Pheasant Bombe and Marmalade Duck. A Week of Meals 005/6

It's been a while since I did one of these 'what I've been eating' posts.  For this delay you have my unreserved apologies, but between preparing to move house, assorted birthdays and trips to darkest Hull, things have been getting on top of me a bit.  Indeed, all I have to remind me of what I've been eating are a load of pictures from my digital camera, which I just spent half an hour trying to figure out what dishes they were actually of.

Anyway, in the spirit of CSI : Soup Kitchen, I think I managed to figure it out, so here we go

Pheasant Bombe

This is an Italian recipe from a book of 'celebration dishes' and it was meant to be pigeon, but we couldn't get hold of any of that particular bird on a trip to the butchers, so we decided to substitute pheasant instead.  It was baked in a sort of risotto, in a dish, and kind of resembles a steak and kidney pudding, but with a game surprise inside.  It got us thinking about what other fillings we could include in further bombes - rabbit seems like a good choice.

Asian Mushroom Risotto

Risotto using rice is my enemy, as I may have mentioned before.  However, using pearl barley it is a dream, easy to cook, tasty and with a really nice texture (also, none of the swearing that accompanies me trying to get the rice cooked perfectly)  I spent quite a bit on various exotic mushrooms, including straw, enoki, shitake, oyster and king oyster but it was worth it as they had such a rich, almost meaty flavour.  It's almost (But not quite) enough to make a boy turn vegetarian...

Fennel and Leek Gratin with Roasted Squash and Sage

This was a veg box meal, as I have started calling them, using up lots of vegetables.  I often think that vegetable dishes feel like side dishes in search of a steak and this was no exception, apart from combining two of them with some couscous made for a perfectly satisfactory meal

Duck with Marmalade

It was Mrs Soup's birthday and as is the time-honoured tradition in our house,  she got to pick what dish she would eat on her special day.  She is a big fan of duck, which was combined with some home made marmalade and then just roasted.  Which would all be fine, I was regularly basting to make sure the meat didn't dry out and it was looking amazing, smelling even better, when I realised that I WAS COOKING THE DUCK UPSIDE DOWN!!! How did I even do that?  I have no idea, but I spent two hours making sure the bird was perfect, only to has wasted my time as the breasts hadn't been basted at all...

All was not lost however, as it was perfectly tasty, but the swearing I had avoided whilst cooking the risotto returned with a vengeance after realising my mistake with the duck...