With Mardi Gras looming, I thought it might be fun to cook up some New Orleans-styled goodies featuring duck, andouille sausage and Creole seasoning. These rich ingredients are typical of the fare from this town that knows how to party — an instinct that goes into overdrive during Mardi Gras.
And in this recipe, I’ve figured out a couple ways for us to have our cake and eat it, too. It delivers big flavor without the usual complement of fat and calories.
We start with the star of this show, the breast of duck, a well-known fount of flavor that — depending on how you cook it — doesn’t have to be terribly heavy. I do recommend that you saute the breast with the skin on; that’s how to maximize its deliciousness and moistness.
But you can remove and discard the skin — along with most of the serious fat and calories — afterward. In happy fact, duck meat without the skin is leaner than white meat chicken. And duck fat is not bad fat. Yes, some of it is saturated, but a large percentage of it is mono- and poly-unsaturated, with the same properties, incredibly enough, as olive oil.