Duck, cherry and beetroot salad with Lambrusco

A couple of weeks ago we were treated to a particularly memorable meal at Quo Vadis that featured a main course salad of duck with cherries and beetroot, topped with crunchy toasted breadcrumbs. It was the perfect dish for a warm summer evening. Grown up and satisfying, yet not too earnest – large pieces of crisp, salty duck skin were a deliciously naughty touch.

We had friends round for dinner last Friday and I recreated it as a starter. Flicking through my new copy of Diana Henry's A Change of Appetite I noticed a recipe for goat's cheese and cherry salad in which she macerates the cherries in brandy or grappa, along with olive oil, white balsamic vinegar and lemon juice. I used kirsch, olive oil and apple balsamic (I don't yet have any white balsamic) and found the dressing didn't need any lemon juice, leaving them for a couple of hours or so before combining with salad leaves, sliced cooked beetroot and the flesh and skin from duck legs I'd roasted earlier. The crunchy breadcrumbs were made by roasting chunks of bread in the pan used for the duck. Once they had dried out I scraped the pan thoroughly to incorporate all the tasty duck bits and then pounded the toasted bread in a pestle and mortar.

We enjoyed it with a bottle of Albinea Canali Lambrusco Ottocentonero from the Wine Society (a steal at £7.95) – dry, fresh and appetising with plenty of lush cherry fruit and spot on with the salad. It was a steal at £7.95, but has (not surprisingly) sold out. However, their other Lambrusco would also be worth trying, but keep an eye out elsewhere, especially while dining out, for proper dry examples (not to be confused with the naff sweet versions of the past). Following New York's lead, interest in this 'forgotten gem' is growing in the UK where, for example, Ottolenghi restaurants report booming sales. Great news for summer drinking.

Otto's: old-school charm

Okay, I'll pin my colours to the mast straightaway. I absolutely love Otto's. If you're interested in food, drink and especially cooking there's a great deal to love here. Even before we entered the restaurant on a quiet stretch of Gray's Inn Road, the eye-catchingly glamorous empty bottles in the window got the juices flowing. Once inside, there was a palpable buzz from diners all delighted to be there, witnessing the spectacle of classic, old-school restaurant service, expertly led from the front of house by Otto Albert Tepassé who has 43 years' experience gleaned in starry dining rooms such as La Tour d'Argent, Plaza Athenée and Maxim's in Paris. His young chef, Eric Jolibois, has manned the stoves at the Hotel Bristol, Carré des Feuillants and Taillevent in Paris and Maison Troigros in Roanne.

We'd had to book a couple of months in advance to have the dish for which Otto's is most known: canard à la presse (i.e. pressed duck) as the duck press can only be used a couple of times per sitting and the ducks are ordered in advance from Burgaud in Challans, the same supplier as La Tour d'Argent. I first came across this fabled dish reading Brideshead Revisited (see here) and as soon as I heard that a London restaurant was serving it, I just had to go, willing husband in tow. We were greeted warmly by Otto and immediately offered glasses of Ayala Champagne while we settled ourselves in for a memorable evening.

Another table were also having pressed duck which gave us the chance to observe the spectacle before it was our turn. In the meantime we ordered a couple of starters (to be honest, unnecessary given what was to follow, but they helped fill the time). I had smoked salmon, hand-carved at the table (£12.50) and N had snail and creamed garlic ravioli with parsley sauce (£9.50). These were washed down by some cleansing Cuvée des Evêques Pinot Blanc by Hugel (£24). It also gave us the chance to deliberate over which red to have with the duck. As you might expect, the wine list is strong on Burgundy and not greedily priced. We opted for Beaune Premier Cru les Siziers 2005 de Montille (£65).

As we ate our starters, we were shown (introduced to?) our duck – large, plump and complete with feathered head. This is not for the squeamish. It is then taken away to be roasted before reappearing at the table, cooked, for flambéing, carving and, ultimately, pressing. In the meantime the sauce base is made by firstly melting a brown sugar cube and allowing it to caramelise which is then flambéed with Cognac. Port and red Burgundy follow and are reduced to a syrupy consistency, then stock from a previous duck (enriched with veal bone) is added. After a lot of whisking over heat (a burner in an large ice bucket) the chopped liver from our duck is stirred in, plus some Sercial Madeira. After a lot more reducing, the sauce is strained twice.

Shortly afterwards we are served an appetiser of duck liver crostini with a little cup of Malvasia Madeira: a great little taste of what was to come. Rich and complex.

Our duck, now roasted, is brought back to the table and is then doused in Cognac, flambéed and carved. The legs are removed and returned to the kitchen and the breasts removed from the carcass and set aside to keep warm. The skin is gently eased away from the breast meat with a spoon. Now for the main event. The carcass is put inside the silver-plated duck press (made by Christofle in the early 1900s) to be crushed, extracting all the tasty duck gunk which is then whisked into the sauce for pouring over the breast meat. The result is dark, glossy and deeply flavoured, with layer upon layer of complexity and amazing with the gamey meat.

Pommes soufflés – something we'd never seen before – came as an accompaniment. These little air-filled potato pillows are made from finely sliced (2mm) potatoes (in this case the very dry Agria variety) deep fried three times, each time for 20 minutes, until they pop and expand. Imagine the fanciest game chips turned into crisp little bubbles. Apparently, many don't behave properly and are discarded. No wonder you don't encounter them much.

We were getting very full by this point, but two more duck dishes followed – there was a wonderfully rich creation made from the leg meat and then a bowl of tasty crunchiness like duck scratchings made from the skin. There was so much to eat.

However, we managed a palate cleansing dessert – pineapple, coconut cream and lychee sorbet with some dainty little madeleines. Otto joined us with a rather special bottle of Mosel Riesling, Graacher Himmelreich Auslese 2000 from J J Prum which rounded off the evening impeccably.

Of course, something this laborious and luxurious doesn't come cheap, but £120 for the canard à la presse for two (plus drinks, although several of ours were included) seemed perfectly reasonable for a special evening out. We'll certainly be going back – there are more classic culinary adventures we look forward to sharing with Otto before he calls it a night.

Otto's
182 Gray's Inn Road
London
WC1X 8EW
Tel 020 7713 0107

Pousse d'Or Caillerets Clos des 60 Ouvrées 1996 and mallard

Now, this wasn't any old duck and burgundy combination as you might have guessed from the heading, this was complex, gamey mallard and a rather cherished mature Volnay. For a number of years I've been the proud owner of a bottle of Domaine de la Pousse d'Or Caillerets Clos des 60 Ouvrées 1996. We've recently moved house, so this autumn seemed a good time to open it to toast our new home. We had an old friend of mine from the wine trade round for supper, so the timing and company seemed ideal.

I've had several red burgundies from this tight, briskly acidic vintage and some of them (especially village wines) are reaching the end of their lives. However, I expected this wine from such a notable site and skilled winemaker to still be very much on song. To my relief (it always feels like Russian Roulette with mature wines), it was in full voice.

There is something quite moving about this wine. It was made by Gérard Potel, one of Burgundy's greatest recent figures, who ran the domaine until his premature death in 1997. You can read more about Domaine de la Pousse d'Or and Gérard Potel here on Clive Coates's website. It reveals that critical changes were taking place at the domaine and how stress may have contributed to Potel's early demise. So, the bottle of Volnay that had lurked in my cellar for so many years has particular poignance as it was from Potel's final vintage.

Amazingly, after 17 years, the wine was full of vigour, with a rounded silky texture, creamy and fleshy – not what I expected from this angular (even gaunt) vintage. Aromatically there was a lot going on – violets,  morello cherries, plums, exotic spice, even savoury soy notes, all supported by a refreshing chalky mineral backbone. Expressive, pure, defined and entirely harmonious. Ravishingly beautiful.

Allowing the wine to fully articulate itself, the mallard worked brilliantly. The gamey meat was complex enough in its own right, simply served with potatoes roasted in duck fat and one of my favourite vegetables for fine reds, red cabbage. An autumn treat we won't be forgetting in a hurry.

When cooking goes wrong

Cooking can be a hit and miss affair. Over the years I've got much better at following recipes, particularly to expand my repertoire and to get a better technical understanding. But you still need to keep pushing boundaries and take the odd risk.

Not long ago I had a misguided experiment with some duck. I roasted the bird and then deglazed the pan with a generous slug of Campari, stirring in redcurrant jelly. To say this didn't work is quite an understatement. My husband who is not the greatest fan of Campari anyway (I love it!) observed all this, grimacing. I thought the aromatic bitterness would make a perfect foil to cut through the rich duck fat. But no, it just tasted bitter. Horribly bitter. And the bitterness seemed to intensify. So much so that I had to replate my food. Sensibly, my husband already had already done this by that point. I even recall blotting my duck with some kitchen roll to remove all traces of the sauce. (Bizarrely, it had tasted fairly balanced and interesting when I sampled it from the pan.)

The subject of when cooking goes wrong was suggested to me by my friend Ginny who lives in Greece who sent in the picture of the burnt loaf. She's a keen cook, very ambitious and (obviously) couldn't wait to try out a wood-fired oven that came as part of her family's new built-in barbecue. It looks like a lovingly prepared loaf and it's almost heartbreaking seeing it like this. However, she tells me that after much hilarity, her sons removed the charred crust and 'scoffed' the rest of the loaf. The flavour must have been fabulous. Not surprisingly, they are now on the look out for a decent oven thermometer – and still keep laughing about it!

Do please let me know if you've had similar experiences. We can learn from each others' mistakes...