asian confit duck salad

david and i were given a tin of duck confit just before christmas and over recent months i have been trying to pluck up the courage to use it. i don’t know why but for some reason it intimidated me! this is probably in part due to a disastrous* experience of cooking duck c10 years ago, since when i have never cooked and rarely eaten the stuff.

however, i was encouraged by friends, put on my brave boots and found that roast confit duck is truly delicious. it is also an absolute sod for making the oven filthy and stinky! the next round of confit duck will need to be saved for when i need to clean the oven anyway.

we used our two roasted duck legs in two separate meals – the richness of the meat means a little goes a long way. one was used as part of a salad with fennel, blood orange, watercress and a walnut dressing.

the other was inspired by a skye gyngell recipe from an old magazine. i layered the duck with a mix of raw bean sprouts and lightly cooked pak choi and gai lan (tenderstem broccoli or asparagus would also be really good) that was dressed with a mix of lime juice and sesame oil. interspersed in the layers is some chilli jam (i used tracklements chilli jam which has quite a sweet spicy flavour; skye’s original recipe suggested the belazu smoked chilli jelly which is far more subtly flavoured) and chopped toasted cashew nuts. the original recipe also included quartered boiled eggs which i omitted.

it’s a fantastic dish – strong fresh flavours and something a bit different. we ate it as a light lunch but i think it would also be good as a starter.

* i wanted to make a chinese roast duck and the advice i found was to boil the raw bird before roasting, to remove some of the fat. i will never forget the truly revolting smell of boiled duck and its fat that resulted and lingered in my flat for days.