Roast mallard with port and marmalade sauce recipe

Sunday roast with a difference! This easy dish mixes the flavour of wild duck with savoury bacon and sweet orange - delicious!

Ingredients

• 1 onion, unpeeled, and cut into 6 wedges
• 1tbsp olive oil
• 6 streaky bacon rashers, stretched and halved
• 3 mallard (wild duck)
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• Juice of 1 large orange
• 300ml (½ pint) game or chicken stock
• 5tbsp port
• 4tbsp orange marmalade
• A little tomato ketchup
• 2tsp cornflour, optional
• Roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and Savoy cabbage, to serve

Method

1. Set the oven to gas mark 7/220°C. Put the onion wedges in a roasting tin and sprinkle them with the oil. Arrange the bacon rashers over the mallard to cover the breasts, then place on top of the onion wedges and roast for 20 minutes.
2. Take the bacon off and put it in the roasting tin alongside the duck (or with the roasting vegetables). Sprinkle the ducks with salt and pepper and put back in the oven for 15 mins to brown.
3. Take the birds out of the oven and transfer them to a warm baking tray, tipping the juices from inside the birds into the tray. Leave them, along with the bacon and onion wedges, to rest for 10 mins in a warm place.
4. Scrape the roasting tin juices into a frying pan and add the orange juice, stock, port, marmalade and a good squeeze of ketchup, and boil to reduce until fairly thick. Add the cornflour, mixed with a little water, to thicken the sauce, if you prefer.
5. Carve the birds and serve with the sauce, as it is or sieved, if you like it smooth, along with roast potatoes, carrots, parsnips and shredded, boiled cabbage.