The Best Purple Duck Sauce Ever

Many cooks prefer not to fix duck. It often turns out greasy and unappealing. I have the cure for that, and a fool proof recipe for sauce that stands on its own. It's the only sauce for which I get requests without the main dish (i.e. Liat's friends say, "Can you make the duck sauce without the duck?").

Here's how to make the duck: Preheat the over to 425F. Trim the duck of the neck fat and the fat in the breast cavity. Take a fork and release all your suppressed aggressions on the duck by stabbing it repeatedly in 1/2 inch intervals on both sides. The duck will be thoroughly pricked when you're done.

Put the duck on a rack in a disposable foil pan and give it the heat shock of 425F for 45 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350F and bake for another 1 1/4 hours. The skin should look nice and brown. When you serve the bird, it will peel off easily and there will be a layer of air between the skin and the meat, since all the fat has melted away.

Now to the sauce:

Ingredients

• 2 cans pitted Bing cherries in sweet syrup
• 2 cans halved cling peaches in sweet syrup
• 1 can pineapple chunks in sweet syrup
• 1 can apricot halves in sweet syrup
• 1/3 cup Grand Marnier
• 2 tbsp. cornstarch
• 1/3 cup sugar

Drain the liquid from the cans. Heat it in a medium size pan. While heating, mix thoroughly the Grand Marnier and the cornstarch. Whisk into the near-boiling juice mixture and continue whisking until the sauce thickens and turns dark purple. It's a beautiful color. Add the fruit and the sugar into the sauce and mix thoroughly. Add more liqueur or sugar to taste.

Now all you have to do is present the duck and offer the sauce on the side. It's delicious.

For the brave ones amongst us, I recommend to flambe the duck with some heated Grand Marnier. It's a high risk proposition but the blue fire is very fetching!