Merlin Labron-Johnson’s Wild Duck Tourte

Serves 4

Ingredients

• 400g puff pastry, rolled to the thickness of a £1 coin
• 1 wild duck
• 1 partridge breast
• 40g pork back fat
• 8 juniper berries, crushed
• black pepper
• salt
• 4 leaves of cabbage, blanched and well-drained of any water.
• 1 egg, beaten

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Cut the pastry into 4 circles, a little bit larger than the size of a CD. Set aside in the fridge.
3. Remove the breasts and legs from the duck. Remove the skin from the duck breasts and cut in half crossways. Season the breast pieces and stack one half on top of the other so that you have a thicker wedge, almost resembling a square. Wrap this square in a cabbage leaf and put this in the fridge to chill.
4. Put the pork fat and partridge meat through the mincer.
5. Take the meat from the duck legs and finely dice, saving the skin for something else. Fold the diced leg meat through the minced
   partridge and pork fat along with approximately half of the beaten egg and season with salt, lots of pepper and the crushed juniper. Fry a little bit of this mixture to test the seasoning. This is your ‘farce’.
6. Remove the wrapped duck breasts from the fridge. Lay the remaining two cabbage leaves on a bench and add a spoonful of farce to each one. Spread it out in a little circle and sit a duck breast on top. Now cover the breasts in a thin layer of the farce and bring the edges of the cabbage leaf up around it so that the whole thing is wrapped in a leaf. You should have: a duck breast wrapped in a leaf, wrapped in farce, wrapped in a leaf.
7. Place each of these bundles on a disc of puff pastry and top with another disc. Pinch and crimp the edges so that they are sealed.
8. Add a drop of milk to the remainder of the beaten egg and use this to brush the top of the pies. Bake the pies in the oven for about 15 minutes or until they have reached a core temperature of around 50 degrees.
9. Leave to rest for 4-5 minutes before carving and then serve with a game sauce, some fruit and a bitter leaf salad.

Recipe courtesy of Merlin Labron-Johnson of Michelin-starred Osip.

Images © Ed Schofield