Duck with Port and Cranberry Sauce

Who would have thought that deep into January we would still be hoovering up the Christmas leftovers?  We have made stocks of soup and pies out of the leftover turkey and vegetables.  All of the cheese has been consumed and the last of the chocolate pennies have been melted in R's hands and smeared across the furniture.

The final reminder of the festivities was the last of the cranberry sauce that Z made this time last month.  In Christmases gone by we have bought a jar of cranberry sauce and thrown it out in mid June, but because this was home-made we felt duty bound to use it.  A pack of duck breasts in the freezer seamed the perfect foil for the sharp sweet sauce.

I gently fried the duck skin side down to render off the fat*.  After ten minutes I flipped the breasts over, turned off the heat and let the duck sit in the pan for ten minutes more.  Finally I removed the duck from the pan, cranked up the heat again and fried off some onions.  I added half a pint of port** and let that reduce before stirring in the cranberry sauce.  I'm not a fan of slicing bits of meat to serve them but there was a marked size difference between the two breast so the whole thing went a bit cheffy.  It will be around a year before we do this again, but it will be worth the wait!

*which is now sat in a jar in the fridge waiting for the next time we do roast potatoes.
**technically a Christmas leftover but booze doesn't count.