Smoked Duck Pistou Fried Rice

If you stumbled upon my older posts, you might find some images missing. Yep, I was too dumb to use Photobucket for my image hosting need, and they have been down for what? Almost a month now?

It's not Photobucket's first time failing on their customers, so over the past few months or so, I've already switched to a new image hosting service, it's been stable with faster speed. It'll be great if I could switch all my old posts with the new service. However, I will have to dig out old pictures for over the past 10+ years, reload, and relink one by one. Sounds like a mission impossible. 

I've left a comment to Photobucket, "we (as all Photobucket users) all been kidnapped because years of memories stored with Photobucket." Perhaps they'll never really fix the issue, so most likely my old posts will remain "sorry, this image is currently unavailable." But let's just look at the happier side, at least my new hosting choice has been wonderful and hasn't failed be a bit yet.

Smoked duck pistou fried rice -

Ingredients (about 2 to 3 portions)?

• 2 to 3 portions cooked white rice (about 2 1/2 rice cups uncooked rice)
• 2 smoked duck breasts (about 230 grams/each)
• 1 ripe tomato
• Some black pepper

Sauce -

• 1 loosely packed cup basil
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 teaspoons sea salt
• 1/4 cup olive oil

How?

Cook enough rice for 2 to 3 servings. I used about 2 1/2 rice cups of uncooked rice for this recipe. Use a little bit less water to cook the rice to get dryer grains. You can also use leftover cooked rice that's been stored in the fridge, the cold will suck out some moisture from the rice too.

Cube the tomato, peel and roughly chop the garlic cloves.

Pistou sauce is more like a simple version of pesto sauce. It's a Provençal sauce basically made with garlic, basil, and olive oil. It can be elaborated with extra ingredients such as cheese and tomato. Let's keep it simple here, since this pistou sauce is going to be used as fried rice seasoning.

Use a mortar and pestle if available, otherwise food processor works too. Blend basil, chopped garlic, and 2 teaspoons of salt while slowing pouring in 1/4 cup of olive oil to the food processor. Taste and see if more salt is needed. Once smooth, scoop out the pistou sauce for later use.

Score the duck skin crosswise, and sear the duck breasts skin side down with a pan. There's no need to add any extra oil, the duck fat will slowly render to the surface. Keep searing using medium high heat till the skin nicely browned. Flip to the meaty since and sear till slightly browned.

Remove the breasts from heat and let them rest for about 5 to 10 minutes. Slice and set aside for later use. I used smoked duck breast here so no extra seasoning is needed. Originally I was aiming for steak, but the price doesn't look pretty so I swapped out with smoked duck breast. Works great still, and actually easier to work with.

Save the duck fat for other dishes, so grab another pan, a big one or use a pot for the fried rice.

Pour in pistou sauce and turn to medium high heat to warm it up. Once warmed up a bit and not burning the garlic inside, mix in cooked rice 1/3 at a time. Make sure the grains are coated with the sauce before adding another batch of rice. Repeat till all the rice are evenly coated with the sauce.

Plate the rice, lay down duck breast slices in the center and garnish with tomato cubes. Sprinkle some freshly ground black pepper.

As for the leftover duck fat, if any, use that to bake some veggies for a flavor boost. If any pistou sauce left, simply dip in some toasted bread then wipe the sauce clean. One other way, pistou sauce also works great with grilled white fish.