Aromatic Crispy Duck w/Pea Salad

This recipe has a ton of potential but more than a few problems, possibly due to a poor translation. The recipe is really too easy to need two cooks, but Soupereasy and I ended up being glad to have two heads to rethink the recipe.

We both think that the first and last three steps of the recipe should be reversed. It just seems to make more sense to make the salad and salad dressing before searing the duck. Also -- the salad is composed of green peas and chickpeas in a lemony tahini dressing; we encountered two problems with the salad:

1. the peas and chickpeas didn't really seem to complement each other and the dressing didn't seem to improve that situation;
2. the dressing was composed of lemon syrup, tahini and cilantro, but the directions for making the lemon syrup (whole lemon cut into 10 wedges, sugar, and water to cover -- boil, then simmer 5 min, then use a hand-blender) gave us a really odd sweet/bitter lemony slush, even though we used a stand blender.

So we started over, used lemon peel with no pits and seeded lemon slices (would supreme the lemon next time) and were much happier with the result and the dressing.

The recipe calls for a duck breast with the skin removed. We decided to render the fat from the skin and used a tablespoon of that to cook the duck. The breast in cut in half length-wide and then each half into thin scallops which are quickly seared (about a minute per side. The recipe calls for a "smoking" pan but we used a non-stick pan over fairly high but not smoking heat. As the duck finishes cooking you add a small amount of soy sauce to deglaze the pan, then off-heat some hoisin sauce. The duck is then placed atop the dressed pea salad and drizzled with additional dressing.

The duck and dressing combo really works, but the neither of us really liked pea salad with it. I do think the duck and dressing would really work with soba noodles, and maybe some slivered snap peas.