I trotted to Piazza Vittorio market this week, mostly for my seasonal fill of pitted Gaeta olives.... If you know where else to buy them closer to my neck of the woods (Monteverde), please advise! Anyway, I love the market and all the ethnic stalls, so there's always a good reason to go, even when Pakistani mangoes aren't in season. I also wanted Oolong Tea from the Chinese supermarket, which is said to have amazing slimming powers.... Not the supermarket, the tea =)
So I went for olives, and came home with a duck, as you do.
The duck was originated by a craving for duck breast, which I watched being cooked on Gambero Rosso channel, with honey and chilli. Anyway, the duck breasts are in the freezer awaiting a quiet evening or weekend meal with James.
The carcass went into making a jus or fond de volaille, for when I'll be cooking the breasts. The legs, liver and heart went into a duck ragout which we had for dinner yesterday with some fusilli pugliesi. It takes a while to bone and de-nerve duck legs, and then chop all the meat to a decent standard by hand. While I was doing this, James fell asleep in front of the TV. No wonder I wasn't managing to have a conversation with him from the kitchen!
To make the ragout I used a dash of olive oil, 1 shallot, 1 carrot, 1 stick of celery; a blade of mace, 5 cloves, a few black pepercorns, a cinnamon stick, sage, thyme, marjoram, all of which went into my nifty pacman style sylicone ball which prevents all the little aromatics from floating around your stocks and sauces and then having to fish them out with Certosine-style patience. A good dash of red wine, and a can of my trusty Mutti tomato pulp. All of this cooked slowly for about two hours. Yum!
By the way, the Oolong tea is working, together with a box of Dr Ernst's slimming tisane also bought in the chinese supermarket. It appears I am losing about 2 to 300 grams PER DAY! All without effort!
You know what, I might make oolong tea duck breast.... who knows, it might be good.
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