Pflaumencremesuppe mit Barbarie-Ente – Plum Cream Soup with Roasted Barbarie Duck

There’s this show here in Germany called „Das perfekte Dinner“ (The Perfect Dinner), which is kind of a mix between a cooking and a reality competition something show. It’s broadcasted daily from Monday to Friday and it works like this:

Every week a group of five people from the same town (or at least region) get together for five attempts at the perfect dinner. Every day someone else prepares and serves a three course dinner for the rest of the group. The dinner then gets „graded“ by the servees and the one contestant who served the best dinner wins. It’s that easy and a lot of fun, because you get all the kitchen drama, a sneak peek into other people’s lifes and the one or other culinary hint all at the same time.

This week one of the contestants started his dinner with a strange plum cream soup, which according to him he once ate in a Berlin restaurant and managed to get the recipe. It was served with roasted duck and the idea of a plum soup alone sounded so weird that I had to try this out. The recipes get published on the TV station’s website, so I had no problems getting it.

Since the recipe I had was intended for five people I roughly halved the measurements thinking I’d get about as much to feed two and still have some left. But apparently we eat too little (which for the life of me I cannot believe), because what I got felt like it could easily serve five or six. So, for a lovely dinner for two I’d recommend roughly halving the recipe again, although you might want to concentrate on the plums and liquids, and leave everything else as it is.

Vegetarians just leave out the bacon and duck and you’ll have nothing to fear. As for regular meat eaters, the duck is not exactly mandatory, but it adds some luxury – and of course a lot of additional flavor – to the dish.

Plum cream soup with roasted duck

1 (barbary) duck breast
1 kg plums or quetsches
1 leek
1 tomato
1 red chili
50 g bacon
250 ml Japanese plum wine
250 ml vegetable or chicken stock
salt
pepper
tabasco or sambal oelek
sour cream or the like
oil

Start with cutting the plums into quarters, and get that out of your way. It’s not as time intensive as it might seem, but you’d rather have the soup ready first than overcooking the duck, which was my worst fear when I made this. I started with the duck and for the rest of the cooking process was constantly worried about letting it roast too long, so the next time I’d concentrate on having everything ready for the soup before even starting to think about the duck.

You can, however, preheat your stove to about 200°C.

Chop the leek and chili finely. If you haven’t gotten sliced bacon, slice that into small cubes as well and quarter the tomato. Now you’re basically set.

After all the chopping is done you’re ready for the duck. I say start roasting the duck now, because by the time you’ll get to steam the leek and chili you’ll want some of the duck’s juicy fat to add to the mixture. This wasn’t in the recipe, but as I saw my two pots aside each other, one filled with the leek and the other with the roasting duck and its lovely duck fat it seemed so obvious to me that none of this should go to waste.

I have roasted a duck breast about once before. At least I remember one time. I have this admiration for duck and duck breasts that I somehow imagined roasting it would be a hard task with plenty possibilities to screw up. Now of course it turns out that roasting duck breast is so easy. Just cut the skin side in a criss-cross pattern. Cut deeply enough to reach the flesh, but not further. This may sound complicated, but it’s not. You’ll know which way is right without help. Salt and pepper both sides of the breast. Then roast the duck in a pan with the skin side down. In no time the juicy fat will come out. Just leave it there until the skin side is done and transfer to the oven where it will stay for about 20 to 30 minutes. I can’t give exact measure, but I think it’s safe to say that with a bit of careful observation you’ll know when it is done. If you feel unsure just take it out and slice it open and then call your husband/boyfriend over to the kitchen to tell you if it’s done. Well, that’s what I did.

While the duck is roasting in either the pan or the oven prepare the soup. First fry the bacon in a pot. When it’s done, get it out and transfer to a small bowl. Now steam the leek and chili until soft, add the stock and plum wine, let cook away for a few minutes and then add the quartered plums. Now all you have to do is bring that mixture to a boil and bring out whatever equipment you have for pureeing the soup. I used a blender, but a hand blender will do fine, too.

The next step is pretty easy: Add the tomato and puree the soup. While this is easy, I had some logistic problems in my kitchen, since I had to do it in two batches. But apart from that, this is about as easy as it can get. Season the pureed soup with salt, pepper and tabasco. The recipe called for sambal oelek, but I didn’t have anything at home, so I simply used tabasco. I’d say that probably everything hot and spicy will do.

Now all you have to do is wait for the duck to be ready and then slice it up into fine pieces. Then either prepare the dishes in the kitchen or bring everything to the table and have everyone put together their own plate. I guess this just depends on who your guests are. Basically pour the soup on the plate, add some bacon, duck and sour cream. I always add freshly ground pepper as well, but that’s because I add freshly ground pepper to about everything (sweet things excluded).

Serves five to six. I guess.