CLEMENTINES FOR HOLIDAY CHEER

The brightest spot on a winter’s day is the sunny glow of clementines dangling from the tree in my garden. I’ve picked off all the low-hanging fruit, a few every day, to eat out of hand. Now I need to get my tall son to pick what remains from the higher branches.

Clementines are a cultivar of the citrus fruit, mandarin. They are easy-to-peel, fairly free of seeds and have a perfect balance of sweet and tangy juice.

Looking for an elegant dish for a dinner party, I latched on to my clementines as a stand-in for oranges in duck a l’orange. Instead of the old-fashioned gloppy sauce, I made a bright, sweet-sour sauce with clementine juice and PX wine.

PX is a gorgeous dessert wine produced from grapes of the Pedro Ximenez (PX) variety that are sun-dried before pressing, which concentrates the fruit and sugars. The wine tastes like liquid raisins with a subtle bitter-coffee aftertaste. It is produced in Jerez/Sherry, Málaga and in the region of Montilla-Moriles (Córdoba), where the PX variety is the principal grape (also used for dry, fino type wine). Serve PX wine with fruit and pastries for dessert, with cheese, spooned over ice cream or sponge cake. Reduce it to a syrup to glaze duck or pork tenderloin.

Remove peel and pith.

I wanted perfect clementine segments to finish the sauce, but I wasn’t so successful in cutting them into membrane-free segments. It’s easy to do with oranges or grapefruit, but this fruit is too small and delicate. I suggest peeling the clementines by slicing off the tops and bottoms, then cut down around the circumference of the clementines, removing skin and pith. Then, simply divide into segments, leaving the remaining membranes in place.

You’ll need 6 to 8 ounces boneless duck breast per serving.The half-breasts that I bought weighed about 12 ounces each, but you may find them considerably larger.

Scoring the layer of skin and fat helps to render out the fat while cooking, producing a nice crisp skin. Duck breast (also called magret) is usually served rare or medium rare, so it takes very little time to cook. It needs to rest 10 minutes before slicing. I served it with rice and sauteed pumpkin, a vegetable which goes very nicely with citrus. (Keep the reserved duck fat, refrigerated, to fry potatoes in on another day.)

Duck breast with clementine sauce--an elegant dinner.

Magret de Pato con Salsa de Clementinas
Duck Breast with Clementine Sauce

Serves 6

3 pounds boneless duck breast halves (3-4)
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Sprigs of fresh thyme
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 shallots, finely chopped
½ cup PX wine
1 cup chicken stock
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
1 teaspoon anisette liqueur (optional)
5 clementines

With a sharp knife, score the skin and fat on the duck in a crosshatch, without cutting into the flesh. Sprinkle the duck breasts with salt, pepper and chopped thyme. Allow to come to room temperature.

Heat the oil in a saucepan and sauté the shallots until they are browned. Add the PX wine, stock, vinegar and anisette, if using. Season with ½ teaspoon salt, pepper and a sprig of thyme.

Remove the zest (peel without any white pith) from one of the clementines and add the zest to the saucepan with the juice of one clementine. Bring the sauce to a boil, then simmer until reduced by half, about 15 minutes. Taste for salt and add more, if needed. Discard the zest and sprig of thyme and set the sauce aside.

Peel the remaining clementines and divide into segments, removing as much of the membrane as possible.

Heat a heavy skillet and place the duck breasts, fat side down, in it. Cook them until fat is browned and crisped, about 5 minutes. Very carefully, pour or spoon off all the fat in the pan into a heatproof bowl.

Turn the duck breasts and cook the reverse side until browned, about 3 minutes for rare meat or longer for medium rare. Remove the breasts to a cutting board and allow to rest 10 minutes before slicing.

Reheat the sauce. Add 1 tablespoon of reserved duck fat to the sauce. Immediately before serving, add the clementines to the sauce.

Serve the sliced duck with sauce spooned over it.

Citrus and sweet wine make a delicious sauce for duck breast.

An elegant dish for a New Year's Eve dinner party.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL.

¡FELIZ AÑO NUEVO! HAPPY NEW YEAR

It's only the first day of the New Year and already I have good fortune--baskets of wonderful fruit from a friend's farm--oranges, avocados and clementines--plus gorgeous sunshine.

And I've already started on at least one of my New Year's resolutions--to wash the windows so that wonderful sun can shine in and warm my kitchen and dining room. The black-eyed peas are simmering with   pork and greens. It's just about sunset and time to light a fire in the fireplace.


Time to put behind me the last week of 2013. On Christmas day, a night of rain and high winds brought a mimosa tree down blocking the driveway. Ben spent the afternoon cutting it up and hauling away. Then, marauding goats destroyed my vegetable garden and led Ben on a merry chase round and round the pool. I think the goatherd had had too many holiday brandies, cause he was totally out of control of his herd. He even left one goat behind. She moseyed around grazing and, at nightfall, bumped at the door as if she wanted in. Ben called her the "Christmas Goat." Leo named her "Gassy." I called her "Scape" and played around with the phrase, "Milk her for all she's worth." But, I've never milked a goat.

I've got another resolution--to redesign the blog. Needs some freshening up, I think. We shall see if I manage to follow through on that one.

Hope your New Year brings good fortune, good food and sunshine.

HOLIDAY CHEER FROM SUNNY SPAIN

At my house in southern Spain, holiday cheer is an evergreen tree glowing with bright golden ornaments. That would be the clementine tree on my patio, or the lemon tree on the edge of the vegetable garden or the neighbor’s pair of orange trees right above me. In Spain, citrus trees laden with fruit herald the winter holidays.

The gorgeous fruit finds its way into capacious Christmas stockings, into bowls, and onto festive holiday plates. Fresh-squeezed orange juice is pure bliss for a holiday breakfast or combined with bubbly cava for parties.  Big kids and little kids adore the juicy clementines, those easy-to-peel tangerines, with their tangy-sweet flavor. My son Ben, home last weekend with an incipient cold, ate about a dozen of them (and seems to have beat the flu bug, though the big dose of vitamin C did not protect him from injuring his knee while surfing).  

Last year I spent the holidays with my other son, Daniel, and his family in Atlanta. At a nearby supermarket, I found boxes of Spanish clementines at a great price. We went through crates of them before the stocks disappeared.

I go way back with my “orange Christmas.” Years ago, when I lived in a ramshackle village house, every winter I made marmalade with the bitter Seville oranges that grew in the back garden. Marmalade making was a three-day procedure, allowing the sliced oranges to soak, cook, and soak again in order to develop the pectin. I gave marmalade away as gifts and sold jars of it from my house.

I’m posting two citrus recipes. One is an adaptation of a salad found in tapa bars in southern Spain (called remojón, salmorejo or ensalada malagueña, depending where you are). The traditional recipe calls for bacalao, salt cod, which is toasted and shredded, topping the oranges. My version uses shrimp and I serve it as a starter for Christmas dinner. The other is also a salad, a contrast of juicy clementines, crisp fennel and smooth sweet potatoes. It makes a fine side dish on a buffet table. I took it to a brunch while visiting friends in Seattle last New Year’s.

Ensalada Malagueña
Málaga Salad with Oranges and Olives

A photo of this salad (by Michelle Chaplow) appears on the front cover of my newest cookbook, TAPAS—A BITE OF SPAIN (see the column to the left; click to order the book from Santana Books).

Makes 12 tapas or 6 starters.  


Salad greens
4 oranges, peeled and pith removed
1 small red onion or 6 scallions, thinly sliced
10 green or black pitted olives
1 clove garlic, minced
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
Pinch of red chile flakes
18 cooked and peeled shrimp

Arrange salad greens on individual salad plates.

Slice the oranges and cut into bite-sized pieces. Arrange them on the greens. Scatter the onions on top. Arrange the olives on the oranges.

In a small bowl, combine the garlic, oil, vinegar and chile.

Scatter the shrimp on top of the oranges. Drizzle with the dressing. Allow to stand 30 minutes before serving.

Salad of Sweet Potatoes, Fennel and Clementines

Serves 6 as a starter or side.

1 pound sweet potatoes (2 medium)
¼ cup red wine vinegar
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 large bulb of fennel (about 8 ounces)
3 clementines (about 10 ounces)
1 tablespoon finely chopped shallots
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon Sherry vinegar
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
Salad greens (optional)
½ red onion, thinly sliced
toasted almonds (optional)

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into ¾-inch cubes. Cook in boiling salted water until just tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Drain, refresh in cold water and drain again. Place the sweet potatoes in a bowl and add the wine vinegar, ¼ teaspoon salt and pepper. Cover and allow the potatoes to marinate at least 1 hour and up to 24 hours.

Trim the fennel of stalks, saving sprigs of the green fronds for garnish. Quarter the bulb, then thinly slice crosswise. Add to the sweet potatoes.

Remove skin and white pith from the clementines. Chop them and add to the sweet potatoes.

In a small bowl combine the shallots, mustard, honey, Sherry vinegar and ¼ teaspoon salt. Stir in the oil until dressing is smooth. Gently stir the dressing into the sweet potatoes. (Salad can be dressed up to 2 hours before serving.)

Place salad greens on plates. Scoop salad on greens. Scatter sliced onions and hazelnuts, if using, over the sweet potatoes. Garnish with sprigs of fennel greens.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!