Chestnut Soup with Smoked Wild Duck Breast and Orange Foam

Comfort food is great especially in the cold season, and a good home-made soup is easy to prepare, will keep our body warm, and doesn’t require the addition of a lot of fat. In this soup, I’m combining chestnuts and wild duck breast, topped by delicious orange foam. Chestnuts are very healthy and have a beautiful, rich, sweet, and starchy flavor which perfectly complements the salty smoked wild duck breast.

You need the following ingredients: (serves 4)

• 1 smoked wild duck breast
• 250 g / 0.55 lbs chestnuts (pre-cooked)
• 1 leek
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 shallots
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1/3 cup / 80 ml white port wine
• 4 1/3 cups / ~ 1 l Homemade Vegetable Broth
• 1 tbsp Homemade Ghee
• salt and pepper (to taste)

for the orange foam:

• 1/3 cup / 80 ml orange juice
• 4 cl cream
• 1 tsp soy lecithin powder

Note: I always try to buy organic ingredients, ideally seasonal and local. In this recipe, I used most of the ingredients from Delhaize Luxembourg. They offer a variety of organic and local ingredients.

Remove the smoked wild duck breast from the refrigerator so that it warms up to room temperature before serving.

For the soup, peel the garlic and shallots and chop them. Trim and clean the leek, and wash the leek, parsley, and thyme. Slice the leek and chop the herbs and chestnuts. Spare a couple of chestnuts and thyme leaves for decoration.

In a medium size pot over medium heat, sauté the shallots, leek, and garlic with one tbsp of ghee while stirring continuously. Add the chestnuts and herbs and combine everything. Deglaze with the white port until almost all liquid is gone. Season with salt and pepper and add the vegetable stock. Reduce the heat and let the soup simmer for about 20 minutes. Puree the soup with a hand blender until smooth. Add some water or vegetable stock if the soup is to thick. As needed, season again with salt and pepper to your liking.

For the orange foam, combine all ingredients in a small pot and blend with a hand blender until foamy. Try to get as much air as possible into the liquid by holding your hand blender at a slight angle, that way it will create a nice foamy texture. Soy lecithin is part of the molecular kitchen and helps maintain the texture of the orange foam once it’s added to the hot soup. Remove some of the duck fat, and heat it in a pan.  Then add the thyme leaves and chopped chestnuts you spared before. Let them brown slightly.

Serve in a soup plate or bowl, arrange 2-3 slices of the smoked wild duck breast in the middle of the soup. Drizzle a couple of teaspoons of the foam around the duck breast and sprinkle some of the roasted chestnuts and thyme leaves on top of the foam.

Enjoy, Melanie…

Categories: Soups, World of Recipes

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