INGREDIENTS: (Serves 6)
5 celery sticks, finely diced; 1 large red onion, finely chopped; 6 garlic cloves, crushed; 6cm piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped; 2tsp juniper berries; juice and finely grated zest of 1 orange; a glug of vegetable oil; 2tsp za’atar; 4 duck leg
METHOD:
1. Heat the oven to 180°C/fan 160°C/gas mark 4.
2. Put the celery, onion, garlic and ginger in a shallow casserole dish. Bash the juniper berries lightly and add them to the casserole. Add the orange juice and zest and drizzle with a good glug of vegetable oil. Mix and spread it out as a bed for the duck legs.
3. Rub the za’atar over the duck legs and place in the casserole. Season well with salt and pepper. Place in the oven and cook, uncovered, for roughly 90 mins, depending on the size of your duck legs. The duck is done when the flesh easily pulls away from the bone with the touch of a fork.
4. Meanwhile, remove the seeds from the pomegranate by scoring the skin into quarters. Submerge the fruit in a bowl of cold water and, gently pull apart the quarters and ease out the seeds with your fingers. The seeds sink. Everything else floats, so discard it with the water Dry the seeds on kitchen paper.
5. Remove the duck from the oven. Pour off the fat from the vegetables. Allow to cool for a few minutes so removing the meat from the bones is easier.
6. Shred the duck and skin and tip into a bowl. Tumble together with the roasted vegetables and then turn out onto a serving platter.
7. For the dressing: Combine the lemon juice, pomegranate molasses and olive oil.
8. Serve before the duck cools completely: Drizzle the dressing all over, then top with the pomegranate seeds and sliced spring onions.
PRUE LEITH had barely written a recipe in 25 years. For more than two decades, the culinary mind of the legendary Prue Leith – the woman who set up the prestigious Leiths Cookery School and London restaurant of the same name – lay pretty much dormant.
And then she found herself appearing on the Great British Menu, replacing Mary Berry on the Great British Bake Off, and “pinching” recipes from the contestants. Telly provoked her interest in cooking again, and she found a whole new audience interested in her.
“When I stopped writing cookery books 25 years ago, half the people who are now watching Bake Off weren’t even alive,” she notes dryly. These people, as well as faithful Leith fans, are fully catered for in her new cookbook, Prue: My All-time Favourite Recipes.
Packed with classics like roast pork and cottage pie with black pudding, the South African cook is also sharing fresher, zingier dishes, like baked sea bass with samphire and cucumber, Colombian chicken, and potato soup and burrata with kumquats.
While Bake Off has encouraged her to start inventing recipes again, it’s also triggered a new interest in cakes. “I’ve never been much of a cake-maker,” muses Prue, 78, who’d only bake them on special occasions. “There wasn’t cake in the house like in my grandmother’s.”
But now there is: “John, my husband, gets quite: [shouting] ‘Where’s the cake?’” Her freezer is now usually stuffed with fruit cake or a lemon polenta (“so there’s always cake for him”).
Prue is ever prepared with a quick comment or dry remark, however, her (somewhat accidental) catchphrase – “Is it worth the calories?” – might be an abiding principle, but wasn’t meant to be her personal slogan.
“I always judge things by, ‘I don’t care how many calories it’s got, it’s so delicious I’m going to eat it’, or, ‘It’s a special occasion, it’s worth the calories’. I won’t eat something which is high in calories and not particularly wonderful, because that’s just not worth it, you feel guilty after,”
There have been developments around eating and cooking over the past few decades that she does find encouraging though: She believes TV is beginning to prod people to pick up a pan but is adamant there needs to be more focus on learning cookery skills at school, and more support for people who aren’t adept in the kitchen.
“Life has got tougher and tougher for people on a tight budget, so people who have never learnt to cook, who have basically grown up on junk food, it’s really difficult for them to change unless someone will give them a hand,” she says, “because if you can’t cook, you’re not going to risk your benefit money
throughout a meal. It just fits the bill, with creamy, buttery notes of vanilla, slices of apple and dashes of citrus.
Ooohs and aahs accompanied the sipping of
Banfi La Lus Albarossa 2015
(RRP £18.99, weaverswines.com, 13.5% abv) Now here’s a grape I’d not heard of before – albarossa. Its parents are barbera and nebbiolo and it grows in the Piedmont region of Italy.
It has an inky-black colour and a fresh, fruity, lightness of touch. Cherry and plum fruits, and notes of liquorice and vanilla, combine with great structure and acidity to make for a perfect roast dinner wine. (In C-word terms, it even managed to on something the children won’t eat because they’ve never seen it before.”
Endlessly practical and committed, alongside her Bake Off role, Prue is a patron of the Chefs In Schools charity, which aims to get professional chefs into school classrooms.
“I have never managed to put my feet up, ever,” she notes. “I’m having a little revival here in my old age, a kind of renaissance, it’s all very exciting.”
■ Prue: My All-time Favourite Recipes by Prue Leith, photography by David Loftus, is published by Bluebird, priced £25.
win the complicated stand-off with cranberries).
Finally,
Henry Fessy Fleurie Le Pavillon 2014
(RRP £13.49, Waitrose, 13.5% abv) is another wine ideally created to see you through all your roast dinner (and Christmas) wishes.
It has a nose of red fruits, slashes of spice, pepper, and a good acidity. Sprouts, I said. Not in a derogatory way, aimed at anyone in particular, but because it would be a great match to their savoury woodiness. When you roll out the cheese board this wine will also tilt its head to one side and say, ‘bring it on, I’m made for this’.
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