Cooking meat with a sauce from fruits is not familiar in Vietnamese cooking. That’s why I am always eager to try Western dishes served with this kind of sauce. They are often new experiences to me: cooking fruits in savory dishes.
When watching Western cooking shows, my fiance is often impressed by the different levels of doneness, especially when it comes to meats. In Vietnamese food, we hardly cook the meat till rare or medium rare but often cook well-done. Seeing a large piece of lamb rack or beef fillet mignon cooked until rare or medium-rare, with the red juice comes out from the very tender inner meat, he always wishes to really try a perfect piece of that meat one day.
When I cooked this duck breast, the result was as he expected. Following the cooking time suggested, the duck breast was just medium, nearly well-done. When I sliced the duck fillet, a pale pink juice came out of the meat. For the first time, my fiance admitted that this was the most tender piece of duck breast he had been eaten so far. He really liked having this tender meat with orange sauce as well. When I can afford to buy beef and lamb, I definitely try cooking the meat at different doneness for him to try.
