I was recently given a whole duck by a friend whose freezer had given up the ghost (it’s good to have disconnected friends) which came as a huge treat given the supermarket prices of Daffy and his mates.

Duck is probably my favourite meat, but despite that when faced with a whole one, I was a little unsure of what to do with it. Previous experiences with duck in my own kitchen to date have involved neatly packaged pairs of breasts.

I turned to Nigel Slater’s wonderful Real Food for inspiration and was not disappointed. Ripping off his ideas I came up with the following.

Roast Duck

Original, huh?

But easy and satisfying. Duck contains so much fat that you don’t need to be too careful about your cooking times – the fat will keep the flesh moist even if you overdo it a bit.

One of the best bits about roast duck is getting a crispy skin. This is best achieved by slashing the skin crisscross fashion with a sharp knife. Then place the duck in a clean basin and pour over a kettle’s worth of boiling water. This will leach some of the fat from underneath the skin. After a few minutes it’s bath, remove the duck and pat dry with kitchen paper. You can then season with salt and pepper and roast in a reasonably hot oven (180 degrees C). A 2 kilo duck will take about an hour and a half.

If you want a bit more excitement, grate an apple and the zest of a couple of oranges and mix in a bowl with a couple of handfuls of fresh bread-crumbs. Add the juice of the oranges – just enough to bind the mixture. Season well. Mix these ingredients into a stuffing consistency and stuff the duck before you stick it in the oven.

Potatoes cooked in duck fat

As the duck roasts, you’ll notice that it produces an awful lot of fat (pints of the stuff). It’s a good idea to keep draining the fat away, but don’t chuck it. Cook your spuds in it!

Chop your potatoes into halves and add to a dry pan with a couple of peeled garlic cloves. Pour over enough duck fat to just cover the spuds. Bring the duck fat to the boil, reduce the heat, cover the pan and cook the potatoes over a low, low heat until soft. At this point, pour off the duck fat (again, don’t throw it away!) and return the uncovered pan to the heat for a few more minutes while the potatoes begin to brown and crisp.

It’s probably worth mentioning at this point that you won’t need many potatoes per person. The duck fat makes them taste fabulous but also makes them incredibly rich, so beware!

Serve the potatoes with the roast duck and some greens – savoy cabbage, Brussels Sprouts or similar, saving some for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Bubble and Quack.

Add a little oil to a frying pan and throw in your left-over duck-fat potatoes. As the potatoes start to brown, crush them lightly with the back of a fork. Toss in your left over greens (Savoy cabbage is particularly good) and mix well. Cook until the potatoes are starting to crisp on the outside and serve topped with a fried egg.

Quack.

Thanks to Nigel Slater for his ideas and recipes. You can buy Real Food here.

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The honey bee is perhaps one of the most amazing creatures on this planet, not least because it produces one of nature’s most versatile substances – honey. Its remarkable properties are well documented – from the ancient times of the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, to a more modern day profile where its antibacterial, antioxidant and antiseptic properties are highly praised. And for good reason… There is anecdotal evidence that this naturally low-fat sweetener prevents the growth of the MRSA bug prevalent in our hospitals. It has also been suggested that honey can increase antioxidant levels in our bloodstream, helping to prevent heart disease. Even arthritis suffers claim that a bee sting can relieve their pain as well as some MS sufferers.
On a more conventional note, hay fever may be calmed by eating locally produced honey made from local pollens, thus improving resistance. Historically, honey-based ointments were used to heal burns and sores by the Egyptians, and today’s cosmetics industry uses honey in cleansing, softening and moisturising products. A hot drink of honey and lemon has anti-inflammatory agents alleviating a sort throat as well as providing natural decongestants.
Honey’s aroma, flavour and colour is determined by the nectar of the flowers its made from. Bees must collect nectar from 2,000,000 flowers to make 1lb of honey – which means flying 90,000 miles – that’s 3 times round the globe. Yet one honey bee will only make 1/12th of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime. A colony of bees runs to tens of thousands of worker bees (female) with one queen and a few drones (male) who are killed by the worker bees at the end of a season to prevent the greedy drones from eating the honey in winter!
4,000 tonnes of honey is produced in Britain each year, although we consume more than 25,000 tonnes of worldwide varieties annually. Those particular to the UK include apple blossom, borage, cherry blossom, hawthorn and heather and some of Britain’s 35,000 beekeepers travel the length of the country with their bees helping to pollinate plants and trees that produce fruit for our supermarkets.
One hive can generate 20 to 40lbs of honey a year, enough to keep friends and family supplied for some time! So if the humble bumble has awoken your desire to become an apiarist, there are wide networks of support available to you. The British Beekeepers Association is the most helpful starting point, or their general secretary (Tel: 024 7669 6679) who can put you in touch with your local group. If, like me, you’d rather just eat the nectar of the gods, visit Real Food Direct (Tel: 0118 946 4706) for a good British honey.

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
It’s harvesting time in the patch this week. The broad beans have done brilliantly and they have a wonderful sweet taste to them. I have managed to avoid the black fly this year, which is a great relief. I tend to pick the whole lot in one go and then blanche them for 1 minute before freezing them. Broad beans are one of the only veggies that really freeze well and keep their freshness.
The marrows are also flowering nicely and look like being a bumper crop. My mum does an absolutely delicious stuffed marrow with fresh mince from the local butcher (Beaumonts 01223 880955), the combination of the 2 flavours is mouth watering. I have also planted sweet corn for the first time this year. The cobs make a great snack for kids who love pitching a skewer in each end and popping off the niblets.
At this time of the year Snow White might be a more appropriate name. Every time you do the slightest bit of work the garden birds looking for a meal follow you. We have been particularly lucky this year as the Greenfinches and Tits have done very well. The prettiest of the birds though, in my opinion, is the little Wrens. They are gorgeous little fellows, perching themselves sideways on branches and bushes as if being upright was only for beginners. They help to keep the bugs down and once they have found a tasty morsel they whip it back to their annual nest in the thatch.

Tip for the week is to buy some Bangers from Beaumonts and BBQ them with a mixed pan of garden tomatoes and courgettes Einstein cant be completely right about everything.

I play rugby which means that two evenings a week I have to run around a field trying not to drop a funny-shaped ball. By the time droppi…, I mean training is finished, I’ve jogged home and showered, it’s normally about 10pm and too late for a big meal. So on training days, the main meal of the day comes at lunchtime.

But another problem arises. My workload at BigBarn is monumental. How can I produce a substantial meal at lunchtime and not miss an email or a forum post?

Easy! The Italians and the Spanish are masters of fast food – and I’m not talking burgers and hot dogs.

Pasta, polenta and omelettes – or tortilla – can all be combined with local ingredients to produce delicious meals in 30 minutes or so with minimal attention to the stove. Here we go…

Simple Spaghetti

Dead simple and equally versatile. You can pretty much throw in whatever you want.

Ingredients

1 onion
2 cloves garlic
Olive oil
3 tomatoes, plus a squeeze of tomato puree
3 button mushrooms
Salt, pepper
Basil (ideally fresh leaves)
Spaghetti for one (or any other pasta you like, really)

Plus either, or all of:

Handful of spinach
2 Leeks, chopped into 1cm discs
Handful green beans, topped, tailed and chopped in half
Handful Savoy cabbage leaves, greens or similar – shredded
Handful peas, frozen or otherwise

Method

Finely chop the onion and garlic
Add a glug of oil to the pan and add the onion and garlic. Turn the heat up to medium.
While the onions are cooking put a deep pan of heavily salted water on for the pasta.
When the onions are translucent, chop the mushrooms and add to the pan.
When the mushrooms have browned, chop the tomatoes and add.

By this time the pasta water should have boiled. Add your pasta.

Add your chosen vegetables to the tomato sauce. They should have cooked by the time the pasta is ready. Season to taste.

When the pasta has cooked, drain and add to the sauce. Mix, add the basil, and serve, with grated parmesan if you have it.

Polenta

Polenta is basically ground maize. When made “soft” it is almost like mashed potato. Soft polenta, when cooled, becomes very firm and solid. At this stage it can be sliced and cooked, preferably in a ridged griddle pan. Recipes follow for each.

Soft Polenta

Mugful polenta
2 mugfuls water
Salt
Butter
Olive Oil
Salt
Pepper
Basil
Cheese – cheddar is good, parmesan is better

Pour the water into a pan and put on to boil. When the water is at a rolling boil, pour in the polenta, stirring all the time.

Turn the heat down to the lowest setting. The polenta will need to cook gently for about twenty minutes. Stir it every now and then. Please be careful – cooking polenta is searing hot and is liable to spit at you.

When the polenta has thickened to the consistency of mashed potato, add a spoonful of butter and stir in well. Then add a glug of oil, and stir again. Season to taste, then rip up the basil leaves and mix into the polenta.

Serve with the cheese on top.

Polenta Stacks

Soft polenta
Slice of cheese – Brie, Camembert, Edam, or Ementhal are good
Slice of ham

Follow the recipe for soft polenta. Instead of eating it, pour it out onto a clean chopping board. Spread the polenta so that it is about an inch thick. Cover with clingfilm and leave to cool.

When the polenta has cooled it will be much firmer – the consistency of plasticine.

Cut the polenta into 4″ by 4″ squares. Heat a ridged griddle pan – get it very hot! Brush the polenta squares on both sides with olive oil.

Add the polenta to the grill pan and cook on each side until browned.

Take the polenta squares from the pan and place the ham, then the cheese on top. Heat under the grill until the cheese has melted.

Spanish Omelette

Combined with a little spiciness and some potatoes a Spanish Omelette, or Tortilla, can contain pretty much any greens you want. I’ve enjoyed, shredded cabbage, peas, broad beans, Green beans and spinach. This simple version is my favourite, though.

1 Onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
2 medium potatoes, scrubbed and cubed
2 good butcher’s sausages
3 large eggs
1 glug of cream
1 handful grated cheddar cheese
1 teaspoon paprika
Salt and pepper

Cook the onions and garlic in a little oil until the onions are translucent. Add the potatoes, stir and leave to cook through.

Split the skins of the sausages and peel the meat away. Chop the sausage meat into bite sized chunks and add to the pan.

While the sausages are cooking, break the eggs into a mixing bowl and add the cream, paprika, salt and pepper. Beat well with a fork.
When the sausage meat has cooked and the potatoes are starting to brown at the edges, add the egg to the pan. Swirl the pan to ensure the egg is well spread and leave to cook over a low heat. Heat the grill.

When the bottom of the omelette has set, spread the cheese over the top and put the pan under the grill. Cook until the egg has puffed up and the cheese is golden brown.

Serve with a green salad.

My local greengrocer is a source of endless information on the over charging by the big supermarkets. Today his topic of wrath was the price of garlic. He can buy it from a local supplier for 5p per bulb and sell it for 15p per bulb; this is compared to a certain large super market that charges £1.35 for 2 bulbs!!

If we bear in mind their buying power it would seem to suggest they are making somewhere in the region of a 23,000% profit!! It is no wonder that the profit results always please the city. These levels of profit are probably needed to fly the garlic from England to Spain to be packaged and then back to England to the stores.

On the veg patch I have worked out that my Garlic costs me less than 2p per bulb, it is truly fresh, organic and has only travelled about 16 yards from plot to plate. Beautiful.

There are stories in the press this week of how Birdseye is to remove E numbers from their products. As big processed food manufacturers are accused by the government of doing too little to reduce the amounts of salt and fat in their products, Birdseye is taking steps to remove all artificial flavours and preservatives.

This may be a step in the right direction but it comes too little too late. Britons have a £12 billion addiction to processed and pre-packaged food caused in part by the marketing of these products. Dr Vyvyan Howard, senior lecturer in Toxicology at University of Liverpool is overseeing a study on the effects of E numbers on nerve cells and reports �almost all E numbers have no nutritional value. They have all been tested one at a time but they certainly havent been tested in combination, as they appear in foodstuffs. My own view is that I wouldnt touch them. The basic reason for using additives is economic-it is to disguise otherwise poor ingredients.�

Part of the problem is that when these companies make changes that benefit us, the consumer, theyre often hiding another motive, usually sales. We saw McDonalds recent effort at low fat salad where the Chicken Caesar Salad with its dressing has as much fat as a Big Mac – well done guys, really low fat then.

When E numbers have finally been removed altogether or, at the very least, clearly labelled on foods, (at present the new trick is to list E numbers under their chemical name), there will probably be yet another unhealthy way of preserving poor quality food to take the place of E numbers.
An example is the bags of salad that are sold in supermarkets; you know the ones that are blown up with air to make the bag look full? Well, these are not full of air; its Modified Atmosphere Packaging which uses reduced oxygen levels to slow the rate the salad decomposes. Oh, and theres more: that same salad has been washed in a chlorine solution twenty times stronger than your local swimming pool. Still think its the healthy option? This preservation method is not chemical like E numbers added to food, but I would say that its an artificial preservative, wouldnt you? The bottom line is the salad in those bags can be a month old and still be on the shelf before the sell-by date is up.

Why, when its so easy to grow salad, do we still buy this stuff? Have a look at Matts Rocket Master Class to see how easy and cheap it is to grow over very little time. Why not get the kids to grow some salad. Itll teach them more than seed planting and you wont have to eat chlorine-washed, reduced oxygen-preserved and expensive crap anymore.

We want to encourage you to eat locally produced good food, not because of an irrational hatred of companies like Birdseye or Nestle but because supermarkets and their manufacturers are only interested in making a profit, and its the quality of food you buy from them that suffers the most. However, buy food direct from your local farmers and you will see and taste the difference. The food might tire more quickly, but I would prefer that than knowing my salad is preserved in chlorine.

If you register with BigBarn we will send details of sepcial offers in your area and campaign for a local food section in your local supermarket.