Rillettes de Canard - A Random Recipe Challenge

I did it, I finally cooked a random recipe this month. I said I would make the effort this year and I have and I'm feeling quite proud of myself. The challenge this month was to cook a random recipe from someone else's book collection. As my Mum has more books to choose from than my brother or my friends I decided to let her pick the recipe for me and email it to me. The book she picked was 'The French Market' by Joanne Harris and Fran Ward. This is a book that I bought for her as a birthday present a few years ago. I told her that the recipe choice had to be random and as far as I can tell she did just that as I know she wouldn't. have purposefully chosen this recipe for me. I had to cook rillettes de canard, this is duck cooked slowly in its own fat and white wine until the meat falls off the bone. The idea is that the meat is shredded quite finely and mixed with the fat to form a thick paste consistency which can be spread on bread in a similar fashion to paté once the fat has set. I didn't quite get this far with it as I wanted to serve it just warm for dinner one night and my boyfriend can be a bit fussy sometimes. He doesn't like paté which is why I went for the unconventional serving option as I didn't want him to turn his nose up at it. So instead I served the duck meat in ramekins with some of the juices with a celeriac and swede mash and some brocoli. This is something I would make again though as it was quite easy to make and my boyfriend approved.  I've never cooked duck before because for some reason I always assumed it was really expensive but I was glad to be proved wrong.

 
Ingredients - Serves 2 - adapted from 'The French Market'

2 duck legs

200ml dry white wine

100ml water

sea salt

ground black pepper

1 clove of garlic, chopped

1 pinch allspice

1 bay leaf

1 sprig thyme

Put the duck legs into a large saucepan then add all the remainng ingredients. Cover with a tight fitting lid and simmer for 90 minutes until the meat falls from the bones. Give it a stir now and again and top up the liquid if necessary. Remove the herbs and the bones, shred the meat and spoon into ramekins and pour over the juices. Serve warm with seasonal vegetables like I did or cool in the fridge and then spread on crusty bread.

 

To make celeriac and swede mash, chop half a celeriac and half a small swede into cubes, simmer for 20 minutes until tender then mash with a knob of butter, a splash of milk and season with black pepper and nutmeg.

I'm entering this into the Random Recipe Challenge, Made With Love Mondays, Herbs On Saturday, this month hosted by Bangers & Mash, and Simple and in Season