Duck - no Grouse

When I invested in the Aldi Serrano ham I also bought and put in the freezer a stuffed duck that if memory serves cost £8.99. It was a standby, and a way of avoiding the shops as much as possible over the Christmas and New Year hols. I hate that mad crush, the irrational belief that the supermarkets may never open again, contrary to all experience and the message of major ad campaigns, so illogically you need to shop every day. 

It proved a luxurious bargain. With bread sauce (better than the version I made on Christmas Day), glazed carrots and a mash of spud and parsnip it was the basis of a good meal for four. But the bonus was the cereal-bowlful of duck fat that has since enriched several soups, and last night (a week on) made crispy golden cubes of potato. Only goose-fat can rival it for that quality of crisping stuff up. 

Half the bowl remains - a little goes a very long way, and it keeps for several weeks. So midweek we'll have a crispy potato gratin, not even needing cheese or onions, though I'll be tempted to slip some shavings of the enduring Serrano ham in there for interest and protein, and a thinly-sliced sliver or two or garlic. The spuds need to be cut as thinly as possible, probably on the blade on the grater, then fried quickly in the fat and tipped into a gratin dish and mixed with the garlic and ham to finish in a hot oven - it's done when it's brown on top. 

Served with a green salad or some home-made coleslaw and followed by the survivors from the box of Christmas mandarins it's a moderately healthy supper for pennies. Fewer than 250 pennies if you reckon on 60p of spuds, 2p of garlic, 50p of ham, 75p for the salad element (over-costed as a cos lettuce now £1 in the shops and half of one will suffice) and 50p for three mandarins. A bit more if I go for the slaw.

Over Christmas the most frequently spotted dish here was said coleslaw. There is a small bowlful in the fridge now. What can be easier than grating a big carrot and an apple, plus half a small onion for bite, cutting some white cabbage very finely, and mixing with Helmann's? We ate it alongside sarnies, with the inevitable (and wonderful) cold meat aftermath, and at a small party after New Year's Eve. We'll have more this week one way or another. By my reckoning a big bowlful costs say 10p for a carrot, 30p an apple, 30p for the cabbage, and 5p for the onion. Two big spoons of mayo runs to maybe 20p. So 95p for roughly five times the volume of a supermarket carton that costs more than that, and isn't as fresh by a long chalk.