So this week I roasted some potatoes and carrots in a little vegetable oil and stuck a couple of duck legs in the oven too. I did them in a Nigel Slater duck salad style: rubbed the skin with Chinese five spice and seasoned with salt & pepper and roasted at 200C for an hour. I crisped the skin up a bit by injecting the fat back in with a metal baster. I then added the rendered fat into the potatoes for extra yumminess.

Steamed some green veg. Cooked a couple of slabs of salmon in the same oven, with olive oil, salt, pepper & dill. Quickly pan fried the steak with a bit of garlic and some bloody ‘artisanal’ bread left over from the farmers’ market. Sliced the steak and the duck and everyone helped themselves. Didn’t bother with gravy – there was a dollop of mayonnaise for anyone who fancied it.

Net result: much less bother than a normal roast chicken with gravy, and the boys are now hooked on roast duck. It was delicious, and so easy. Nice one, Nigel.

Mock hoisin sauce

• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 2 tablespoons soft dark sugar
• 1 teaspoon runny honey
• half a teaspoon Chinese five spice
• 1 teaspoon sweet chilli dipping sauce
• 1 teaspoon peanut butter

Combine the ingredients in a jar, warm gently in the microwave and shake, shake, shake.

Pancake mix

• 4 parts plain flour
• 1.5 parts boiling water
• er, that’s it

I used this recipe but used sunflower oil instead of sesame oil. You make dough out of the flour and water, roll it out into pancakes and quickly fry them in a hot pan. I didn’t bother steaming them.

Combining the pancakes

I reheated the left-over duck in the microwave and shredded it. Then spreaded one side of the pancakes with my hoisin-style sauce and piled on duck, thinly sliced spring onions, cucumber and a little lettuce. I rolled them up as best I could (I am always crap at this but for me it’s all about the taste not about making something beautiful – they don’t stay on the plate long enough to be admired!)