18 October 2016

Magret de canard aux navets

I just searched my blog from top to bottom and back again to see if I could find a recipe with photos of the classic French dish called « canard aux navets ». I could not. I can't believe I've been blogging for 11 years and I've never posted about Duck with Turnips — especially since I love glazed turnips.


Usually duck with turnips is made with a whole roasted duck and the standard purple, white-fleshed turnip. What inspired me to make the dish yesterday was two things — we had a couple of very large duck breasts, or magrets de canard, in the freezer, and at the supermarket on Saturday I found some pretty little yellow turnips. One piece of magret was easily enough for the two of us. The yellow turnips were a little smaller than a tennis ball.


All I did to cook the duck breast was to sear it in a hot frying pan, cooking it skin-side down first to render the fat under the skin, which I had scored with a sharp knife to keep the breast from curling. Then I set it in a warm oven to wait while I glazed the turnips, which were first steamed in a steamer pot along with some pearl onions. I sauteed the partially cooked turnips and onions in the duck fat and then added some teriyaki sauce as a glaze. I could have used honey or sugar, but I had made up a batch of teriyaki sauce a few days earlier and decided it would be good in duck with turnips. I laid the duck breast back in the pan, surrounded by the vegetables, covered the pan, and let everything finish cooking that way. Duck breast is served rosé, as we say in France, meaning it is medium-rare. It tastes more like beefsteak than like poultry.


Yellow turnips are not the same thing as rutabagas, but from the little bit of reading I've done there's a lot of confusion about that in the U.S. Rutabagas are also yellow, and they resemble giant turnips, but they are not of the same species as turnips. The navet jaune « boule d'or » is a variety of turnip and its scientific name is Brassica rapa. The rutabaga — known in the U.K. as "swede" because it supposedly came from Scandinavia — is a turnip-cabbage hybrid (Brassica napobrassica), and is called « un rutabaga » in French as in the U.S. It is also sometimes called « le chou-navet ». What I had was not at all rutabaga, but real yellow turnips.

21 comments:

  1. I bought a yellow turnip the other day by accident. I thought it was a swede, which I much prefer. I added it to a blanquette de veau and put up with it. I sometimes get sucked into buying the pink and white turnips in the spring when they are small and irresistibly pretty. Shame about the taste though :-)

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    1. It helps if you glaze them with honey, sugar, or something like teriyaki sauce. I know some people find turnips to be bitter, but I don't. I'm also surprised to hear that you actually like rutabagas! So few people do.

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    2. Rutabaga... or swede to me... is an English staple...
      many traditional stews wouldn't be the same without it.
      We also cube, cook then drain and mash swede...
      or swede and carrots...and serve up with butter melted into it.
      And haggis wouldn't be tha same served up "wi'out 'neeps!"
      'Neeps are not turnips, but bashed swede!

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    3. People in the U.S. southern states also eat rutabegas — my mother cooks them. My grandmother's favorite kind of greens was turnip tops, and I like those too, as well as rutabaga.

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    4. A lot of our recent attempts with turnips have only supplied us with the tops... we like them too. The Greeks use them all the time and have a name I cannot remember.... "She Who Must Be Obeyed" is still asleep, or I'd ask!!

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  2. Je drool!
    We've grown these...
    but the soil in Leeds was very sandy and didn't suit "roots" very much...
    except for four types...
    swede proppa...probably because it was cabbage based...
    and any carrot, parsnip or beetroot.
    Here, on the otherhand... we've had no real luck with swede or turnip...
    but beetroot and carrots... no problem!
    And no problem with parsnips either...when they bleedin' germinate!!

    There is one turnip that I would love to grow again... Virtue's Hammer...
    or Marteau over here... and we did have success ONE year in Leeds...
    they are sweet and tender all the way through, with a creamy texture when young and raw....
    and can be grated into salads!!

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    1. We haven't tried to grow turnips or carrots etc. in our heavy clay soil. We did have success with potatoes one year, however. I can recommend the boule d'or turnips. I'd think in your valley you'd have the right kind of soil for them.

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  3. Looks delicious!
    We are fans of turnips, in fact any root veg. We had beef stew with the full set in it yesteday, turnips, swede, carrots, potatoes, parsnips, also leeks, done in the slow cooker for nine hours.
    Love the idea of this recipe, we shall try it!

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    1. I meant to add, it's a perfect dish for the season.

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    2. I had a hard time deciding whether I wanted the duck breast to be cooked "rosé" or whether I wanted to braise it so that I was completely cooked through. If you make canard aux navets with a whole duck it would be braised or roasted that way, fully cooked, and if you make it with duck legs then those would also be braised until nearly falling off the bone. Like confit de canard, which would also be good. I finally went with rosé because it took a lot less time.

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    3. Those little pearl onions, oignons grelot, came frozen from Picard, by the way.

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  4. This looks delicious. Just like you, I love everything turnip, whether it is the root proper or the greens. And, again, no carrots! What's going on, here ? :-)

    I see you make good use of that pan. The last time I used it was to cook côtes de porc confites au lasit in SC.

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    1. Sorry, of course it was ...confites au lait.

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    2. Mer... mince, j'ai encore oublié les carottes.

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    3. I like pork cooked in milk, and chicken cooked in milk too.

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  5. Your dish looks wonderful! I grew up eating a lot of turnips and rutabagas. I had always assumed that turnips and rutabagas were related. I think one reason is that my dad, who grew up in suburban Atlanta, called them northern turnips.

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    1. People in the U.S. call rutabagas "yellow turnips" from what I've read. But here in France we get yellow turnips that are really turnips, not rutabagas. They have a slightly different taste and texture.

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  6. I didn't know about the name Swede- I had a friend that used to call walnuts, "yankee nuts" since we eat so many pecans down here. Your dinner looks delicious!

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    1. We called those "English walnuts" to distinguish them from black walnuts. In Québec they call them noix de Grenoble.

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