I love duck cooked this way: the skin salty-crisp like charred paper and the meat mouth-meltingly tender. The potatoes and the orange, sliced thin, cook in the same pan as the duck and infuse with the deeply flavoursome fat from the legs as they roast, intermingling with the sweet juices from the fruit.
My preference is to arrange the slices of orange under the meat, as far as possible, which means that they soften and tenderise rather than crisp and turn bitter as they cook in the oven. It’s one of those delightful one-pan dishes that constitutes a complete meal in itself, though I often serve it with a bitter leaf salad on the side: just crisp, fresh leaves (ruby-red chicory or blush-pink radicchio) dressed with a little olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice and a generous sprinkling of salt flakes.
Hands on time:
20 minutes
Hands off time:
1 ¼ hours in the oven; 10 minutes resting
Serves 2
2 duck legs
2 large potatoes (total weight 300–350g)
1 large orange
Small bunch of thyme
Sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper
