Confit Duck and Date Suet Pastries By Matthew Maciver from The Apartment in Edinburgh

THE Apartment has been a family-run restaurant for the past four years. We try to use local suppliers and produce for the vast majority of our dishes to support smaller producers. Our cooking style is essentially British but has Mediterranean influences, the duck pastry recipe is a perfect example of this. Head chef Matthew Maciver, who has been at the restaurant since it opened, shares his recipe for you to try at home.

INGREDIENTS

For the filling:

200ml of duck fat or

100mls of your preferred cooking oil

2 Large duck legs (or 4x small)

75 grams chopped dates

2 finely chopped banana shallots (50 grams)

For The Pastry:

250g self-raising flour

150g beef suet (ask at any butchers)

150mls cold water

Pinch of salt

Few hefty grinds of pepper

Tsp of finely chopped fresh thyme

1 egg and one extra yolk beaten together

METHOD

1. Pre-heat the oven to 160°(fan 150°)

2. Put the duck fat into a roasting tin, turn the legs until they are covered with the fat, cover the dish tightly with foil and roast for three hours.

3. Take the legs out of the oven, carefully unwrap and leave to cool.

4. For the pastry, add the flour and suet to a food processor. Blitz together for 30 secondss until mixture has texture of breadcrumbs.

5. Add good pinch of salt, chopped thyme and pepper to mixture, pour in 120mls of the water and mix together until mixture forms a firm dough (dough needs to be quite firm so only use all the water if it does not bind).

6. Rest the dough in a clean bowl covered with a tea towel in the fridge for 30 minutes maximum.

7. To make the filling, remove the skin from the duck legs and shred the meat into a mixing bowl and then mix in the dates.

8. Heat a frying pan to a medium heat, add a tablespoon of your preferred cooking oil, then add the shallots. Fry the shallots until slightly coloured then add the duck and chopped dates and fry stirring every minute or so for 10 minutes until all the ingredients are combined.

9. Let cool for 10 minutes then form into golf ball size dollops.

10. Remove pastry from fridge and roll out on a thinly floured surface to roughly half centimetre depth, cut into approximately 15cm round discs and place the duck golf ball in the middle. Lightly brush inside with beaten egg mixture and form into a Cornish pastry type or dim sum type shape by crimping the edges. Brush a little more egg mixture on top to seal.

11. Bake on greaseproof paper at 200° (190° fan) for 20 minutes, cool and devour.

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