Simon says...slow roast duck

Simon's slow-cooked citrus duck with citrus
Basically, you stuff the duck cavity with halved citrus (mandarins and cumquats), cook it at 120 for seven hours and then stuff yourself with ridiculously delicious, falling-apart duck and perfectly crispy duck skin.
Order your duck here.

Simon Marnie, the ABC radio host who regularly suffers my waffling on the Providores' Report section of his weekend show, recently bought a Tathra pasture-raised, Aylesbury-Pekin duck from us. A few days later I got a fevered text raving about how he'd found this brilliant new recipe for slow-cooking duck using cumquats and mandarins and he'd roasted our duck and it was fantastic. Apparently his lunch guest, a successful Sydney restaurateur, got stuck in and had seconds and thirds and fourths. Simon was also squeaking with excitement about the rendered duck fat he had left over at the end which he'll use later for roasting potatoes or something equally appealing. So, naturally, we tried his recipe using the Calamondins we had to hand and he was right, it was delicious.

Simon's recipe
So simple, even I could do it.

Heat the oven to 120 degrees and score the skin of your room-temperature duck, being careful not to pierce the flesh. Stuff the cavity with some peeled mandarins and some cumquats cut in half - you want to release the juice but get the flavour and sweetness of the skins. The mandarins are slightly sweet and the cumquats are a little sour which is a lovely combination. If you're finicky you can close the aperture with toothpicks, not a bad idea.

Rub the duck skin with salt and oil (although the duck will release a lot of fat so we skipped the oil) and, put the duck on a trivet in a baking tray - you don't want it sitting in the fat. Cook for seven hours - according to Simon, something wonderful happens in that last hour so don't be impatient.

That's basically it. The skin will be crisp and the meat falls off the bone. We served ours with a freekeh risotto and a parade of winter veg from Sift Produce. Delicious.

Actually, we were so excited about eating it that we forgot to photograph it when it came out of the oven. So you'll have to make do with this shot of it on the plate taken by the chef who, going by the blurriness, was clearly trembling with anticipation.