We can be rude about the supermarkets but at 7.00pm on a Tuesday evening after work there aren’t that many other options in Birkenhead to pick up some food to cook for the evening.  I went in without any great expectations and came out better than anticipated with a couple of duck legs and a pomegranate that was going cheap – so all for less than £3.00.

I had at the back of my mind that there were recipes for duck and pomegranate and a quick flick through a couple of books showed I was right although it transpired I could have picked up some walnuts as well. I pierced the skin of the duck legs and browned them in olive oil in a heavy pan over a medium heat for 15/20 minutes. I took them out whilst I cooked off a finely sliced onion and a squashed clove of garlic.

I squeezed out the juice from the pomegranate I had bought (wishing I had got two) and the juice from a lemon. This was added to the wilted onions together with a tablespoon of good honey, a seasoning of salt and pepper and a good splash of water. The duck legs were put back into the pan and I put the lid on and left it on a low heat for almost an hour.

By that time the duck was cooked but there a good layer of fat on the sauce. So I took out the legs and kept them warm on a plate. Taking the pan off the heat I used some paper kitchen towels to skim off the fat gently layering them down to soak it up before carefully lifting and discarding. Once the fat had gone the pan was put back on the heat to allow the sauce to reduce for a few minutes whilst I cleaned off some green salad from the garden. The rain from the last few days seems to force the soil into all corners of the green leaves so it needed a good soaking. Once it was clean and dry I poured the sauce over the duck legs and used the green salad to help soak up the juices. They were delicious.

Every year I come back from Cork I will have a handful of smoked sausages from Gubbeen. They will have been bought from their stall at Bantry Market on the last Friday of the holiday in a final flurry of enthusiasm and desperation to bring back with me as much of the food of West Cork that I can. Once home I usually quickly realise that it will take some weeks to get through all of the sausage and so some will end up in the freezer.

Last night I found two sausages going back to 2005 and 2006. One was a salami and the other salchichon. There was no getting away from it they needed eating up so I took them out to defrost overnight.

Galen and I ate them this evening.

In town today over lunch I bought from Lunya a glass jar 600 gr of smoked lentils Lentajas al natural extra. When I got home I finely chopped a small onion and started to cook it off in a good dollop of olive oil on a high heat. I added 4 chopped cloves of garlic and cooked that for a few minutes more whilst I peeled and chopped the sausage into dice of about half an inch. Outside of their plastic wrapper they smelt fine despite their years lurking at the back of the freezer. At the back of the house the sage has been going wild in our wet summer and I finely sliced 4 leaves to add to the onions and garlic together with a half teaspoon of paprika from the 1 kilo tin I bought years ago from Brindisi and is still going.

That all continued to cook as I drain the lentils. This took longer than anticipated as the lentils had settled at the bottom of the jar and had to be eased out the air burping and farting behind them. Once into a sieve I sluiced them with water and put them into the pan, the contents of which had started to gain some colour. All this was allowed to heat through, moistened with a slug of the Galician beer I was drinking.

There was a final seasoning with salt, pepper and parsley and it was then eaten out of bowls listening still to Giant Sand.