A couple of very simple, but worthwhile interlopes into the kitchen today. Here’s the first.

Tangy Duck Salad

Actually you could do lots of things with this duck (either hot or cold), but we chose to make it into our trademark “all in one” salad.

You’ll need, for the duck …
1 duck breast per person
Tomato ketchup
Brown sauce (HP Sauce or equivalent)
Worcester Sauce

And for the salad …
Pasta (enough for each person, cooked and cooled), we used linguine
Tomatoes
1 small Onion
3-4 cloves Garlic
Can Kidney Beans
1 Fennel (or other salad ingredients of your choice; crisp lettuce would work well)

You need to start the day before, by cutting the duck breasts, crosswise, into 5mm slices. Put them in a plastic box with a large slug of tomato ketchup, brown sauce and Worc. Sauce. Mix well and leave in the fridge to marinade overnight.

On the next day, pan fry the duck (+ marinade) in a very small amount of oil until done (maybe 5 minutes). You might want to strain off most of the liquid halfway through so the duck has a chance to get nicely sticky. Set the duck aside and leave to cool. You should end up with slightly sticky and tangy, almost sweet and sour, duck.

When mealtime approaches, halve the duck pieces and mix together with the pasta; thinly sliced onion, tomato, fennel etc.; drained beans; and chopped garlic. Season lightly with salt and pepper and dress with white wine vinegar and olive oil (you can mix this together as dressing if you wish, but I never bother). Serve with a robust white wine.

Enjoy!

(You could do lots of variants on the marinade, maybe by including lemon juice, lime juice, soy sauce or even a dash of chilli.)