Duck Pancakes with Hoisin Sauce

This is a meal we decided to make using some slow cooked duck legs, Blue Dragon pancakes and hoisin sauce.   Sous Chef J is very fond of finger food and we hoped this would be a dish he'd like to get his hands on.

Preparing the ingredients was easy.  The duck legs were cooked in the slow cooker (seasoning added). 








 
We removed the skin from the duck legs before the meat was 'pulled' from the bones using two forks to give a pile of shredded meat.


A 10cm length of cucumber was cut in half then sliced into thin sticks.  A handful of salad (spring?) onions were also sliced into thin sticks, of similar size to the cucumber.

Next, it was simply a matter of preparing the pancakes according to the instructions on the packet. 

It's really easy - just place them in just boiled water for 15 to 20 seconds - we did a batch and then stacked them on a clean tea towel before assembling.


Finally, assembly began... by layng the cucumber and onion in a line, adding some shredded duck and then rolling the pancake (taking care to fold in one end to stop escaping innards).

Serving the rolls with hoisin dipping sauce and prawn crackers meant we had a tasty meal of finger food.

The skin, which we'd removed from the joints prior to shredding, was added to a hot frying pan and quickly crisped up.  Tasty either with the pancake rolls or as an addition to a salad another time.

Wild Raspberry Jam (no added sugar)

We have a walk we take with the dog where we had spotted a patch of raspberry canes - it's alongside the bridleway.  We noticed a few fruits were ripe and ready to harvest so when we returned at the weekend, it was great to see how many more had been ripened in just seven days.  Only spending a few minutes gathering fruit, we were surprised to find, once back home, that we had 350g red raspberries and eight yellow raspberries (much to Sous Chef J's delight).

As wild raspberries are small and very flavoursome, we decided to try to make jam with no added sugar. With no idea as to how it would turn out but thought it worth a go and would, we hoped, make a suitable filling for one of our favourite roulades.

After washing the raspberries, they were put in a pan and a small amount of freshly squeezed orange juice was added.  The pan was placed over a medium heat and brought to a rolling boil.  The raspberries were boiled until pulling back with a spoon revealed only a small amount of fluid.

Whilst the raspberries were boiling, we sterilised our jam jar (by placing it and its lid in the washing up bowl and filling with boiling water).  This was then quickly drained, making sure not to touch the inside of the jar or lid.

The jam was then decanted into the jam jar and left to cool.  It was good to hear the 'click' of the lid as the cooling contents created a vacuum seal in the jar.

We had read online that wild raspberries contain alot of pectin so we didn't add any sugar or pectin.  As you can see, in the pic to the right, after setting, there was no doubt this was not a runny jam!

Trying the jam on some Genius Gluten Free seeded bread that had been toasted, it was a tasty preserve that was very much like a thick paste/spread rather than a traditional jam with jelly.  Surprisingly, even though there were lots of seeds in the jam, as the fruit was wild, they were very small and not at all unpleasant.

Not bad for an almost free fruit spread!

Rosy's Gluten Free

Having spotted Rosy's Gluten Free on twitter and hearing about all the lovely products on offer, Sous Chef J and I finally made it into the store today!   What a find... we were greeted by the lovely Rosy and loads of our gluten free favourites on the shelves.

Located in Leicester, the store is a treasure trove of hard to find goods - like Eskal Wafer Rolls (don't get me started... ) and Baked to Taste sausage rolls and pasties.  Even better, we got to buy some of the award winning focaccia we'd heard so much about on twitter.

There are shelves of goodies to look through and select from.  Freezer and chiller cabinets stocked with breads, pizzas, sausage rolls, pork pies and so on. 

 Our haul... waiting to be paid for!

The frozen foods we purchased were Baked to Taste sausage rolls, part baked mini focaccia with caramelised red onion and also some with orange and almond.   Focaccia Per Tutti are a Leicestershire based company and they were winners of the Free From Food award 2014 for bread... so we're keen to try their goodies out for ourselves. 

We also bought some spicy hummus chips, coconut flour, falafel mix and a peanut oat bar.   Now we know that the shop has such a great range of stock, we'll definitely be making the trip there again.  Only 15 minutes from J21 of the M1 ... post code LE2 7HN works well in the sat nav... you can park right outside the shop (on the pavement area) which is a handy to know seeing as parking's sometimes hard to find when students are about.