Comfort food on a snowy Sunday

Winter has finally arrived. It's at least a month late. But no matter, I kind of love snow! It makes everything pretty. We went for a walk and were beaten about by the snow on Saturday for a few hours and it was great. We then went into town at night, ate Persian food for the first time (amazing), and sat in window seats in pubs sipping ale and looking out at it. Brilliant.

It's comfort food time. Today's tasty comfort food is: slow cooked duck legs with celeriac gratin and heaps of veg.

I've never cooked duck legs before, they were on offer a while ago and I bought them and shoved them in the freezer. As usual I looked up loads of recipes then ignored them.

In fact, I've never cooked celeriac gratin before, but I decided we've had a hell of a lot of mash recently and wanted something different.

We even had a vegetable I'd never cooked before, cavolo nero, which I just steamed like it was kale, then added some butter and pepper. (Actually too much pepper, as our pepper mill broke and it ended up covered in whole peppercorns. I managed to pick most of them off.)

Duck legs braised in red wine:

For the duck legs heat up a pan nice and hot, if possible use one that can go straight in the oven. Season the duck legs then shove them in the pan skin side down for a few minutes. You want a good colour on them. Brown them on the other side too, then remove from the pan.

Pour away a lot of the fat from the pan – duck is a fatty meat – then fry off a chopped onion and a couple of chopped cloves of garlic. Add some thyme, then pour in half a bottle of red wine. I then added a grating of nutmeg and a couple of bay leaves. I also chucked in a handful of mixed berries from the freezer. This might sound odd, but lots of recipes I read called for redcurrant jelly or similar and we don't have any of that in because the other half doesn't like it.

Shove the duck legs back in the pan, season then put a lid on and shove it in the oven at about 170 degrees. It'll be in there for about two hours, uncover it after the first hour.

Celeriac Gratin:

Peel and slice a celeriac as finely as you can. Do the same with a couple of potatoes and an onion, then layer it all up in a dish with salt and pepper. Take a small tub of cream, and top it up with some milk to make it up to about half a pint. Pour it over the vegetables and dot some butter on the top. 

Shove it in the oven for a good hour. I think I would normally do it on a higher heat for slightly less time, but the oven was already set at 170 for the duck! 

 The gravy:

When the duck is ready it will have gone all sticky and lovely. Take the duck legs out and put the sauce back on the heat, then add some chicken stock and let it reduce for a little while. Without this step it would be incredibly tasty but SO rich, and you wouldn't have as much gravy. Strain the sauce through a sieve, then put back on the heat and put the duck legs back in to warm through. 

This was seriously good. There are a few things I would maybe do differently; I think the celeriac gratin would have been nice with some garlic through it, and if you were having it with meat that's not so rich I'd put some parmesan on top. I wouldn't throw a load of whole peppercorns over my cavolo nero, as that was annoying. But in general this was really good in a “pick up bones and gnaw on them” kind of way. And I have a good wedge of celeriac gratin for my tea at work tonight, which is much better than a ready meal.

This week's soup: Spicy butternut squash. It's a good 'un. I'm currently compiling a big list of soup recipes for someone from work, so I'll put them up as a bonus blog post one of these days.