Just look at the picture! Is this not
the greatest vegetable you’ve ever seen?! It sat on a vegetable stall but, to
me, it was probably more befitting of a coral reef. I was told that it was a Romanesco cauliflower. What exactly I was
going to do with it, I didn’t exactly know but it looked nice and I knew
straightaway that I had to put a picture of it on the blog. You see, in between
running Dear Son to gymnastics club and doing the food shopping this morning, I
made my way to Harry’s in Bridgend as they have started a local food market
every Saturday from 10:30am so I made sure I was there early. It’s a great idea
because all the produce is local either from their own walled garden or from
other local producers. So, I got Donegal strawberries which come from Culdaff; I
got a bag of herbs from Harry’s walled garden; mini turnips; beetroot; a bag of
salad leaves; a cucumber and the romanesco cauliflower. They also sell
potatoes, Mrs. Doherty’s wheaten scone bread (which is famous and made by Donal’s
mother!), tomato chutney, courgettes, tomatoes, mushrooms, rhubarb etc. I would
highly recommend making a trip to Bridgend any Saturday for all the beautiful
fresh produce that’s available.
But getting back to The Challenge, I promised
last night that today’s recipe was going to be something special and special it
was. Now, to put it in context firstly, from the second I laid eyes on this
recipe in the book, I said there was absolutely no way that I was going to make
it (ever!) so I would just somehow explain my way out of it. However, as time went on, I
knew in my heart that I had to make it. Well, why go to the point of making the
other 178 recipes and not make the two that has this particular type of meat in
it? The recipe was, of course, Pan-fried
duck breasts with redcurrant jelly sauce - one of two recipes in Rachel’s
book that have duck in it. The main reason I was intending not to make it was mainly because I grew up with Dear Father
rearing ducks so the thought didn’t sit well with me. The other, more pragmatic,
reason was where was I going to get duck for the recipe? Well, it must have
been fate because the other day, when I was in the supermarket, I spotted duck
breasts and duck legs. From that second, I knew my fate was sealed – I would have to suck it up
and reluctantly make those two recipes. So here’s how my first ever time at
cooking duck went…
The first thing I had to do was get
the latex gloves out (some things never change!), score diagonals in the skin of the duck breast and season
them. Secondly, I put the duck on a frying pan (skin side down) on a medium heat
for 2 minutes after which time I turned down the heat and let it cook for 15
minutes or so – actually maybe slightly more as it was a large duck breast.
Every so often, I would spoon off the duck fat to put it into a smaller frying
pan to make the sauce.
While the duck was cooking, I used
some of the duck fat to get started on the sauce. The recipe said to use 3
tablespoons of duck fat but it took quite a while (in my world!) to get one
tablespoon as I was only cooking one duck breast so my impatience won out and I
used 1 tablespoon of duck fat and 2 olive oil. That heated up and then I added
a finely chopped red onion, 6 tablespoons of redcurrant jelly, 2 tablespoons of
red wine vinegar and the juice of 2 oranges. Redcurrant jelly isn’t the easiest
thing to find but you’ll get it in M&S on the shelves beside their chicken and
vegetable stocks and other meat condiments. Anyway, once the sauce came up to
the boil, I whisked it every now and then until it thickened like syrup and
finished off by seasoning it. I served up by slicing the duck and pouring some
of the jelly sauce over it.
The verdict…
I knew this recipe was going to be
special – 10 marks out of 10!!! Dear Husband absolutely loved it. He used the words
‘tender’, ‘delicious’, ‘extremely tasty’. You get the gist of it. An absolute hit!
I asked him had he ever eaten duck before and he said he had it once in the
Radisson in Letterkenny. Other than that, the only other person I know who would
eat duck is my friend Claire.
Overall, it was an easy meal to make.
I think the biggest tasks are probably sourcing the duck and redcurrant jelly –
after that, it’s pretty plain sailing. It was also a fairly quick recipe to
make too especially considering how highly it scored. I never thought I’d say
this but, if you eat duck, you will most certainly have to make this recipe. Oh
dear, I’ve just realised, I’m going to have to make this again. Aw, the poor
wee duckies but lucky dear Husband…
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