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Duck Au Vin

Duck Au Vin recipe, eat well on universal credit

The other afternoon after I got back from a short shift we had the usual “What do you fancy for dinner” conversation. But neither of us had a plan. On occasions like this I usually go to the supermarket, find something appealing and we build a recipe around it. But these Duck Legs were clearly mispriced and deserved something a bit special. Even the staff thought the price at £1.75 was wrong, but that’s what the system said, far be it from me to disagree. We had the remains of a bottle of Red Wine from a few months ago when we had a guest. So a bit of Googling and recipe alteration resulted in this!

Ingredients:-

2 Duck Legs
2 Tbsp plain flour (gluten free for us)
1 Tbsp sunflower oil
2 Small Carrots , chopped
1 Onion , chopped
2 Garlic cloves , roughly chopped
½ a Bottle cheap Red Wine
4 Sprigs of Thyme & 2 Bay Leaves
140g Smoked Bacon lardons
120g baby button mushroom
Salt & Pepper to season

Method:-

(1) Heat oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Tip the duck into a large bowl and season. Scatter over the flour and toss until coated. Heat the oil in a large ovenproof casserole dish with a lid and  slowly brown the Duck on all sides. Remove the duck to a plate, then add the carrots, onion and garlic to the dish and cook for 5 mins until just starting to colour.
(2) Nestle the duck amongst the veg and pour over the wine. Add the herbs, season, then bring everything to the boil.
(3) To serve, heat a pan and sizzle the Lardons for 5 mins. Turn up the heat, add the mushrooms and cook for 3-4 mins. Return the duck and sauce to the dish and simmer for 10 mins until the sauce has reduced a little. Serve each person a duck leg with some sauce spooned over.

We served this with Broccoli on a bed of mashed Potatoes. It really didn’t need anything else and was really tender.

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Gluttony Burger

This is more a tale of generosity combined with an excess of food humour and low Vitamin D levels! Not a recipe as such.

The generosity element is derived from a large tray of products we were given and which has kept us in high quality Meat, Fish and Cheese for the best part of this month. We generally try to give more than we take however we have several friends who are connected with various Food Banks. Sometimes we are offered vegetables and bread which is well past its use by date and is destined for composting. If we can salvage it we are always grateful. But this was something a bit different for us. When items which need refrigeration are donated to Food Banks they can present problems. When things like Veal, Venison, Aberdeen Angus Beef, Sea Bass and high quality Cheese are donated they really do create issues. Much appreciated as I’m sure they were. Dried and ambient produce is much easier for them to store and distribute. So when a friend offered us a green catering crate of goodies we were extremely grateful.  The food humour element and Vitamin D levels refer to our best solution to the winter blues. Laughter is the best cure and the enjoyment of cooking together is at least 50% of the benefit of a good meat!

So let’s not be too wordy here. When we ran the Bistro Sue’s hand pressed Bistro Burgers were a major part of the menu and people travelled considerable distances to try our rotating specials. We had a pack of Aberdeen Angus minced Beef in the goodie tray and time on our hands.

Ingredients:-

Gluten free bread bun which was the frozen result of a Tony error and was initially supposed to be a Pizza base!
Home Made Marie Rose Sauce.
Hand cut Salad.
4 Hand pressed Burgers.
Sliced Gherkins.
4 Eggs
4 rashers of Bacon.
Chilli Cheese slices.
1 Polish Smoked Sausage.
1 Large white Onion (For Onion Rings)

Method:-

(1) Wing it.
(2) Laugh a lot.
(3) Enjoy over 2 days!

Joking aside the assembly of the various layers in your burger really are up to you. But that monstrosity you see on the top was part of the joke. “Shall I batter the last Polish Sausage and use it as a centre for the Onion Rings?” - Is the sort of conversation only we have in the kitchen I guess?

Although this truly was a “Gluttony Burger“ all we actually bought specifically for it were the Cheese Slices, A Cannonball Onion and a Tomato. So technically we did shoehorn this into our budget!!!!!

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