Mallard roasted on ciabatta with smashed borlotti beans, braised leg and liver, cavolo nero and truffle

We’re now bang in the middle of game season, which means it’s time to branch out from the usual beef, chicken, pork and lamb and have a go at something different. I’m usually terrible at taking advantage of this glut of alternative meat, but this year I’ve really made an effort and have already cooked with pheasant, grouse and wild rabbit. Although the often stronger, livery flavour puts a lot of people off, I personally love a bit of game and will always jump at the chance to buy it from a butcher or order it when eating out. The flavours work so well with other autumnal ingredients, be it sweeter squashes, beets and sweetcorn or bitter cabbage leaves and earthy mushrooms. 

 
This dish, like many of my better ones, happened by chance. It certainly wasn’t the result of a long-conceived and adjusted recipe; it all came together very quickly. I was strolling through Marylebone on the way home from town, and being a rare visitor to the area I thought I would take advantage and have a quick snoop around. Moxon Street was like my foodie heaven, with the delightful smell of cheese wafting out of La Fromagerie and the impressive glass-lined hanging room in The Ginger Pig, lined with blackened aged-foreribs and porterhouses. It was whilst in the butchers that I spied the mallard, and not often seeing them around I just had to take it. Back in London Fields and a quick trip to the local E5 Bakehouse for a huge slab of ciabatta and the local greengrocers saw me ready to go.
 
Ever since I had the chicken roasted on bread at Rotorino in Dalston I’ve wanted to have a go at something similar. It was such a fantastic dish, and the fact that I still have it at the front of my mind months after eating it is tribute alone. The end result is something similar to posh fried bread, all laden with the roasting juices and olive oil. To accompany the bird and the bread, I made a very savoury, earthy and thick stew out of the beans, the braised leg meat and the livers. Combined with the fairly sweet sauce it really brings depth to the dish. 

Serves 2 

Ingredients: 

For the mallards: 

2 plump mallards, legs removed and crowns trimmed 
2 long thin slices of fresh ciabatta 
2 cloves of garlic, sliced 
8 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked 
2 tbsp butter 

For the braised mallard legs and sauce: 

The legs and trimmings from the mallard 
4 shallots, finely sliced 
3 garlic cloves, crushed 
1 tbsp soft brown sugar 
1 carrot, diced 
1 leek, sliced 
5 sprigs of thyme 
1 bay leaf 
A good splash of brandy 
1ltr chicken stock 

For the smashed borlotti beans: 

6 tbsp cooked borlotti beans including the cooking liquid 
2 cloves of garlic, grated 
4 sprigs of thyme, leaves picked 
½ a shallot, finely chopped 
4 chicken livers, cleaned and diced 
The picked braised leg meat from the mallards 
¼ lemon, juice only 
Extra virgin olive oil 
A few gratings of black truffle  

For the roasted shallots:
 
2 shallots, quartered lengthways 
1 tbsp butter 
1 tbsp olive oil 
5 sprigs of thyme
 
For the cavolo nero: 

4 large cavolo nero leaves, thick stems removed 
1 tbsp butter
 
To finish:
 
A few gratings of black truffle 
Extra virgin olive oil 

 
First braise the legs of the mallard. Heat a heavy saucepan to a medium-high temperature and add a little olive oil. Fry the mallard legs quickly to brown well on all sides, then transfer to a plate. Repeat with all of the trimmings from the bird until well coloured. Turn the temperature down slightly and tip in the shallots, garlic, thyme and sugar and fry for about 15 minutes, or until softened and golden. Add the other vegetables and herbs and continue to cook for another few minutes. Turn the heat back up and add the brandy, burning off the alcohol and de-glazing the pan. Top up with the stock and return the mallard legs and trimmings to the pan. Bring to a simmer, then cook very gently for about 2 hours, or until the leg meat is tender. Remove the legs from the stock and shred the meat off the bones. Set aside until needed later.
 
Strain the rest of the stock and discard the carcass and vegetables. Pour the liquid into a smaller pan and set to a high temperature. Reduce until only a small amount of thick sauce remains, about 150ml. Cover and keep warm until needed. 

Pre-heat the oven to 160⁰C.
 
Put the quartered shallots into a small baking dish and toss in the olive oil, seasoning and thyme. Dot the butter around and bake in the oven for about 45 minutes, or until really soft and slightly charred at the edges. Peel the shallot layers into individual petals and set aside.
 
For the borlotti beans, add a little olive oil to a saucepan and set to a medium-high temperature. Season the chicken livers and then fry quickly for about two minutes or until golden brown on the outside and still pink in the middle. Transfer to a side plate. Lower the heat, add the shallot, garlic and thyme and soften for a few minutes. Add the borlotti beans and liquid along with the braised leg meat, season well and gently cook for about 15 minutes. Return the livers to the pan and roughly smash the contents against the side of the pan with a wooden spoon. Finish with the lemon juice, a tablespoon of the reduced sauce, two tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and a few gratings of the black truffle. Keep warm until needed. 

 
Raise the oven temperature to 200⁰C.
 
While the borlotti beans are cooking roast the mallards. Pour some oil into a non-stick frying pan and set to a medium-high heat. Season the inside and outside of the birds and sear quickly on each breast for 1-2 minutes, then add the butter to the pan, turn the birds breast-side up and baste really well. Lay the ciabatta slices onto the bottom of an oven dish and top with a little extra-virgin olive oil, the slices of garlic, seasoning and the thyme leaves. Place the browned mallards on top of the bread, pour over the pan juices and roast for 10-12 minutes, basting every few minutes. When cooked, transfer the mallards to a chopping board to rest for 10 minutes. Pick the garlic off the ciabatta and return the bread to the oven for a few minutes to crisp up slightly.
 
Re-heat the pan used to sear the mallards and add the butter for the cavolo nero. When melted, add the leaves, a bit of seasoning and a splash of water and fry for a couple of minutes until slightly softened.
 
While the mallard is resting also reheat the other elements of the dish if necessary.
 
To serve up, spoon a good amount of the smashed beans onto each piece of ciabatta and place one on each plate. Top with some of the cavolo nero leaves. Carve the mallards and arrange the breasts around the bread. Finish with some of the slow-roasted shallot, a generous spoonful of the sauce, some extra virgin olive oil and more grated truffle.

Restaurant review: Patty and Bun, Marylebone

After the downright success that was our visit to Honest Burgers last October, Katie and I have been eager to try another of the new burger joints that have been clogging the arteries of my Twitter feed recently. The burger revolution of London just keeps on rolling on, being taken to more and more extravagant levels. The trend of elevating simple fast food into something posh has fallen on the humble patty, and now you can pop out and indulge in lobster, Iberico ham or even a lump of foie gras as part of the experience. But for now I’m not bothered about all that gloss; it’s all about how a patty, bun and condiments alone can be elevated into something special. I must have forgotten the names of half of the new eateries that have opened, but the place that kept cropping up was Patty and Bun in Marylebone. 

There seems to be a formula with the modern trendy burger joint: find a small pipe of a shop in a busy area of town, cram it elbow-to-elbow with tables, turn the lights right down and hire someone to play music that was considered cheesy and awful at the time and is somehow now seen as edgy. Slap a long queuing time with that you’re there. Service will be fast and there will visibly be people eyeballing you for your table. But that said, when has eating a burger every been long and comfortable experience? They are the very essence of fast food (apart from those bloggers who might still be waiting for their burger to arrive at Meat Liquor, although I haven’t had the experience myself). 

And although to a certain extent Patty and Bun fits into this rhythm, I would urge you to overcome these factors for the sheer pleasure of the food that you are about to eat. It is almost torture having to queue outside for half an hour staring at the words ‘confit chicken wings’. The menu at Patty and Bun is minimal, but you want to eat every last word of it in one glutinous sitting. Once you have finished firing laser beams from your eyes at slow diners and a table becomes available, you just cannot order quickly enough.

One mouthful of burger and all the waiting and hanging around is forgotten. It was not a pretty burger to look at, it was the dirty variety that makes your stomach want to jump out of your mouth and grab it before your hands get the chance. Below the golden shiny bun gushed cheese and burger juices, and the perfectly seasoned patty cooked a perfect pink. All of this hype certainly stands, it is right up there with the best. 

But you have no time to grab for that extra napkin, as it’s time for those wings. They sounded amazing on the menu, but I was curious having never tried chicken cooked in that manner. My word. Beneath the crunchy spiced crust they just fell apart, and all I could do was fight Katie for who got that last one. They were good to the point that a shop selling them and only them would do very well indeed. They were truly memorable, and the taste that I now want every wing I ever eat in my life to match.

Likewise, the coleslaw was the finest I have eaten in a burger joint. Often they are a sad afterthought, badly dressed and seasoned. But like everything else at Patty and Bun, the attention to detail was evident. 

We finished with peanut choc ices, as you do. And they were exactly the right thing to eat after a dense main. Not too big, just enough to refresh you and leave you tasting something sweet. I hadn’t eaten a choc ice since I was about 12, but these ones conjured all of those memories back in a second. Mostly of those ones that had been carried in a bag on a warm day for far too long, and were a glorious dissolving mess when opened.

This was madness. I am a grown man, and the thought of sitting in a crammed room with disposable paper covering the table and the woman at your elbow swaying genuinely to Craig David would not be up there on my dining experiences wish list. But I cannot wait to go back. Unlike many places before, I still have the taste of that burger and those wings in my mouth, and not even the surroundings can deter my want. I would thoroughly, thoroughly recommend it. 

It is difficult to compare to Honest, as they both make really excellent burgers. I would happily take friends to either. But for overall experience, I still think that the former edges it. As fun as the Big Mac greaseproof wrap is on the surface, I still like to eat my burger on a plate, and the ambience is not quite so intense at Honest. Patty and Bun nailed the food though. It is only the difference of a few small deeply-rooted faults at either. Reviews of this nature do have a habit of making the writer an unnecessary pedant... 

But the search still goes on, and as the London burger wheel keeps on churning I am excited as to where my next burger will be.