Serves: 4
I prefer roasting the duck legs for an hour in the oven as this releases a lot of the fat -which you can pour off and use for cooking roast potatoes. If you had some leftover duck meat from a whole bird you could always skip stage one and make the sauce, cook it for an hour until the squash is soft and then stir in the chopped up duck meat. I can’t resist a one pot dish so I like to add vegetables to the curry which isn’t authentic but makes life so easy-no faffing around.
Ingredients
- 4 duck legs
- 2 echalion shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, peeled
- 1 stick lemon grass, outer layer removed and roughly chopped
- 30g piece root ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 heaped tablespoon red Thai curry paste (or 2 if your paste is not very strong)
- 350g peeled and diced butternut squash
- 400ml tin coconut milk
- 500ml chicken stock
- 1 tablespoon Thai fish sauce
- ½ tablespoon palm sugar or brown sugar
- 240g shitake mushrooms
- 3 kaffir lime leaves
- 2 tablespoons roughly chopped coriander
- 1 tablespoon Thai basil (or ordinary) roughly torn
- 2 tablespoons crispy onions
- To serve Jasmine or coconut rice
Method
- Heat the oven to 200˚c, fan oven 180˚c, mark 6. Season the duck legs with salt and ground black pepper and place in a roasting tin. Cook in the oven for 1 hour. Remove and pour off the fat. Set aside. Turn the oven down to 170˚c, fan oven 150˚c, mark 3.
- While the duck is cooking you can make the sauce. Place the shallots, garlic, lemon grass and ginger in a small liquidiser or food processor with 1 tablespoon of the oil. Blend to a paste. Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in a flameproof and ovenproof casserole dish and stir in the paste. Cook gently for 5 minutes, stirring. Add the red curry paste and cook for a minute. Stir in the butternut squash, coating the cubes with the paste.
- Pour in the coconut milk, stock,fish sauce and sugar. Bring to the boil and stir in the shitake mushrooms. Add the lime leaves and arrange the duck in the dish. Cover with a lid and cook in the oven for 1 hour 20 minutes. The duck should be really tender and falling off the bone. Sprinkle over the herbs and crispy onions just before serving. Serve with rice.
