it again.