James Titcumb

Image sourced from: roboppy on flickr under CC-by-nc-nd 2.0 license.

A good confit de canard (duck confit) is hard to get hold of in England, but luckily as my parents live in the Dordogne region they sometimes bring over a tin. A confit de canard is duck legs that are kept in tins, covered in it’s own fat. This fat is great and should be kept after cooking for doing roast potatoes and so on. It’s really easy to cook the duck as well. All you have to do is put in oven for 35-45 minutes (for a good fan assisted, I’d stick to 35-40) at 180 degrees. I simply took the duck legs out of the tin, put them on a grill rack skin side up above a roasting tin to catch the precious duck fat. I poured more of the duck fat over to make sure there was plenty on them, and simply season with salt and pepper. Cook as above, until the skin is nice and crispy. It’ll make a bit of a mess of your oven, but it’s well worth it. After cooking, whilst the fat is still hot and pourable, pour into a container with the remaining fat in the tin and let it cool. Keep this fat in the fridge, and it’ll keep for a few months I believe, and you can use it for roasting potatoes etc. or anywhere where duck fat might be a tasty ingredient. I served ours with mashed potato, carrots and courgette, but traditionally duck might be served with some lettuce and sautéed potatoes.

Soup is a really yummy dish, really easy to make, and great for winter. Carrot & Coriander soup is my favourite and I had a bash at making my own last night. The only thing is, you need a blender or liquidiser for this, so if you don’t have one, you can get one pretty cheap.

Ingredients

• Carrots
• 3/4 pint Vegetable or chicken stock
• A white potato or two (depending on how thick you want it – I used 3!)
• Fresh coriander
• A bit of butter
• Optional – double cream

Instructions

Skin potatoes and carrots. Chop coriander up really fine. Remember – the more coriander you have, the more spicy it gets! Put a bit of butter in a large saucepan. Heat them on medium/low for about 5 minutes. Pour in your stock, and simmer for 15 minutes. Add coriander, and if you want, some double cream.

Let it all cool right down to a temperature that won’t melt your blender – you’re not blaming me if you put hot stuff in your blender and it melts! Then put it all in the blender and blend until really smooth. Once blended, pour back into your saucepan and heat… and as always, do not boil it as this may impair the flavour, and it’ll just be downright hot.

Pour into your bowl, and garnish with a coriander leaf. Serve with bread and butter. Yum!

This is a slight variation of this recipe, and I haven’t actually done this yet, I’m just planning it! We’ll see how it goes later…

Ingredients

• 2 skin-on Chicken breasts
• Mushrooms
• Rice
• Chicken stock
• Garlic
• Onions
• Double cream

Instructions

Follow instructions on cooking chicken, copied from the original post:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Season chicken with Salt/Pepper. Fry quickly with skin down until golden brown. Flip over and cook for a minute. Take chicken, and put in an oven dish, and surround with the chicken stock. I put garlic in the stock as well as I love garlic. Cook for 20-25 minutes or until cooked.

While this is cooking, fry off some onion and garlic. Add mushrooms and fry them a bit. Add a little chicken stock, and the rice. Reduce. Add more chicken stock, reduce again. Repeat until stock is all soaked into the chicken. Once this is done, stir in some double cream.

Serve the chicken on the risotto bed. Should hopefuly be tasty!!

Update: It was tasty! Picture attatched…

I did this one a couple of weeks ago, and it was really yummy. I adapted this recipe, and made my own version.

Ingredients

• 2 skin-on chicken breasts
• Chicken stock (you can make this with Chicken Oxo cubes and hot water!)
• Mushrooms
• White wine
• Double Cream
• Spinach
• Tarragon (I had to get the Scwartz stuff as I couldn’t find any fresh)
• Garlic

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Season chicken with Salt/Pepper. Fry quickly with skin down until golden brown. Flip over and cook for a minute. Take chicken, and put in an oven dish, and surround with the chicken stock. I put garlic in the stock as well as I love garlic. Cook for 20-25 minutes or until cooked.

Melt some butter in a frying pan and add mushrooms until golden. Add white wine and reduce almost completely. Add cream, spinach and tarragon, and reduce by a third. While doing this, boil some rice.

To serve, put a bit of rice on each plate, chicken on top.  put the sauce next to the rice/chicken as I had a lot of mushrooms and spinach in mine. Yum.

It’s simple, really healthy, and really yummy. I had it for breakfast this morning, and it’s great to help you wake up, and tastes great – but can of course be had at any time of day. It’s not rocket science, all you need is some fruits, some juice, some ice and a blender.

Ingredients

• Strawberries
• Blackberries
• Juice (e.g. Summer berry juice)
• Ice cubes

Instructions

Well, there really isn’t too much to say about this – stick everything in, and blend until smooth… Drink straight away for a nice refreshing and healthy drink. Don’t forget to rinse the blender as soon as you can, otherwise it’s a nightmare to clean!