I love those strange, painted ducks dangling in windows.
There are many such restaurants now in my neighbourhood Queensway but I regularly go to one specific.
When I went in the Chinese owner said "hello Mr King; always a pleasure to see you".

It is amazing how many friends and supporters I've garnered in 41 years here.

So I ordered one of the ducks (I like them on the bone and whole) with Chinese vegetables and went off to buy some magazines whilst they were prepared.

Came back 5 minutes later. All done; off I went.

Only to discover they had chopped it into bits. Never mind; heated it and the lettuce (bok choi???) that tastes and looks a bit like spinach.

And it was all deeply delicious. Dipped the heated duck pieces in the fabulous sauce, loved the lettuce in garlic sauce (no kissing)...

Big glass of ice cold white French wine.

Jolly good.

Have not really had a chance to cook this week, I`m running all over the place and working on lots of unknown musical material with people that I don`t know yet very well.

Love duck, hate guinea fowl, I find them completely pointless after finally getting around to eating one.

I must order some ducks actually as I have finally emptied the freezer.

Was it eaten in,or take away?
You should mention the name of the place if it's so good,I now pass through London occasionally,and would like to pop in as it's so good.

Taken out SE and there are several very good ones now in Queensway.

Is the food post banned or the duck?

..and why?

Ah Zoo, that was my pathetic attempt at a topical gag - these ducks were considered unhealthy by the Health and Safety unit and they were almost banned in Chinatown a few weeks ago.

No topic is banned though some are terminated when they get over cooked!

Well , I bought something I had actually never bought from a chill cabinet before, not for the feint hearted...LARD!

As my French reading adventure into recipes continues, I kind of had to be accurate! Olive oil, I agree with the recipe, would have not worked had I substituted it as I normally would have.

Translated quickly for you all, I have slow cooked 4 pork chops for 1 hour in lard, mint, oregano and 1 bayleaf, salt and pepper, a handful of raisins, to serve with savoy cabbage. (it said haricot vertes, but I can`t stand the things!)

Waitrose do pots of excellent goose fat which is as close to lard as I'm prepared to go (otherwise my arteries seize up at the thought).

Terrific for crisp roast potatoes.

I always have goose fat on hand but it said "lard or margarine". You wanna put Stork in a recipe?

No thanks Madame Mapie!
Smells great anyway here, I recommend to anyone to get a foriegn language cook book and try and work the recipes out.

The Lard Information Council??????

I recognise him! He was a Radio One DJ!

Lol! I do have to say it worked superbly! Save the goose fat for potatoes, stick the lard in with the pork.

I am never using olive oil with pork again, good ole` lard makes it so gentle a meat!

I saw lards face, now I`m a believer....!

In the good ole days I'm reliably told they had lard sandwiches!
Even in Ukraine they still put salted pig fat onto rye bread and eat it with slugs of homemade spirits!!
Personally I find Russian/Moldovan/Ukraine meat dishes do taste better with heated up pig fat rather than using a lard paste..pretty much a similar thing,but more natural a product.

Well Soli, mu Mum always used to keep beef dripping in the fridge and I recall that my school gardener used to actually have beef dripping sandwiches, of which the school cook would save the dripping for him, make a sarnie and take it out to him on his break with a cup of char!

I think that the "lard culture" in the UK came much after the war, when there was quite literally less food about, the UK did seem to have a far less wasteful approach to food than they do now, we throw away so much produce now that is a disgrace!

Well, I will say that we are all up bright and early here on our lardy meal and I feel oddly enough less weighed down than I normally feel on my largely olive oil diet!

"IT`S LARD WE WANT!"

Bring it on!