Ocado delivers my shopping on Tuesday mornings. I already had 2 duck legs on order, then watched Masterchef, where a dude cooked a duck breast, the look of which made me grab my laptop immediately and edit my order.  2 duck breasts cost £9, 2 legs £4.50. The whole duck, just under 1,5 kg was on offer at £6.70. I hesitated for a few minutes, as I’ve never taken apart a bird and I’d hate to make a mess of it. But there’s youtube.com, so I watched 2 videos of how to do that and ordered the bird.

I have to say that butchering the duck was not as difficult as I thought it would be and it made me feel like I’ve just learned a new skill, saved some money and ended up with both breasts, legs and extras as well. My mum often makes soups on turkey/chicken wings, so I saved mine and froze them for that purpose, then decided to use the carcass to make some duck stock. Another 2 minute video helped with that- never done my own stock before. I whacked the carcass in the hot oven for 25 minutes till browned.

When cooled a little,  it went in  the pot together with a shallot, some green celery, carrots, bay leaves, peppercorns, a few porcini mushrooms and cooked nice and slowly for over 3 hours.

Strained, it now cools in the fridge and will be used for sauces, especially to accompany duck legs.

I then went on to reward my good housekeeping by dining on a pan fried duck breast with fabulous daphinoise potatoes and green beans, washed down with a large glass of Argentinian malbec.  Yum.