{"id":567,"date":"2019-04-01T07:59:35","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T07:59:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/?p=567"},"modified":"2019-03-30T12:55:20","modified_gmt":"2019-03-30T12:55:20","slug":"old-friends-new-adventures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/duck_old-friends-new-adventures","title":{"rendered":"Old friends, new adventures"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_0222-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"lock on Canal St Martin\" title=\"lock on Canal St Martin\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-468\" width=\"245\" height=\"326\">Two of our good friends from the Isle of Man came to visit us a few days go. This is not Penny or Steve&#8217;s first trip to Paris by a long way, so Marie-Danielle and I scratched our heads as to what we could find that would amuse them. Then it came to us&#8230; Steve and Penny both like boats and have enjoyed several barge holidays on British canals so what better than to discover a different aspect of Paris in an unusual way, idling down the Canal St Martin through a series of nine locks, two swing bridges, and a 2 mile long tunnel that passes under the Bastille. Problem solved. For 2\u00bd hours, we lazed our way through an almost unknown Paris without a care in the world.<\/p>\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/i96986-parmentier-confit-canard.jpeg\" alt=\"Parmentier de Canard\" title=\"Parmentier de Canard\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-468\" width=\"227\" height=\"119\">We&#8217;ve wined and dined with Steve and Penny on many occasions, so wanted to come up with something a little different. On their arrival on the Sunday, we did a simple Parmentier de Canard (a shepherd&#8217;s pie using duck instead of lamb). In fact, this is a bit of a cheat because we use Confit de Canard which we can obtain easily here in France. All I needed to do was drain the fat from the duck, remove the skin, and pull the flesh with a fork. I peeled and chopped some shallots, browned them gently in some of the duck fat, added some chopped parsley and a little seasoning, then covered with mashed potatoes. A bit of oven time and we ate like kings and queens!<\/p>\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/IMG_0209-768x1024.jpg\" alt=\"2002 Chateau Martet\" title=\"2002 Chateau Martet\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-468\" width=\"217\" height=\"163\">Steve is a big fan of red wine (so are we!) and duck demands a decent full-bodied red. A few weeks ago, we celebrated some family birthdays and discovered half-a-dozen bottles of dusty but interesting-looking <b>2002 Chateau Martet<\/b>. The wine was truly wonderful and, since there remained a few more bottles, we grabbed hold of some to go with the  Parmentier de Canard. An excellent choice. A marriage made in heaven even!<\/p>\n\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/03\/Monk-Fish-Steak-with-Saffron-743.jpg\" alt=\"Monk Fish Steak with Saffron\" title=\"Monk Fish Steak with Saffron\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-468\">On the Monday, when we had our day out on the Canal St. Martin, we ate in a little restaurant in the Latin Quarter of Paris. Tuesday, we dined at home and I prepared <a https:=\"\" www.needarecipe.com=\"\" recipes=\"\" monk-fish-steak-with-saffron=\"\" 743=\"\" target=\"_blank\">Monk Fish Steaks with Saffron<\/a>, a delightful feast of colour, taste and smell. In addition to creamed potatoes, I braised some <a href=\"https:\/\/www.needarecipe.com\/recipes\/Braised-Fennel\/83\/\" target=\"_blank\">fennel<\/a> which complemented the fish. And to help the meal down, we pulled some bottles of Pouilly Fum\u00e9 from the cellar.<\/p>\n\n<p>A great few days with some great friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two of our good friends from the Isle of Man came to visit us a few days go. This is not Penny or Steve&#8217;s first trip to Paris by a long way, so Marie-Danielle and I scratched our heads as to what we could find that would amuse them. Then it came to us&#8230; Steve &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/duck_old-friends-new-adventures\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Old friends, new adventures<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,33,61,21],"tags":[18,62,107,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":628,"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567\/revisions\/628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/needarecipe.com\/food-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}