Everything but the quack!

Pappardelle with duck ragu

SOMETIMES you wonder about supermarkets. Waitrose are currently selling two duck breasts for £9 but whole roast in the bag 1.25kg ducks at £8.35. So that means any sharp-eyed cook with a sharp knife can get the breasts, plus two legs and the carcase for free and still finish 65p up on the deal.

Or even more. “I’ve got a £1.50 voucher for any duck product,” said my wife as she disappeared down the aisle. I did the maths. That meant I – or she – was only going to pay £6.85 for that quacker.

Which made up, in part, for the laughably high prices she insists on paying when she could go to more inexpensive supermarkets.

I’ve done it before (without the voucher) and the legs normally finish up as a confit. Sadly, this is where things go wrong – I sometimes roast them too dry or to a crisp when I dredge them out of their fat some months later. There had to be another use apart from a stir-fry.

There is: duck ragu.

What follows is an amalgam of several Venetian recipes, which concentrate on flavourings such as bay, thyme and sage and, in one case, cinnamon. So I used all four and added rosemary for luck.

My cut price duck, ready for butchering

All the recipes I consulted stipulated using one leg per person or a whole duck (in which case you roast it) but I found two legs gave quite enough ragu for four. And I prefer cooking on the stove top rather than in the oven because it is less wasteful of energy. And cheaper.

You need:

2 duck legs, oiled and seasoned

1 small onion, 1 stick of celery, 1 large carrot, all chopped small for a soffrito

125ml red wine

125ml chicken stock

1 tin chopped tomato

tomato puree

herbs as above

2 cloves garlic, crushed

1 tbsp plain flour

1 dessert spoon ground cinnamon

salt and pepper to taste

Butchering was relatively easy. Dislocate the leg and wing joints first before cutting and work your knife carefully along the breastbone.

Brown the duck legs in a heavy casserole for about 10 minutes. I added the tops of the wings – not much meat but they will add flavour.

Remove the meat with tongs and pour off all but 1 tbsp of duck fat. I poured the excess into my duck fat jar.

Gently cook the vegetables, herbs and garlic gently for as long as you can be bothered (but at least 10 mins) then add the cinnamon and flour and stir in for a minute or two.

All chopped and ready to go

Now add the wine, chicken stock, tomatoes and puree and return the meat to the pan. It should be just submerged. Bring to boil then turn down to a simmer and leave, stirring occasionally to stop things sticking. You want the meat to be really tender.

Then remove it to a plate and allow to cool. Then, with two forks, carefully remove the skin (don’t both if you miss bits, it will be very soft) shred the meat from the bones and return to the pan.

A cook’s treat is to suck, guzzle and gnaw the bones clean before discarding.

It tasted wonderful although I might go a bit easier on the cinnamon next time. It’s going in the freezer until I need it (as a sauce with pasta) because we are having those duck breasts, pan-fried, first.

I also boiled up the carcase as a stock, also destined for the freezer, and while all this was going on I gently fried little two inch squares of snipped skin from the carcase in a heavy-based frying pan. Sprinkled with salt and pepper, they made another little treat.

And, of course, they yielded even more fat for the jar. And I even finished up with a little duck ‘dripping’ which went well with my breakfast toast.

I’m feeling pretty pleased with it all. That duck gave us eight main meals in total: breasts, four plates of ragu and two bowls of soup, plus all those little extras. We ate everything but the quack.

When you’re married to a Waitrose Wife you have to stretch those pennies, don’t you?

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