Wrap it up- Duck Ballotine, Beetroot Puree, and Fondant Potato

The weather has been particularly uncharacteristic for Birmingham the past two weeks, and this weekend Mother Nature has decided to dump almost 30cm of snow. Snow in England means stay inside. Stay inside makes Kristyn go crazy, so what to do? Get busy in the kitchen.

This weekend's challenge is brought to you by MasterChef Everyday. This book is sponsored by John Torode and Gregg Wallace and is a combination of past winner recipes and "everyday" takes on some quite complex techniques. I've tried some recipes in this book already- some successful (and will repost), others disastrous (naming and shaming the Malaysian Beef and Potato Curry by Linda Lusardi). 

I'm not enamoured by the content of the book and will more than likely pull what the recipes that work and pass the book along.Gregg and John have described the content as "great food, delivered with love from great contestants- here for you to create yourselves at home." and "fantastic flavours, wonderful textures, creating really beautiful plates of food... that takes practice.". A lot of the techniques take practice (like wrapping ballotines). To create some of the more beautiful plates, you need to plan in advance to search for ingredients that are not common stock. And speaking of stock- what a wasteful exercise for a handful of meals. The edits on the show hide this tremendously well; one risotto recipe that I tried gave you a veggie stock recipe to make, but you threw away all of the stock veg at the end of it. I know it's mainly just root veg and some celery, but I hate throwing food away, nor did I have the time to Google "what to do with leftover stock veg" after sssslllllooooowwwllly basting a risotto. In any case... this post is about an attempt at a Duck Ballotine Wrapped in Pancetta with a shot of Beetroot Puree: so Ingredients Out!

Duck breasts, pancetta (I've used smoked bacon), olive oil, butter, salt and pepper, parsley, garlic, onion/ shallot, duck breast trimmings, beetroot, more butter, and double cream. The title of this recipe says it was submitted by James Perry MasterChef 2011 final 5= high hopes for good flavours. Downside is that for this to be a "final" dish, then it is more than likely a fine-ish dining dish and I'm going to need to plump it up to be an actual dinner sized portion. Cue the fondant potato:  potatoes, more butter, more garlic, and for effect... whatever leftover fresh herbs that I have. Looks pretty!

So, how does this come together? Firstly trim the thin end of the duck and keep to the side. With a bit of exercise: taking an Jamie-style 15 Minute Meal approach, beat out the skinned and trimmed duck breast to 5mm thick with a rolling pin. Aaaaahh! Duck breast isn't cheap and I'm smashing the heck out of it. It needs to be thin for the ballotine, but I don't want to to be too thin to make it into duck leather.

In the meantime, get Kenny out and make the stuffing from the onions, herbs, garlic, and trimmings from the duck breast. There is a "simplify for EVERYday" tip telling you to use reconstituted stuffing and jazz it up with the parsley and garlic. I'm not really sure how much faster that is vs. putting some herbs and veg in the food processor. Nice try, though.

Next up, layer up: cling film + bacon layer + beaten breast + stuffing. Use the cling film to help roll up the ballotine tightly. This has brought flashbacks to sushi rolling parties I've had in the past, or any type of food that is rolled- burritos, enchilladas, etc and my inability to keep it neat and tidy. I fully recognise that this is a weakness of mine. Oh well, let's see how it ends up.

 So far so good... looks as it should.

The assembled ballotine is then poached in boiling water for 15 minutes, left to rest (for an nondescript amount  of time) while the beetroot puree is prepared. The beetroot is "freshly cooked" in the ingredient line, so I have had it on the boil while I prepared the duck. The beetroot is chopped into small chunks, and pureed until smooth with some melted butter and double cream. The recipe specifies food processor, but after blitzing until steady, the puree is a bit choppy. I tried to "puree" it in the blender, but it still didn't budge. The instructions also say to pass through a conical sieve (and to serve the juice in a shot glass). I've decided instead that the bits are small and the flavour is nice, so I will serve as a minced beetroot bed to add some fibre to the plate.

Back to the ballotines and it's the moment of truth: have these set as one continuous sausage-looking mass or have they turned into a bacon wrapped taco? Wa wa: bacon wrapped taco, just like seaweed wrapped taco for my sushi. Oh well, nothing a bit of string can't fix. Into the pan for browning off in delicious butter.

Looks good from the top.

A bit open from the bottom.

Fondant potatoes have been on the go this whole time. I poached this recipe (and the spuds) from a few pages down from the duck and these barrelled buttered beauties are winners. This was also a new thing for me to try, and the only correction would be to use a different (smaller) pan (or pot). Potatoes on the butter and the pan filled with water until the tops are exposed, the concoction is simmered for an hour.

The potatoes are then "left to warm" whatever that means. In the case of my potatoes vs. fondant potatoes I have ordered from a restaurant, mine needed a bit of frying off. I elected to scoop the butter and herbs off of the top of the concoction in the pan and get the supds in the oven while I finished off the ballotine.

So, how was it? Tasty! Great flavours as promised by John and Gregg, but the textures were amiss. How cooked is cooked beetroot? How firm should a fondant potato be? This, I am sure, must come from the practice-element. Although, the descriptions are vague at times which I believe is a reason why the textures do go wrong. This is the challenge of getting "fine dining" into an everyday-type book. Everyday cooking shouldn't span more than a page and the shortcuts are noticed in the dish. Everyday cooking should be tasty, and this dish distinctly delivers.