Hell's Kitchen: Duck Tikka
Hi and welcome to part III of Hell's Kitchen. I'm still completely without kitchen and appliances, but its fine because I went mad on the batch cooking front and am just going through and microwaving nice things every night.
So, today's post: it may not be the best of pictures - blame complete chaos in my house - but this duck tikka was a perfectly good way of using up two duck legs that had been languishing in the freezer for yonks. Like the jerk pork dish the other day, cooking for the freezer doesn't just mean making up a big old pot of pasta - cook up some cuts of meat that respond well to reheating (usually your fattier pieces and those best for slow cooking etc) with some strong spicing and then pop them straight back in the freezer until you want them.
Once defrosted, I marinated these duck legs in a GASP pre-made tikka mix that I found at the back of my cupboard. Look, I had to empty my entire kitchen, so these things are bound to happen and it was purchased in the days before me and Mrs Parmar became close pals, so I was young and foolish in my Indian cookery. To compensate, I added some minced ginger, minced garlic and some tomato puree in an attempt to make it feel more homemade.
After a couple of hours, I set them off to cook down in a lidded saucepan on the hob over a low heat. The skin crisped up nicely and all the fat then rendered out, allowing the duck to do its thing in the pan for about 40 mins.
That's it. I cooled it down quickly, stuck it in some tupperware and then just microwaved it for when we wanted it as a dinner. We had it with some pre-made cauliflower rice, chapatis courtesy of Mrs Parmar and a sneaky bit of one of her amazing baby aubergine curries. Oh, and a bit of saag paneer (more on that later). So actually it turned into quite a feast, but a pretty healthy one still.