Duck's off!

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

29 August

Our own gourmet night, when a friend and I visited an upmarket Indian restaurant that had shunned dark furnishings in favour of a light and bright decor (replete with shining statues of violins and saxes), was nothing like Basil's.

Except that, when I saw the list of tandoori items available, I could not resist - because I had never experienced - duck done in a tandoor oven.

Now I know, because I have no reason to believe that it was not a perfectly good initial piece of poultry, that the transformation that the process works on chicken (or lamb) is not suited to that very different commodity of duck: the effect, as characterized by my friend when he sampled a couple of pieces, was to render the dense flesh more like liver.

So it was alchemically no longer duck, but more like (though not sufficiently so to repulse me) a cheaper offering: gold into lead, one rather feared, for all that the experiment was worth...


If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here