Ugly duckling and Snow Queen

 I haven't posted for a while, though I have been cooking - endlessly. I finished work in the middle of December, ready for a relaxing break and, well, it wasn't really due to *all the things*. Challenging though it is, my New Year's resolution is to try and embrace the positive - we're all well and have enough to eat (and drink). Being a bit bored and frazzled is not the worst that could happen, by any stretch of the imagination in These Times.

We fancied a change for New Year's Eve, and it also needed to be something the children would eat - the days of putting them to bed at 7 and having a lengthy, boozy meal are long gone. We started with cocktails (and mocktails for the children), then duck ragu and pasta.

The recipe called for a whole duck, which I couldn't get - even my most middle-class supermarket was clean out - so we went for a crown and 2 legs. Roast the duck with a quartered orange inside until cooked (about 90 mins here). 

To make the sauce, fry about 6 slices of pancetta, diced, until golden. Add 1 red onion, 2 carrots and 2 sticks of celery, all finely chopped. Pop in some chopped rosemary, a cinnamon stick and 4 sliced cloves of garlic and soften gently for about 10 minutes.

Add 2 tins of chopped tomatoes and half a bottle of red wine (oh yes, hello New Year). Simmer away for about 25 minutes.

Once the duck is cooked and cooled a little, strip off the meat, shred it and add to the sauce. Cook for another 30 minutes and then add seasoning if required. At this point, the recipe tells you to add a handful each of pine nuts and raisins. I would have loved this  but the rest of he family were all opposed, so please cook it and let me live vicariously!

I did this well in advance, let it stand for a few hours, then reheated it and it was fine. When you're ready to eat, cook your pasta (the recipe said 600g, but we're not that greedy, so I removed some of the sauce and froze it and went for 400g, which was still a bit too much for 4). Drain, and then add to the sauce with a couple of knobs of butter, juice and zest of an orange, a handful of grated parmesan, chopped parsley and a good slug of red wine vinegar. Serve with more parmesan. This looked ugly but was delicious and almost sweet and sour. Leftovers were good cold the next day.

For pudding there was Snow Queen. Confession - although I am the opposite of fussy and will eat almost anything, I don't like sweet cream of any kind. It's ok to pep up a savoury sauce and sour cream on Mexican food is also fine (I didn't say it made sense, ok) this dessert is definitely not for me. It is, however, my husband's favourite - he has been known to eat custard, ice cream and cream in one bowl, so I made it. Don't worry, there was also crumble, I'm not a martyr.

Take 500ml of double cream and whisk into stiff peaks. Add 150g of crumbled meringue (shop-bought, see previous martyr point), 1 tbsp of caster sugar and 1 tbsp of brandy. The recipe said 2 tbsp of brandy, but children, so I added a tsp of vanilla essence instead. It also suggested a tbsp of stem ginger and juice but I didn't have any. Mix the ingredients together, then squash into a lightly greased pudding bowl. You do need to be quite firm here to remove any air pockets. Cover with cling film and foil and freeze overnight. Take it out of the freezer a good hour before you want to eat to defrost enough to get out of the bowl - I sometimes give it a dip in a bowl of hot water to aid removal - then turn it out on to a plate. Cover with whatever you fancy - fruit, grated chocolate, chocolate sauce etc. It is served like a cake, cut into slices.

It was huge and fed my husband and son for most of the week, so next time I'll probably halve the quantities. They told me it was delicious.

We're all at home again, this time without the sunshine, but there is cooking and cocktails so these things will have to sustain us for a while (I will be adding more fruit to my drinks from now on because vitamins. I'm sure that will work.)