Unthinkable Wings

I bought an Instantpot in the Boxing Day sales. Anyone have any tips, tricks or recipes they'd care to share?

No, this is not very Lenten, but it's what I had for dinner on Sunday, so this is all right. Also, it is a very easy and delicious sauce, so I thought I'd share it.

I was working from this recipe, but ended up adapting it quite heavily. It was much easier than my attempts at making orange sauce with port or sherry, and actually nicer - the marmalade has a satisfying slight bitter note under the orangey sweetness which works really well with the duck.

You need:
A heavy based frying pan (it says non-stick in the original recipe, but it doesn't matter).
A roasting tin or a pyrex which is big enough to hold the meat, or similar.
A hob, an oven.
2 duck legs (or portions of duck of your choice).
A knob of butter (nb: if you are using duck breast or very fatty legs, you probably won't need this).
One orange.
4 tbs of decent, fairly bitter, orange marmalade.
Half a mug's worth of chicken stock. I only cook on the weekends and don't have facilities to store much in the fridge, so I don't usually make my own, because it's rarely practical to have a whole chicken. The Knorr stockpots are actually quite good. I'm never quite convinced by chicken stock cubes, though: I'd probably use vegetable bouillon powder (the Marigold stuff is good) instead.
Salt for the duck skin.
Half an onion (or less, depending how much you like onions).

Heat the oven. The original recipe called for you to heat it to 220°C (425°F, British gas mark 7), which means that your duck does in about 25 minutes; I don't like fast roasting very much, so following the pack instructions, we did it at 190C/fan 170C/gas 5 for about forty-five minutes.*

While the oven is heating, salt the skin on your duck, then, heat a pan to a moderate heat on the stovetop, and brown the duck all over, starting with the skin side. If it starts to stick, help it along with a little butter, but it should be OK. If you have another person cooking with you, they should start finely chopping the onions. Once the duck is browned all over and the oven is up to temperature, put the duck in the oven.

If you need to chop the onions, take the frying pan off the heat and do so now, and then if you can be bothered, take the zest off half your orange using a y shaped peeler, and chop it finely (if you have one of those fancy zesters for making peel for cocktails, use that, but alas I do not own one. They're brilliant, though).

Fry the onions gently in the duck fat and, if necessary, butter. While this is going on, squeeze the orange juice, and make up the stock.

Once the onions are transparent and soft, add the maramalade, the orange juice, the zest if you're using it, and the stock to the pan. Continue to heat gently and keep stirring until the marmalade dissolves.

Bring it to the boil, and let it boil for 3-4 minutes or until it starts to go a bit syruppy. If you are roasting the duck at a lower temperature (as I would recommend, but it's a matter of taste, some people like their duck frazzled), it won't be ready yet, but that's OK; just let it sit on the back of the stove and cool off. Once the duck is cooked, it should really have five minutes to 'rest' before it's eaten, so in that time you can heat up the sauce again.

We served it with boiled potatoes and spinach, but any leafy green vegetables, or peas or green beans, would be nice. I suppose you could substitute rice for the potatoes, but you will want something that can mop up the sauce....





NB: I think our oven runs too hot and so the real temperature was almost certainly higher - test your duck, which may need longer if your temperature guage is more accurate! However, unlike chicken, pink duck is perfectly OK to eat and many people prefer it, so you don't need to wait for it to run entirely clear.

Anyone have any brilliant ideas/ recipes for a pudding involving lemons which would be suitable for six people in hot weather, preferably one which can be made in advance?

I have a freezer, but no ice-cream maker.

Do you think one could use kefir (the Polish/ Russian) variety to substitute for buttermilk?

Gah. Sinuses appear to be filled with concrete. Cough vile.

I think tomorrow would be an appropriate day - in terms of health needs! - to eat a fairly oriental chicken noodle soup with chillis. I could go and fritter more money away at the (rather good) Chinese carryout, but does anyone have a decent recipe they could contribute instead? That would probably be cheaper and certainly be more satisfying.

Bother, I was going to make the Ember tart, wasn't I? I wonder if you could put chillis in that.... (No, definitely a bad idea!

*looks hopeful, in a hypochondriac and self-pitying way*