Warm Salad of Squab, Duck & Cherries - Jeremy Lee
This salad recipe - incorporating British cherries - comes from Jeremy Lee of the Blueprint Cafe- he cooked it when he appeared with Henrietta on Market Kitchen.
Serves 2-4
1 Hereford duck
2 squabs or wood pigeons
2 handfuls little beetroot - gold, pink, candy-striped
A great bowl of plump black cherries
Butter
Sea salt
A fully charged pepper mill
A handful or two of very good watercress
A handful very beautiful Mesclun (very young gathered salad leaves, not the terrible stuff in a bag)
2 tbsp Forum Sauvignon red wine vinegar
1 dessertsp sugar
A stick fresh horseradish
A spoonful or two Maille Dijon mustard
Superb extra-virgin olive oil
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Butter, salt and pepper the squabs/wood pigeon and roast in the oven for about 10 minutes (should still be pink).
Salt and pepper the duck and cook at the same temperature for 25-30 minutes until pink. Remove the duck and squabs from the oven and leave to cool.
Pop in the little beetroots on a wee bed of rock salt and cook for 30-40 minutes at 180C/350F until soft. Remove, cool and peel.
Dissolve 2 spoonfuls of vinegar with salt, pepper and sugar. Add in the mustard then add in some olive oil.
Cut the beetroots into random shapes and toss in the dressing.
Remove the meat from the birds and then shred thinly. (The bones will make a lovely stock with which to make a good soup).
Stone the cherries. Pick and wash the watercress. Pick through the mesclun.
Put all in a great white dish and toss together lightly into a gorgeous heap to be eaten toute de suite.
