Duck is on the up. Nolonger is it seen asa rare treat or a dinner party special: we're ordering it and cooking it with less gastronomic reverence, more easy-going enthusiasm. It's long been a favourite of mine, with its dense, rich meat and crucial layer of lovely fat. And what that fat delivers is deep flavour and awonderful yielding texture, combined with theultimate in delicious crisp skin. What more doyou want from a bird?
But if you imagine the ducks we're eating have lived lives of bucolic bliss, bobbing about on ponds and scratching in the grass for delicious bugs, you'd be wrong. As the popularity of duck increases, so the birds' welfare is suffering. Millions of ducks are raised for meat in the UK, many in highly intensive units where the standard of welfare is shockingly low. Most farmed ducks do not even have access to bathing water, which, when you think about the way ducks behave in the wild, isa pretty fundamental deprivation.
My preference is for free-range or, even better, organic duck. Apart from requiring that ducks have access to a stream, pond or lake, Soil Association standards stipulate a lower stocking density, so they have much more outdoor space. The RSPCA also has a set of standards (under its Freedom Foods label) for farmed duck, which, though they don't require the ducks to range outdoors, do stipulate bathing water, straw bedding and natural daylight.
Sadly, you won't find free-range or organic ducks in many supermarkets, but there are plenty of internet sources, and it's always worth asking your butcher. (Ideally, get a duck with giblets, which make fantastic stock.) These higher-welfare birds are often fed a better, grain-based diet, which can make an enormous difference to the flavour of the meat.
I tend to favour cooking duck very simply – roasting it is my favourite approach, and I go for the traditional long roast that gives well-done meat and delectably crisp skin. My basic roasting method is in today's recipes. But I also sometimes like to take the duck apart, cook the breasts and legs in different ways, and use the carcass to make stock.
If you don't fancy going the whole hog with a complete bird, you can buy breasts and legs separately – again, I'd recommend RSPCA Freedom Foods as a minimum welfare standard. Treat yourself to awell-treated duck, then treat your family and friends to one of these treatments. Treats all round, in fact.
Duck breasts with pineapple, chilli and soy
A favourite quick duck recipe. You could swap the pineapple for two tart eating apples, cored and quartered, in which case use a splash of apple juice or cider instead of the pineapple juice. Serves two.
½ large fresh pineapple
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp soft brown sugar (or honey)
3 garlic cloves, chopped
A golfball-sized piece of fresh ginger, peeled and finely sliced
½-1 fresh red chilli (according to heat), deseeded and finely chopped
A few twists of black pepper
2 boneless duck breasts
A little sunflower oil
2 spring onions, finely sliced
A little caster sugar, for dusting
Peel the pineapple and cut off two 2cm-thick slices. Cut these into quarters and trim off the core. Roughly chop the rest of the pineapple and, with your hands, squeeze out the juice into a bowl.
Mix three or four tablespoons of the juice with the soy, sugar (or honey), garlic, ginger, chilli and black pepper. Make three or four slashes in the skin of each duck breast, cutting deep into the fat but not as far as the flesh. Put the breasts in the marinade and turn to coat. Marinate for a couple of hours, if possible, but even 10 minutes will do.
Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Grease a frying pan with sunflower oil and put it on a high heat. Wipe the marinade off the duck and sear quickly all over. Put the breasts skin side up in an ovenproof dish into which they'll fit snugly. Tuck the spring onions underneath and pour over the marinade. Roast for eight to 10 minutes, until the skin is browned and crisp – at this point, the meat should still be pink.
Remove the breasts and leave to rest on a warmed plate. In a small, lightly oiled pan, fry the reserved pineapple slices, dusting them with a little sugar and turning occasionally, so they brown. Strain the meat juices into the pan and reduce to a syrupy sauce, tossing the pineapple pieces to coat them. Put the duck in the pan and turn a few times to coat.
Slice the duck and arrange on plates. Spoon the sauce and pineapple over and around the meat. Serve with rice and steamed greens.
Roast duck with gravy
My go-to method for roast duck with a gorgeous gravy. Serves four.
1 large duck, with giblets, if possible
For the gravy
The neck, giblets and wingtips
1 small onion
1 carrot
1 celery stick
A little oil
1 bay leaf
1 small glass red wine
½ tsp redcurrant jelly (optional)
Untruss the duck and gently pull the legs away from the body. Cut off the wing tips and roughly chop them, together with all the giblets except the liver, plus the onion, carrot and celery. Fry these in a little oil until the meat is nicely browned. Transfer to a saucepan with the bay leaf, cover with water and bring to a simmer. Leave at a gentle simmer for about an hour and three-quarters (ie, while you cook the duck).
Heat the oven to 220C/425F/gas mark 7. Remove any obvious fat from inside the duck. Use a needle to prick the skin all over the breast and where the breast joins the leg. Just pierce the skin: you want the fat to run, but not the juices from the meat. Lightly season the skin.
Put the bird in a roasting tin, and roast for 20 minutes, so the fat starts to run. Turn down the heat to 180C/350F/gas mark 4, baste the bird, and cook for another hour and 10 minutes, basting two or three times. When the juices run clear, it's done – poke a skewer into the thickest part of the leg, close to the breast. Tip the bird so any juices pour out of the cavity into the roasting tin, then transfer the duck to a warmed plate.
Pour off the fat from the tin into a heatproof bowl or dish, leaving just the brown juices in the tin (keep the cooled fat in the fridge for roasting potatoes). Deglaze the tin with wine, then strain the stock and the deglazed pan juices into a clean pan and boil hard to reduce to a rich, syrupy gravy. Taste for seasoning, and add the redcurrant jelly for sweetness, if you like.
To carve, slice between the legs and the breast, then prise off the whole legs, pulling the thigh bone away from the body of the bird. Cut each leg in half at the joint between thigh and drumstick. Slice the whole breasts from the carcass, then cut each into five or six thick slices. Offer your guests a few slices of breast with a thigh or drumstick. Serve with the gravy.
Confit duck leg with white beans
I love salty, savoury confit duck torn into shreds and tossed with beans or lentils. You can also serve the legs whole, roasting them in a very hot oven (230C/450F/gas mark 8) for 10-15 minutes. A whole leg serves one as a main course; shredded like this, apair of legs will do two to four.
15g coarse sea salt
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2-3 sprigs fresh thyme
2-3 bay leaves, torn
6 garlic cloves, squashed
2 duck legs
200-400ml olive oil
1 tin white beans, drained and rinsed
Watercress, to serve
Combine the salt, pepper, thyme, bay leaves and garlic, then rub into the skin and meat of the duck legs. Put the legs in a tray or dish, and refrigerate for 24 hours.
Next day, scrape off and reserve the seasonings. Heat the oven to 150C/300F/gas mark 2. Heat a trickle of olive oil in a frying pan over a fairly high heat, brown the legs all over and transfer to an oven dish in which they fit as snugly as possible. Scatter over the reserved seasonings and pour on enough oil just to cover, or almost cover. Cook in the low oven for about two hours (if the legs are not submerged in oil, turn them halfway through), until the meat falls off the bone. Leave to cool, then store in its oil in the fridge.
To serve, remove one or two duck legs from their oil, allowing any excess oil to drip off, tear the meat off the bones and pull into shreds. Serve alongside white beans (mixed with a little sautéed onion or shallot, if you like) and watercress.
