Pan-seared Duck with Crunchy Sal­ad (serves four easily)

2 bone­less duck breasts (these usu­al­ly come vacuum-packed)
sea salt
2 cups tight­ly packed baby spinach leaves
1 small pur­ple cabbage
1 small white cabbage
2 red bell peppers
1 avocado
1 dozen small tomatoes
hand­ful chives
dress­ing: juice and pulp of a lemon, 1 clove gar­lic, fine­ly chopped, 1/4 cup olive oil, dah bal­sam­ic vine­gar, tasp Dijon mus­tard, sea salt

Place the duck breasts on a cut­ting board (NOT the one you will lat­er use for prepar­ing the sal­ad; always use sep­a­rate boards for raw meat and veg­gies). Score the skin in four hor­i­zon­tal slices, till you can just see the meat beneath. Sprin­kle the skin with sea salt.

Heat a large skil­let till near­ly smok­ing, then put in duck breasts skin side down and sprin­kle with sea salt. You would be wise at this point to cov­er the skil­let with one of those grease screens, since duck is very fat­ty and you (and your price­less Armani jack­et) will get splat­tered. Turn heat down to medi­um and let duck cook for 8 min­utes. Resist the temp­ta­tion to play with it, poke it, and above all DO NOT pierce it.

Mean­while, pile the spinach on a large plat­ter. Shred the cab­bages fine­ly (I cut them in quar­ters first to make small shreds) and slice the red pep­per into small strips. Halve the toma­toes. Chop the chives. Scat­ter all this over the spinach. It will be so pret­ty you’ll be tempt­ed to take a picture.

Now, lift the grease screen and turn over the duck breasts. They will siz­zle mad­ly, so quick­ly put the screen back on, and pre­pare to wait anoth­er 8 min­utes. Com­bine all dress­ing ingre­di­ents and whisk enthus­ti­as­ti­cal­ly, but know that you will have to whisk again just before dress­ing the salad.

Remove the skil­let from the heat and, using tongs so as not to pierce the meat, lift the duck breasts from the skil­let and place on a plate. Pour off the fat and reserve in case you plan to fry eggs or hash browns any time soon (you can always throw it away lat­er if you don’t use it). Wipe the skil­let with paper tow­els and place the duck breasts back in skin side down, then return to heat. Let the breasts siz­zle for about two min­utes, then lift them out of the fat and remove them to a fresh cut­ting board, where they can rest while you pour wine (or in our case, milk) and whisk the dress­ing one more time.

Now, you have a choice to make. Are you going to eat the delec­table skin and com­plete­ly ruin your res­o­lu­tion to eat less fat, or are you going to remove the skin and have a tru­ly guilt-free din­ner? Your choice. I did remove the skin, and let me tell you, we did­n’t feel deprived. Slice the duck thin­ly or thick­ly, whichev­er you like, and lay the slices over the sal­ad. Whisk the dress­ing one more time and pour over the duck.

There is some­thing about the rich, ten­der, pink duck with a bite of crunchy, tangy cab­bage and toma­to, and silky avo­ca­do, and vir­tu­ous spinach, that makes this dish just deli­cious. And so good for you!

Then, the next night we had com­plete­ly bor­ing, for­get­table fan­cy fresh ravi­o­li from Sel­f­ridges. How­ev­er. With it I made an acci­den­tal sauce that turned out to be sub­lime. It hap­pened out of sheer neglect.