Did you want duck duck?

Opposite our meat and fish counter at Tesco is isle number twenty, a place many of our customers chose their meat from to cook and some of the pre-packed fish items too. Of course there are some things over there that we don't sell on either of our counters and one of those things are duck items. Often we get asked for the Gressingham Duck products and we are always happy to show the customers where they are.

As "Duck" is a popular term of affection in the East Midlands i.e "Ey up me Duck" (hello) I suppose it can confuse some of our not so local enquiring customers when we may reply "Duck, duck? Just down here duck. There you go duck. On the top shelf duck. Can I help you with anything else duck?"

The cooking instructions are simple enough. Take out of packaging. Pat dry with a paper towel. Rub skin (the duck skin not your own skin duck) dry and rub in salt and pepper to flavour. Cook the duck legs at gas mark four for ninety minutes duck. I found that I drained the duck fat off a few times during the cooking and basted the legs with their own fat. The finished result made the legs very crispy and moist. Although they take a fair amount of time longer than chicken legs to cook they are definitely worth the wait. It is also worth your while giving them a ten minutes resting time after cooking. I put them in a bowl and some tin foil over to keep them semi-warm.

To accompany the duck I made some patatas bravas and added three small fried red onions and a few bulbs of garlic into the final sauce and I shelled a bag full of fresh peas and rather greedily ate half of them raw before they had even gone anywhere near a saucepan.