48 Years, 4 loaves & a Duck

Well, we survived the 48th anniversary weekend. Come Monday we were down to scraps – if you consider half a duck in a pasta gratin to be scraps.

Ready in the bread department there was:

Pain Niçoise: figs, sundried tomatoes, olives, garlic, herbs. A fine bread to accompany cheese.

Available for breakfasts was Brioche Provençale: loaded with crystalized fruits (soaked in rum and orange juice)

Cake Salé au Potimarron – not really a bread but a savoury cake of spelt, squash, lardons, mushrooms, milk, eggs – sliced to nibble with an aperitif:

Baguettes to go with starters, cheese, etc.

Saturday, seafood day! After sparkling Crémant de Loire and the odd slice of Potimarron, at about 2.00 p.m. we started with – crab cakes!

Followed, rather later, by the fish:

Plaice and serrano bathed in brown butter, garlic and parsley + saffron rice. You have to understand that some time had passed since the Crémant popped it’s cork so the presentation was a bit lacking. I also intended to add a few crevettes and the odd slice of fried tomato but forgot. Still, the fish was perfectly cooked and pretty delicious. I think we were well down a bottle of Loire Sauvignon Blanc by then.

The plan was to skip pud and have a cheese and salad course – Sue had put together a pretty neat cheese board. But time had moved on again and by now red wine was in the mix. It ended up with just me having a bit of cheese on a bit of bread.

Large Wild Turkey and to bed.

Sunday, the main event. 48 years ago I arrived in London from Manchester to discover I’d lost the keys to Sue’s flat. She was working as a probation officer and I had to call her out from the office to let me in. She was not happy. Not an auspicious start but I’m working on making it up to her.

Big duck day. But first, on the dot of 12 midday, my mate Kev was arriving. Every Sunday at midday he comes for just half an hour and we drink a pint of cider and put the previous week to bed. It’s usually Weston’s but, special occasion, I got a couple of 750cl bottles from the Wine Society, one from Somerset the other from Normandy. We preferred the French (but didn’t like the price of either).

Same routine, bit of the Cake with a bottle of sparkling Loire but no starter proper. The duck was a Simon Hopkinson production number and the cooking was a shared operation which is a bit risky if you want to survive into the 49th year.

Innocently called “Roast Duck with cider, cream and apples”, preparation starts the night before when the skin is pricked and a kettle of boiling water poured over it. The duck dries out overnight on a rack. Next day it is roasted, first very hot to brown it and release the fat, and then at a lower temperature for a longer period. Then it is cooled and cut in half before being reheated again in the sauce.

The danger of domestic friction lurks in the fact that Sue is a very literal cook and I’m more instinctive. We both cook a lot and produce good results but by different routes. She’ll follow the method exactly whereas I tend to busk it quite a lot. Cooking the individual dishes of a meal is sort of OK, but sharing a recipe is highly risky, especially one that’s new and complex.

No disagreement about how to pour a kettle of water over a duck, but then there’s the roasting …

Mr Hopkinson’s duck is 1.5K, our’s is 2.2K. He roasts his duck at 230C for 20 minutes and reduces the heat to 180C for 40-50 minutes. Sue starts trying to do a complicated calculation to take into account the difference in weight, the fact that we’re using fan, and even the time it takes for the oven to reduce from 230C to 180C. My approach would be to treat his instructions as a very rough guide, forget about the difference in weight, because it’s pretty easy to tell when a bird is cooked (and he even gives you the internal temperature to reach), keep his initial temperature because you really want heat to start the browning process and release the fat, then reduce his second temperature by 10 degrees to 170C and check progress after 30 minutes. We actually came to an accommodation on this which was pretty encouraging.

The next stage is where things start to get a little strange. The cooked duck is cooled and then halved lengthways. You’re supposed to release the meat from the ribcage but I thought, sod that, I made a right mess last time I tried anything like that, and left it on the bone. What’s more, there was plenty for at least two meals so I cut it in quarters.

Meanwhile Sue was making the sauce which was a little unusual because, like the duck, it came in two halves. First half, chopped apple is stewed gently in butter with a little sugar and lemon juice until it is soft but intact. Then a splash of calvados is stirred in. Second half, 440g of cider is reduced until it becomes syrupy. Then about the same amount of cream is added and the mixture reduced again. Finally the duck pieces go in a gratin dish, the sauce is poured over and the apple spooned into the gaps between and around the bird. Back in the oven for 20 minutes until well glazed.

Now then, you’ve got to acknowledge the strength of our bond if we can jointly cook a duck without an argument. True, we’ve had the previous 48 years for practice and occasionally the rehearsals didn’t go too smoothly but we’ve survived it all with enthusiasm.

There was more. Sue’s perfect little lemon possets, the secret of which is infusing the cream with basil leaves before straining and chilling.

There might have been cheese, I don’t remember.

Like the duck I was well glazed …

Bread Notes

Pain Niçoise formula here – seem to have missed out the red onion this time round. Substituted tomato juice for some of the water (drained from a tin of tomatoes)

Brioche Provençale formula here – beefed up Christmas version with the fruit soaked in rum and orange juice

Cake Salé au Potimarron formula here – this time the squash was cut into wedges, roast and roughly mashed

Baguettes formula here – my latest way with baguettes