The Good Food & Wine Show and Oxford Landing Estates will host an exclusive lunch on Saturday 2 July where you can indulge in a carefully selected menu - designed by Marion and matched with Oxford Landing wines - as well as chat with Marion and Q&A session.
To get you in the mood here is one of Marion's recipes!
Confit duck with star anise & cherry sauce
Serves 6
There’s nothing like duck cooked in duck fat. Or potatoes cooked in duck fat. Or onions cooked in duck fat. Or pork belly cooked in duck fat. Hmmm, duck fat. I think fat is a wondrous thing. I like my steak fatty, my pork fatty and my bacon — you guessed it — fatty. Fat is flavour. In our low-fat, low-GI, high-protein, vita-supplemented eating world I think we can sometimes forget that simple fact. It’s almost blasphemous to talk of cooking with fat these days and yet our televisions are filled with advertisements tempting us with meal deals that wheel and deal in just that. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t got a problem with meal deals and I will admit to loving a chicken nugget or six on occasion, but I try to forgo the regular eating of meal-deal fat so I can afford to indulge in a little home-cooked fat every now and then…or a little more often. For extra decadence, I like to serve this with duck fat potatoes. Simply boil quartered potatoes until just tender, drain, then cook in a large non-stick pan with a big spoonful of duck fat until golden.
2 tablespoons sea salt
3 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 star anise
6 thyme sprigs
6 duck marylands
2 kg duck or goose fat – buy duck or goose fat from butchers and gourmet food shops, plus olive oil for topping up
Cherry sauce
1/4 cup red wine
680 g jar morello cherries, drained, 1/4 cup syrup reserved - available in the canned fruit section of most supermarkets
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
First we need to get together a flavoured salt. Use a mortar and pestle to lightly pound the salt, garlic cloves, peppercorns, star anise and thyme sprigs. You want the garlic to be slightly crushed and the spices cracked. Rub the salty mixture into the duck pieces, cover with plastic wrap refrigerate overnight to marinate.
Now for the confit bit. Preheat the oven to 100°C.
Rinse the duck under cold water to remove the salt mixture. Pat dry and place in a casserole dish or deep roasting tray that’s just large enough to fit the duck in one snug layer.
Heat the duck or goose fat in a saucepan until just melted. Pour over the duck, making sure all the pieces are completely covered — top up with a little olive oil, if you don’t quite have enough.
Bake for 2 hours or until the meat is soft and shrinking back from the bone. Remove from the oven. At this stage you can crisp up the duck skin and enjoy immediately or store the confit duck to improve the flavour. If you’d like to store it, transfer the pieces to a large sterilised jar or container. Strain the fat into the jar to completely cover. Cool, then store in the fridge until you’re ready to serve. You can store the confit duck like this for up to 2 weeks.
Ready to eat? Preheat the oven to 160°C. Heat a heavy-based frying pan over medium heat. Remove the duck pieces from the fat. You will need to scrape away the excess fat, if you’ve been storing them in the fridge. Add to the pan, skin-side first, and sear for 3–4 minutes or until the skin is golden and crisp. Turn the duck pieces over and cook on the other side for about 2 minutes or until warmed through. Transfer to a roasting tray and keep warm in the oven while you make the cherry sauce.
Pour off most of the fat from the pan, leaving about 1 tablespoon and put it back on medium heat. Pour in the red wine and let it sizzle for half a minute, using a wooden spoon to scrape off any crisp duck bits from the base of the pan. Add the cherries and reserved syrup, sugar, star anise and cinnamon. Simmer for about 15 minutes to infuse the flavours and let the cherries collapse and thicken the sauce slightly.
Serve the duck with generous spoonfuls of sweet cherry sauce.
Dutch cream mash
Serves 4
A potato called ‘dutch cream’ simply has to be good for mashing. And it certainly doesn’t disappoint. It has an incredibly rich, yellowy, creamy flesh that whips into an incredibly rich, yellowy, creamy mash.
1 kg dutch cream potatoes, washed, peeled and cut into equal-sized chunks
1 heaped tablespoon sea salt, plus 1 teaspoon extra
100 g unsalted butter
1/4 cup milk
Add the butter, milk and extra salt and mash together, then get out a wooden spoon and vigorously whip the potatoes until your arms can whip no more. Have a taste and add more butter or salt to your liking.
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