Duck breast with blueberry sauce (served with rosemary potatoes)

Never liked duck before but since the man of the house loves it, decided to give it a go.  I think this is the best way of combining meat with sweet in a main course.  Delicious and incredibly filling. Takes a bit of time to prepare though, so allow 1h 30m.

Ingredients:  

4 potatoes, cubed
250g boneless duck breast, uncut, with fat on
Salt, pepper, thyme (1.5 tbsp), rosemary (1tbsp)
3 tablespoons olive oil (can be infused)
600g fresh blueberries
125ml water and 125ml elderflower juice (can be apple too)
3 rashers of bacon, thinly cut
6 shallots, thinly sliced
100g mushrooms (shitaake or chestnut)
15g butter and 2tbsp balsamic vinegar
100g sugar if needed (can be less or none)
one medium sized leek.

Let's do it: 

1.) Prep.  Preheat oven to 190c.  In a small bowls mix salt, pepper, thyme and rosemary. This will be our spice blend. Cube potatoes.  Fry and cut bacon.  Cut mushrooms into thin slices.

2.) Potatoes.  Put cubed potatoes in a 22cx30 ish baking dish, drizzle with olice oil and sprinkle one tbsp on the spice blend over  it.  Toss until evenly coated, then spread into a single layer.  Put in oven, bake for 40 mins.

3.) Sauce:  Stir together the blueberries, juice, water and sugar in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil over medium heat and simmer until the mixture has reduced to a consistency of a syrup (10-20 mins, depending on heat).

4.) Veg:  Melt the butter in a frying pan, add shallots, mushrooms and leeks when sizzly. Cook them until soft and beginning to brown nicely.  Add salt and pepper.  Once they are near done (remember never overdo the mushrooms), take them out of the frying pan, put on a plate, set aside.

5.) Quack:  Rinse the duck breasts and pat dry.  Rub the rest of the spice blend onto both sides of the breast.  Preheat the frying pan on high heat, adding a bit more butter, then place the duck breasts in the pan, fat side down.  This is important! Do not move them until the skin is deep brown (5 mins or so).  Then turn the breasts, and cook until done (no red bits in the middle).  Around 10 misn, if it's too dry you can always add a splash of water to keep the steam up.  Also might work if you cover the pan (but keep checking!). Remove the duck when ready and put it on a plate to rest for 5 mins.

6.) Soon there... Put the veg mixture back in the pan where the duck breasts were (hopefully there will still be some nice duck breast juice around in there!) and add the bacon.   Heat through, then place on a nice serving plate, making a bed for the duck.

7.) Ready now:  Slice the duck breasts into 1cm strips diagonally and nicely place the strips on the veg bed. drizzle with balsamic vinegar, ladle on the blueberry sauce (or put it on the side so that everyone can serve themselves).

Serve with the rosemary potatoes and a nice, medium bodied, dry red wine and enjoy!

Weightwatching bits:

One serving (half of the above) without potatoes is a nice 450 cals, with potatoes add around 150, depending on how much il you drizzled on.  For waistline watchers: actually the vegs and the duck are so rich that you may not even want potatoes.