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The Drunken Duck Inn, near Ambleside, Cumbria

January 1, 2010 Eating out

We thought we might be staying longer at The Drunken Duck, by default. The night had been cold, and the previous day’s showers had frozen over the lying snow. We checked out and set off down the country lane to the side of the Inn, the car wheels skidding on black ice. I was beginning [...]

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Why does nobody eat duck eggs anymore?

November 10, 2009 Food & drink
Why does nobody eat duck eggs anymore?

Duck eggs fell out of fashion just after the Second World War when a health scare connected eating duck eggs with outbreaks of salmonella poisoning. The evidence seemed a little thin, but the connection in the public consciousness took hold, and demand for duck eggs plummeted.  The mass producers ignored ducks in favour of the [...]

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A little corner of France in a basement in Leeds, La Grillade

May 23, 2009 Eating out
La Grillade restaurant, Leeds

La Grillade is a typical French restaurant, just like the places you’d find in any sizable French town. Except it’s in Leeds. That makes it special. The restaurant is housed in the basement of a Victorian terrace, and looks uninspiring from the outside. Down the stairs, it’s a different world, a series of small dining [...]

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Duck and partridge ballotine

January 1, 2009 Food & drink
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A ‘ballotine‘ is a piece of meat that has been taken off the bone, rolled, stuffed and trussed to make a neat parcel of easily roasted meat. This ballotine involved a wild mallard duck, one of the smaller breeds, stuffed with a boned out partridge, which was in turn stuffed with an apricot and walnut [...]

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Confit duck

November 29, 2008 Food & drink

An old method of preserving meat is to cook it slowly in fat, then leave it so that when the fat sets, the meat is entirely encased in it. Any type of meat can be cooked and preserved in this way, but the method is particularly suited to poultry, and especially to duck. To make [...]

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Roast duck with apple and blackberries

September 30, 2008 Food & drink
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Nigel Slater is much respected in my kitchen. I’ve been religiously buying his cookbooks for over a decade now, and his recipes are the first thing I check in the Observer every Sunday morning. There is an ease and simplicity about Slater’s recipes that I like – his is the kind of easy and relaxed [...]

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