Recipe: WeightWatchers Supper Club Wine Glazed Duck Breasts With Figs

I have never been keen on the word diet, it is all to often confused with dieting and the austere connotations of deprivation and drab food.  Not so with Weight Watchers who have a new Facebook Supper Club app packed full of delicious recipes with big flavours to cook, share with friends and enjoy and still lose weight.

The app is packed with tasty sounding, appetising dishes such as lemongrass & lime herb chicken kebabs, chilli beef & pinenut penne or risotto with peas, pancetta and parsley.   There are lighter recipes – such as a lunch box salad or a lemon pepper tuna salad, and because losing weight does not have to be about deprivation there are even some baked jam doughnuts!  Recipes range from 1 to 14 ProPoints® per serving, so there is plenty to choose from.

Y0u can use the recipes in the app as they are, or, select some dishes and invite you Facebook friends to supper (either on person or virtually).  Once you have cooked the dishes you can upload a photo and the tweaks you made to the recipe.  Interestingly I could not see the word diet used anywhere in the app, which seems to be a good way to think about things.

Given the Fuss Free logo of figs, the wine-glazed duck breasts with figs seemed an apt choice to try for our lunch today.

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Recipe: WeightWatchers Supper Club Wine Glazed Duck Breasts With Figs

Prep Time

20 mins

Cook Time

20 mins

Total Time

40 mins

 

(Recipe from WeightWatchers – reproduced with permission) ProPoints® Values: 14

Servings: 2 servings

Author: Helen Best-Shaw

Ingredients

• calorie controlled cooking spray
• 2 × 125 g skinless boneless duck breasts 4oz
• 4 fresh figs halved
• 1 shallot sliced thinly
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• 1 heaped teaspoon clear honey
• 125 ml red wine 4 fl oz
• 150 ml chicken stock 5 fl oz
• a cinnamon stick

Instructions

1. Heat a non stick frying pan over a medium heat and spray lightly with the cooking spray. Add the duck breasts and cook for 5 minutes. Turn the duck and cook for 2 minutes then add the figs, cut side down, plus the sliced shallot. Cook for 3 minutes then remove the duck breasts to a plate and keep warm.
2. Add the balsamic vinegar and honey to the frying pan and turn the figs over in the mixture for 30 seconds before transferring them to the plate with the duck.
3. Pour the red wine and stock into the frying pan, add the cinnamon stick and boil the sauce for 5 minutes on a high heat until reduced and syrupy. Briefly return the duck and figs to the pan and turn to glaze in the sticky sauce. Serve on warmed plates.

We really enjoyed this – the sweetness of the figs and the sticky red wine glaze went very well with the gamey duck and with such big flavours I did not miss the skin which I would have usually kept on.   Certainly one to make again.  I am also converted to using an oil spray when frying – if you have a decent non stick pan you really need very little oil and it is all too easy to glug far more than you need into the pan.

I made a few modifications* – firstly I could not find skinless duck breasts in the supermarket so I had to skin them myself and was quite shocked at the thickness of the fatty skin (and was also surprised at how good the lean duck was with the sticky red wine sauce). I used thick honey rather than runny clear and I added a pinch of cinnamon powder in place of the stick.   I think this would be equally good by adding a strip of orange zest to the sauce instead of the cinnamon.  If you do not have a shallot then use half a small onion in its place.

When reducing the sauce keep a careful eye on it – it goes from too thin to too thick in the blink of an eye.    I served this with some sugar snap peas – WeightWatchers suggest mange tout and carrot and suede mash for no extra ProPoints® per serving.

*Modifications to the recipe may result in a different ProPoints® value per serving.

This is a sponsored post – Weight Watchers paid me a fee to reproduce and share their recipe.  All opinions are my own.