Not your traditional Sunday Dinner

Why have Roast Beef and Yorkies when you could be having Hot Thai Duck Noodle stir-fry with Chilli Jam? (Page 79)  First hurdle was actually getting the duck.  Recipe calls for 400g of cooked duck meat so after scouring tesco.com for the best solution I eventually went for an Aromatic Duck with 12 Pancakes.  Boy and Girl were very excited to spot it in the fridge as its one of their favourites so were rather crestfallen when I told them I was puting it in a stir fry!

Like most stir frys this was pretty easy to throw together - they key is getting all your ingredients prepped in advance so you don't waste any time when it comes to putting it together.  As usual there were a couple that I deviated from.  For ginger & chilli paste I used my trusty frozen cubes of each, instead of Thai holy basil I used bog standard and I used Pak Choi instead of Bok Choi - no idea what the difference there is!

Unfortunately the end result was dissapointing.  Recipe called for 400g of egg noodles which you had to cook, refresh and add to the stir fried veg/duck at the last minute and heat through for 30 seconds.  The sheer quantity and they fact they were now cold from refreshing meant they needed much longer to heat through which in turn meant the veg turned from crispy to soggy.  The photo in the book certainly shows a significantly less proportion of noodles than what I ended up with. 

The only redeeming feature was the accompanying Chilli Jam.  But I used my own version which I make from Rachel Allen's recipe rather than Giraffe, so the credit there goes to me and Ms Allen.  Boy and girl rolled theirs up in the pancakes and hoisin sauce and declared it a hit.  Personally I wouldn't bother with it again and will stick to the more traditional Sunday Roast - you can't beat Delia's Yorkies.