Out for a duck

I love duck: I love Peking duck, with its crisp skin and melting flesh; I love the pink meat of a medium-rare magret de canard, especially when it's served with a little cake of creamy Dauphinoise potatoes and I love the way my mum cooks roast duck, with its skin rubbed in a mixture of honey and soy sauce. I even love my low-fat duck (left), which I marinated in a dry spice rub for a few hours before cooking it on a scorching-hot griddle and serving it with a couscous-based salad.



Spice-rubbed duck for two

2 duck breasts
2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
2 tsp Szechuan peppercorns, crushed
a small piece of ginger, peeled and grated

Remove the skin from the duck breasts (sorry about this – yes, I know the skin crisps up wonderfully and tastes delicious, but it's also pretty fatty) and score the flesh several times, both on the top and bottom of each breast.

Mix the spices together and smear all over the meat. Leave to marinate for anywhere between two hours and most of the day.

Smear the griddle with the barest minimum of olive oil and heat until it's smoking, then cook the duck breasts until they're done as you like them. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper as you cook them. Serve with the salad, below.

Couscous salad for two

1/2 small butternut squash, cut into chunks
olive oil
a large double handful of couscous (I used barley couscous but wheat couscous is just fine)
1/2 a red onion, sliced thinly
lots of chopped fresh coriander and mint
up to one small glass of orange juice
juice of a lime

Heat the oven to 200ºC, then roast the squash with a drizzle of olive oil until its cooked through and has caramelised a bit round the edges. The time this will take rather depends on how big your chunks are, but start looking in the oven at around 25 minutes. Place in a bowl and allow to cool.

Follow the instructions on the couscous packet about cooking – this usually involves placing the dry grains in a bowl and pouring boiling water over them, covering with a lid, and allowing the couscous to plump up. Season thoroughly with salt and freshly ground black pepper as couscous can be very bland, and allow to cool.

When both the couscous and the squash are at room temperature, mix in the red onion and the herbs.

Make a simple dressing with a little bit of olive oil, the orange juice and the lime juice and pour over the couscous. Mix thoroughly and serve.

Variation on a theme

Ras-el-Hanout, a Moroccan spice mixture, has been my discovery of the summer. I started using it in a marinade for quail, but I've quickly become addicted to its finger-lickingly exotic blend of rose petals, cumin, chilli and who knows what else (defining it isn't helped by the fact that everyone's Ras blend is different from everyone else's).

Anyway, just to ring the changes, I mixed some Ras with another Middle Eastern spice, sumac, which has a lemony kind of twang to it, and used a smidgen of olive oil to work it into a paste, along with a bit of squashed garlic and an extra teaspoonful of cumin.

I skinned some chicken quarters and made some deep slashes into the meat, then rubbed the spice paste all over the chicken. I did this late morning, so that by the time I cooked the meat that evening the spices had had a chance to really flavour it.

I served it with a salad of boiled beetroot, cut into chunks. I then stirred in some 0% fat Greek yoghurt, a squeeze of lemon juice, some thinly sliced red onion and a good handful of chopped dill.

The other salad is something I'm working on but haven't fine-tuned enough to post a recipe on this blog, so watch this space...

In case we get any more summer...

I think I might have mentioned how much I love a barbecue. We haven't had much in the way of barbecue weather of late, but the other night we had just enough balmy weather to make it worth pulling the cover off the Weber. While Mark took care of the meaty stuff (see left, with a large slice of steak), I threw a couple of salads together. Laszlo scampered around, getting underfoot, desperately excited by the smell of cooking meat, then collapsed, panting, in the shade under the table. Note to self: get Laszlo a haircut before he overheats.

The greenery (below) came courtesy of the fact that I'd found some great wild fennel at Borough Market, as well as some samphire, so tender that I didn't even need to cook it. I chopped the fennel into 5-cm lengths, tossed the samphire into it, along with some chopped mint, then drizzled the salad with a slick of extra virgin olive oil and a squeeze of lemon.


We also had one of my favourite warm weather salads: cubes of watermelon (de-seeded), mixed with chunks of feta cheese, black olives, thinly sliced rings of red onion and more of that lovely fresh chopped mint. Once again, a simple dressing of olive oil and lemon juice did the trick.

We're hoping for more barbecue weather this weekend, but I suspect we may be out of luck. At least Laszlo will be able to cope without another visit to the pet parlour....

Simple pleasures

I find that when the temperature rises, my appetite slips away. The only things I want to eat are light dishes with fresh flavours. In practice, this mainly means salads – by which I don't mean a few limp leaves of lettuce and a couple of slices of watery tomatoes. I'm talking, instead, about punchy, zesty ingredients, like those of the feta and pea salad (right) Mark and I enjoyed at the weekend.

Feta and pea salad for two

250-300g pea pods, shelled to give about 100-125g peas
100g feta cheese
50g walnuts
a double handful of tasty salad leaves
fresh mint, chopped
walnut oil
tarragon vinegar
dijon mustard

Plunge the peas in salted boiling water until tender, then run them under a cold tap until they're thoroughly cooled.

Dice the feta, chop the walnuts and place in a bowl with the cooked peas and the mint.

Make a simple dressing with the walnut oil, vinegar and mustard – go easy on all the ingredients for a couple of reasons: one being that oil of any kind is high in calories, the other being that you just want to freshen up the flavours of the salad, not drown them.
Pour over the salad and serve, preferably while sitting in a sunny spot in the garden or the park.

South American steak, with all the trimmings

I bought some lovely rump steak at Borough market the other week: it had been hung for 45 days, so it had loads of flavour and was really tender. I marinated it in some olive oil and crushed garlic for a few hours before slapping it onto the griddle.

I served it with some chimichurri sauce, an Argentine relish. I haven't given specific quantities, because it's the kind of thing that needs to be balanced according to your tastes, and it also depends on how many people you're feeding.

To make chimichurri sauce, mix together:

olive oil
lemon juice
fresh parsley, chopped
fresh coriander, chopped
hot red chillies, chopped
salt and freshly ground black pepper

I served the steak and chimichurri with some corn on the cob (Mark got some butter mashed up with lime zest to spread on his). I also dished up a salad based on quinoa, a kind of nutty-flavoured grain. In my own mind (but possibly nowhere else), this creates a kind of South American flavour to the meal because I based this salad on something I ate in a restaurant in Chile a few years ago. I've been making variations on the theme of nutty grains, herbs, tomatoes and chillies ever since.

Quinoa salad for 4:

a punnet of cherry tomatoes
olive oil
250g quinoa or pearl barley (I used quinoa this time round, but have used pearl barley with great success in the past)
1 chipotle chilli
1 red onion, halved and sliced finely
a big bunch of fresh coriander, chopped
1 ripe avocado, peeled and sliced
a couple of limes
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 100C. Tip the tomatoes into a roasting tray and sprinkle lightly with olive oil. Roast the tomatoes gently for at least a couple of hours, until they've completely softened and have started to caramelise. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.

Make up the quinoa or pearl barley acccording to the instructions on the packet and set aside to cool.

Soak the chilli in boiling water for half an hour or so, then chop finely.

Mix the quinoa/barley with the tomatoes, chilli, red onion, coriander and avocado. Drizzle with olive oil and the lime juice (start with the juice of one lime and taste before adding more juice). Season and serve.

A quick lunch

I was in the local supermarket the other day, lunchtime was on its way and I was starving. I really didn't want to succumb to the temptation of a sandwich (all that evil white bread, mayo and butter) – not that I'm usually tempted by those stale supermarket offerings in any case. Pasta is out, of course. And ready meals are right out, of course.

Making lunch from scratch seemed like too much of a faff – but then I realised that there was an old family favourite I could fall back on. This tuna salad is so simple that it stands or falls on the quality of the ingredients, so use the best fish you can find.

Tuna salad for one

1/2 small red onion, sliced thinly
1 tin of tuna in olive oil, drained and forked into flakes
1 small can kidney beans (or half a regular can), drained and rinsed
1 small red chilli
a handful of basil leaves, torn
extra-virgin olive oil
balsamic vinegar
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Mix the onion, tuna, kidney beans, chilli and basil leaves together in a bowl.

Moisten with a splash of olive oil and some balsamic vinegar. Season generously. Tuck in.

Another day, another salad

I love my salads almost as much as I love my soup. So that's the first thing I thought of when a couple of friends came round for Sunday lunch a fortnight ago bearing a large smoked duck breast as a present (wine writers don't often give other wine writers bottles of wine when they're invited for lunch – for some reason culinary gifts are deemed to be far more acceptable).

The duck breast in question ended up in a fine salad that Mark and I enjoyed midweek – it's the kind of thing I like to rustle up when I'm busy and don't have much time for faffing in the kitchen (and at the moment I have very little time at all, what with trips to Burgundy and Bordeaux, plus all kinds of impossible deadlines – at least six before breakfast each morning...)

I bought some of those tender young salad leaves – nothing too bitter or peppery – sliced the duck, then extracted the seeds from a ripe pomegranate. I also added a little finely sliced red onion and some chopped walnuts, then dressed it all with a simple vinaigrette based on walnut oil (yes, walnut oil again – but I'm not sick of it yet), with a little pomegranate molasses (a sweet-sour syrup that I used as a substitute for balsamic vinegar – only a little, mind) and some red wine vinegar plus a dab of Dijon mustard.

We enjoyed it so much I went out and bought another duck breast at the weekend so we can have the same salad again some time soon – as long as our late winter gives way to a slightly warmer spring.

A great spring salad

I'm rather partial to a bit of beetroot, love walnuts and yearn for soft, tangy goat's cheese. So it isn't that surprising that one of my new favourite dishes (especially as the weather seems to be warming up slightly) is a salad that combines these three ingredients.

A couple of points worth noting: beetroot, delicious as it is, is also packed with sugars, so go easy on it. You can buy beetroot ready-cooked, but make sure it hasn't been preserved in vinegar. Alternatively, buy uncooked beetroot, the smaller and more tender the better. I like to cook mine in the oven at around 200C, wrapped in tin foil with a few drops of water sprinkled around the beetroot to stop it drying out. Depending on the size of your beetroot, it will take somewhere between 1 and 2 hours to cook through – if in doubt, take it out of the oven and poke a skewer through it. If it slips through easily, it's done. If you meet with resistance, the beetroot probably needs to go back into the oven a bit longer. Don't forget to peel it before slicing it up for the salad – the skin slips off fairly easily.

It's also worth paying good money for decent walnuts. I nearly fainted when I saw the price of Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Chilean walnuts (nearly four quid for a bag), but they're so moist and flavoursome in comparison to anything else I've found that I've decided I'd rather have slightly fewer, tastier walnuts than a larger quantity of dried-out nuts.

You can use any kind of goat's cheese, from the hard and tangy kind to soft goat's curd that needs to be spooned onto the salad. Feta, although it's a sheep's milk cheese, is another good alternative.

Beetroot, walnut and goat's cheese salad for one

a good handful of salad leaves (I like the ones with aromatic herbs mixed in)
75g cooked beetroot, sliced
a handful of walnuts, roughly chopped
50g goat's cheese, crumbled

Dressing:
Walnut oil
Tarragon vinegar
Dijon mustard

Making this salad, once you've cooked your beetroot according to instructions, couldn't be simpler. Just chuck the beetroot, nuts and cheese on top of the leaves, dress and serve.

As you've probably noticed, I haven't given any quantities for the dressing – I'm crediting you with enough smarts to make a dressing all by yourself. Just go easy on the amount you use to keep the calories down.

The perfect dinner?

In an ideal world, I'd rather not eat complex carbs at dinner (which I eat earlier than I usually would, around 7.30, to ensure I've finished digesting the meal before I go to bed). It can be tough, though, trying to find a recipe that really satisfies my hunger – and my appetite – without including some kind of stodge.

Last Friday, though, I made a great meal that hit the spot for me – and got a 'Wooh, yeah, baby' from Mark. It adds fuel to the theory that a bite of spice in a dish really helps to keep those hunger pangs at bay.

The recipe that follows should give you some idea of how to recreate the dish – but don't take my version as gospel. Like any salad, this Thai beef salad is open to artistic reinterpretation, as long as you keep the general principles in mind.

Thai beef salad for two

Baby spinach leaves – as many as you want
1/2 red onion, sliced thinly
1 small red or green chilli, chopped
1 medium carrot, grated coarsely
1/2 green (unripe) mango, peeled and cut into thin strips (if you can't find green mangoes, you can either use a green apple, which has a some of that sweet-sour thang going for it, or use a ripe mango, although the salad will be slightly different in character)
10-12 cherry tomatoes, halved
1-2 tbsp peanut or vegetable oil
a good handful of cashew nuts
300g steak (I used rump steak, but you can use sirloin or fillet if you want)
fresh coriander leaves, chopped (use as much or as little as you want)
fresh mint leaves, chopped (use as much or as little as you want)

Dressing:
4 tbsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
1 tbsp sesame oil
juice of 2 limes

Put the spinach leaves into a large bowl. Top with sliced onions, then sprinkle with the chopped chilli. Scatter the grated carrot and the green mango over the spinach, then throw in the tomato halves.

Heat a dash of peanut or vegetable oil in a frying pan and toast the cashews until golden (I find if I don't use the oil, the cashews seem to burn rather easily). Once toasted, chop coarsely and put aside.

Heat another tablespoon of oil in a frying pan (or smear over a griddle) and fry the steak. You can cook the steak as you like it, but I always think rare works best for this kind of salad). When it's cooked, take it off the heat, season, then slice. Place the slices on top of the salad, then scatter the nuts and herbs on top.

Mix the dressing ingredients together and taste for balance. You may find you need a bit more lime, a bit more nam pla or even a touch more oil.

Dress the salad and serve.