Duck, duck, pheasant. What a goose?

On Monday night I cooked duck again. The second in my final three ducks. As you can imagine, I was hardly excited about it. Especially after another bird experience I’d had on the weekend.

Mum and I had a mother/daughter weekend in the Southern Highlands and on Saturday night we went to Josh’s Café in Berrima and shared a pheasant. There were loads of interesting things – with a sort of Mediterranean twist – on the menu, but the waiter did the hard sell on the pheasant. Mum was sold straight away and I was happy to give it a try, so away we went. It was cooked to order, so took 50 minutes to arrive and was served with brussel sprouts (yum – love Brussels), chestnuts, pancetta and creamy polenta, it looked superb. Mum LOVED it and was chatting away with the waiter and chef about cooking techniques, so she can head over to the UK and cook a pheasant feast. Me, not so much. Apparently I don’t like game. I love games. But not game. Solitaire, Trivial Pursuit, netball, Taboo, tennis – love those games. But birds that are not chicken and I’m not really a fan. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s just something about them that I don’t like.

So as I say, jumping for joy that two nights later I had a duck in my oven…

Gorgeous Slow-Cooked Duck Pasta

The duck was rubbed with S&P and olive oil, stuffed with four quarters of an orange and popped in the oven at 150 degrees for 2 hours, turned every half hour, so the skin goes crispy all over.

Then I made the sweet and sour sauce – with red onion, pancetta, carrot, celery and garlic all finely sliced and diced and softened in a big pot. To that I added a cinnamon stick, some fresh thyme leaves (a substitute for rosemary, which I forgot to buy), two tins of tomatoes and half a bottle of red wine and left to simmer for half an hour.

Once the duck was done, Mum very kindly pulled all the meat off and then I shredded it and added it to the S&S sauce, leaving it to simmer for another half hour before adding raisins (a substitute for sultanas, which I forgot to buy…) and pine nuts.

While that was all going on, I cooked some really funky semolina pasta that I’d found at Woollies. The packet didn’t have a name for them, so let’s just called them twisty bits.

Finally, to the duck sauce, I added finely chopped parsley, the juice and rind of an orange, two knobs of butter, a glug of red wine vinegar, some grated parmesan cheese and the drained twisty pasta.



Sorry about the photo – it was the steam. Cool huh?

The verdict? Cheers all round. Mum and Evans (who I’d asked in the hope that at least a second person would hopefully enjoy the duck with Mum) absolutely loved it. And you know what? So did I. Apparently, if a duck is hidden in amongst all those other amazing flavours, it’s not half bad. And the flavours were amazing. You could taste them all – the orange, cinnamon, red wine vinegar. All working together to hide a duck and play games with me. The test will be when I cook the final duck recipe next week – a simple roast duck with plum chutney. I don’t know what kind of bird thinks it can hide behind a damn chutney. Just try me Daffy!

Xx