Every week I start the week with the following ambitions:

• meal plan for the week
• drink less wine
• eat less crap.

It’s a simple enough list and I have achieved it the sum total of zero times so far in 2026. I mean, I’ve achieved it the sum total of zero times ever really…… Perhaps I need a new list. But those really are my ambitions for the week and perhaps next Monday might be the start of sticking to them? Who knows? But what I do know, is in the absence of a meal plan, every day starts the same way. Opening the freezer to see what we have, closing the freezer, waking into COD’s office and asking ‘what do you fancy for dinner’, being met with ‘I don’t know’or ‘whatever you feel like’, returning to the kitchen and opening the freezer again. This process was undertaken on Wednesday although I opened the freezer, saw 4 duck breasts and inspiration hit so no need to confer with COD. A good start. My plan was to make seared duck breasts on a bed of couscous with roast veg.

The girls all like duck so this felt fairly safe. In the car on the way to school, EEROD asked what was for dinner and upon hearing couscous, the collective groans from the back of the car reminded me that we had varying degrees of love for the tiny grains. One child said ‘promise you won’t put butternut in again’. One child said ‘I will only eat it plain’ and one just declared she didn’t like it at all. Thank goodness the car trip to school is short. I saved my frustrated swearing for the return trip in an empty car.

Anyway, deciding I didn’t care about the opinions of my offspring, I got home and went to the cupbaord to check on the availability of said couscous. Lucky for them, we didn’t have any. We did have orzo pasta. Idea! Duck breast on an orzo pasta risotto. Yes, Yes, Yes!

COD was out for dinner with friends so didn’t get to enjoy this wonderous meal but we had four clean plates, happy kids and another recipe to add to the book. Not cheap though – duck is pricey. I usually do 4 breasts between 5 of us and slice them up but we demolished the lot between us.

Seared Duck breast with orzo risotto

Ingredients (serves 4):

4 Duck breasts, skin on and scored
Chinese 5 spice
1.5 cups of orzo risotto rice
1 large onion finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic minced
1 romano pepper chopped fairly small
1 courgette chopped fairly small
1L chicken stock
handful of grated parmesan
salt & pepper to taste

Method

Pat the duck breasts to dry them and trim off some of the excess fat (reserve), then season the scored skin with chinese 5 spice. Pop the reserved fat in large pan (this pan needs a lid that fits) in which you will make the rissotto and put it on a high heat. Render the fat so you extract the oil and then remove the fat from the pan and discard. You can skip this step and just use olive oil but this makes good use of the natural oil in the duck fat and gives bags of flavour.

Get a second smaller pan and a flat pot lit out. The lid needs to be smaller then the pan. Turn the pan onto a high heat and when hot, add in the duck breasts skin side down. Put the pot lid onto the breasts to hold them down and stop them from curling up as the skin cooks. The duck breasts will take about 13-15 minutes so think about timings here as they will also need to rest before serving. Turn the breasts regularly while they cook. You want the skins to be super crispy. Once done to your liking – this timing gives medium-rare duck – then remove from the pan and allow to rest while the rissotto finishes cooking.

You need to start this while the duck is cooking. In the pan you rendered the fat in, turn the heat back up and add the onion, garlic and red pepper. Saute until soft and onion is translucent. I find a medium heat works well here. Once the onion is translucent and soft, add the rissotto rice, courgette and stock. Stir well, bring to the boil and then turn heat down and simmer for 10 – 12 minutes (timing is quite precise here) with the lid on. I found I needed to lift the lid for the last few minutes to let some of the liquid cook off but everything will depend on your pan, heat combo so just check.

Once the risotto is cooked and the stock absorbed (it should be creamy like a normal rissotto), turn off the heat, mix in the parmesan and season to taste. Slice each duck breast and serve a portion of risotto with sliced duck breast on top. Enjoy.

In other news:

• I have restarted running. Super slow and in tiny increments but fingers crossed this is me back!
• The kittens managed to work out how to climb over the dog-crate barrier we’ve been using to keep them out of our bed at night. Nights may be harder for a while. They like to play when humans like to sleep. I wont lie though, it is so lovely to have warm bundles of fluff curled up next to me again.
• I need to crack on with making LOD’s prom dress. I am rather terrified so I have started by cleaning and rearranging the sewing room. Cleaning the machines comes next and then maybe, maybe I will have plucked up the courage to cut into the beautiful pink satin……