Recipe Of The Week
Duck Liver Parfait with White Peach and Watercress salad & Verjuice Vinaigrette
Serves 8 as a Starter
- Duck Liver Parfait
- 1kg fresh duck livers, trimmed
- 400g clarified butter
- 1 egg
- 150ml port
- 150ml red wine
- 120g blueberries
- 120g blackberries
- 4 shallots, finely diced
- 2 sprigs of thyme
- knob butter
- Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Vinaigrette
- 300ml extra vergin olive oil
- 35ml fresh squeezed lemon juice
- 100ml verjuice
- 1/2 tsp castor sugar
- To Serve
- 4 handfuls watercress
- 2 white peaches
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- 1 large loaf of turkish bread
Chefs Tip: For a less gamey flavour, soak your livers in milk over night, this will make them milder, but it is purely up to your own personal taste.
Method:
Heat the knob of butter in a large pan until it starts to bubble gently, add shallots and sweat on a low heat until soft, about 8-10 minutes. Add port and red wine, blueberries, blackberries and thyme sprigs and reduce to 100ml. Strain through a fine sieve and set aside.
Place the clarified butter in a pot and melt. Put the livers in a food processor and blitz, turning the livers into a paste. Pass the livers through a fine sieve and return to the food processor, blitz again, pass through a fine sieve again and return to the food processor. To the liver mixture add the wine reduction and the egg and blitz, while the motor is running slowly add the clarified butter until you have fully emulsified the entire mixture. To season place a teaspoon of the mixter into a hot frying pan and cook, taste and add sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to the mixture to taste. Repeat this until you get the seasoning right, there is no going back once the parfait is in the oven.
Grease and line a 1lt terrine tin with greaseproof paper and pour in the liver mixture. Place the tin inside a larger baking tin, pour water inbetween the smaller tin and the larger tin, enough to come half way up the side of the smaller tin, cover with foil and place in a pre-heated oven at 100'c. Bake for 1 hour 15minutes or until set. Then place in the fridge to cool right through, at least 4 hours.
For the vinaigrette, place the lemon juice, verjuice and sugar in a mixing bowel and whisk, keep whisking and add the extra virgin olive oil. Pour mixture into a vinaigrette bottle and put in the fridge.
To serve, cut each peach in half and remove the stone, finely slice each half. Place the watercress in a bowel and add the sliced peaches and drizzle with the vinaigrette (shake vinaigrette well first) and salt and pepper to taste. Remove the parfait from the terrine tin and cut a slice about 1.5cm thick each and place onto a 8 seperate plates, sprinkle with sea salt, place a small handful of the watercress salad onto the each plate and drizzle a little more vinaigrette. Toast the turkish bread and serve on a seperate plate.
