Marx Foods Challenge: Duck Sausage

UPDATE: Hi, everyone. Re-posting this write up because the time to vote is now! Please give me your vote if you like my recipe :) Thank you! The polls will be open till Friday.

I've had a lovely relationship with Marx Foods (a food company based in Seattle). A while ago they sent me a variety of dried peppers to try and I quite enjoyed experimenting with them.

Last week I received an email from Justin Marx encouraging me to participate in testing their new game sausage. I was intrigued and willing to play.

There were a few snafus with FedEx, but I received my package from Marx Foods last Thursday and although completely defrosted, it was still safe to consume. I found out that the sausage comes fully cooked, and not raw as I expected. That made me change my mind regarding what I was planning to cook with the sausage. Plus, the variety that I received was smoked duck. I'm not a huge duck fan because of its strong flavor, and wanted to come up with a dish that would let the sausage shine but at the same time make it less pungent.

After a long deliberation, I decided to make a salad! This might seem like a simple idea, but you don't need to spend hours in the kitchen in order to come up with a great meal. The sweetness of oranges and cranberries goes well with the strong taste of duck sausage and is yet offset by the tartness of Granny Smith apples and the spiciness of mustard.

Plus, you can make this salad year round!

Ingredients
salad
1 orange, segmented
1/2 Granny Smith apple, thinly sliced
2 tablespoons cranberries
1 duck sausage, cut diagonally and grilled on both sides (I used my George Foreman grill, but feel free to use your outdoor grills)
2 cups young lettuce leaves

dressing
1 tablespoon fresh orange juice
1 tablespoon mustard
2 tablespoons olive oil

salt and freshly ground black pepper

Directions
1. Whisk together dressing ingredients. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Either combine all the salad ingredients and drizzle with the dressing or
3. Make a layered salad (see below).

There will be voting on Marx Foods website starting with June 8th. There will be one winner out of 11 people who will receive an entire game sausage sampler!!! Please mark your calendars to vote for me :) I'll also remind you of this next week!