My friend came back from France with this mighty tin and was all like “heughy heughy huagh” and I was all like “sure!”
So what’s inside the tin?
Jesus fcking christ on a bike! This is some serious fat and protein action! There are 4 duck legs and what can only be described as an oil slick of duck fat which is now all over my professional chef’s kitchen table! What on earth am I going to do with all this heavenly French fayre?
A good place to start would be my professional chef’s fridge where I find some ingredients just hangin’ around:
Salad leaves, a red pepper, fresh yogurt, mars pipers tatties.
Here’s my plan: roast the potatoes in the duck fat; roast the pepper and pickle it in some vinegar and sugar (I need something to cut through the richness of the dish); make a yogurt and cumin seed dip; put the salad leaves back in the fridge because they are dead to me.
I start by roasting potatoes in the duck fat (par boiled 10 mins, oven 160c 40 mins):
As this is happening I gently warm the pepper:
As that wee bam cools down, I note that in the bottom of the tin is some jelly so I’m going to turn this into a delicious gravy…
And after 40 minutes I put in the confit duck legs into the oven the tatties are roasting in and grill them for around 10 mins on a high heat.
After which we have:
Grilled protein party!
The final step is to assemble all my ingredients and present very them badly indeed:
Aaaaaand how does it taste?
The gravy is super nice, well balanced and very umami; the duck is a little tough and maybe overly salty and tastes a bit like tinned ham for some strange reason, but the peppers cut through the richness of the dish (I think a better alternative would have been pickled red cabbage mind you). The potatoes are really great, crispy on the outside and fluffy in the middle. And finally, the yogurt is not too bad and lends a nice texture to the whole shebang. Overall, this is a very comforting dish and one that will make you very fat. Probably the greatest let down is the quality of the duck if I’m honest, but I wasn’t expecting much from tinned meat.
But what do you think? How could I have improved this dish? Have you tried this stuff? Tell ME on twitter NOW!!
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ps the duck was pre-cooked in case you’re all confused and shit.
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