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soft and comforting. Taste and correct the seasoning again and ladle the soup into hot soup bowls. Season each serving with a pinch of the lemon zest and 1 heaped teaspoon of grated Parmesan, and add a drizzle of olive oil. Serve immediately.

      Duck, lentil and vegetable broth

      Whenever I have a carcass left after roasting a duck, I tend to make a duck stock from it. The stock can be frozen and used for gravy or for a sauce the next time you roast a duck. In this recipe, it is the stock that forms the basis of the dish. Before you make the stock, pick and scrape any little morsels of meat from the cooked carcass. These will be added to the broth at the end of cooking. If a drumstick or a slice or two of breast meat remains, all the better. You don’t need a lot of duck meat for this recipe, so don’t be worried if the amount is scant. This dish is really about the duck-flavoured broth, the vegetables and the lentils. The stock is made in exactly the same way as a chicken stock, but tends to be fattier. I carefully remove as much fat as I can from the carcass before making the stock. Then I chill the strained, cooked stock overnight. Any surplus fat will rise to the top, solidify and can be easily lifted off, and you end up with a stock that is virtually fat-free.

      As you will gather from reading the list of ingredients, this is a hearty dish, and though I normally serve it as a soup course, it can really be served as a meal in itself. You can then congratulate yourself for extracting a second delicious meal from your duck.

      The ingredients

      I like to use small green lentils such as Puy lentils from France or Castelluccio lentils from Italy.

      It may seem like a lot of garlic in the ingredient list, but garlic when cooked gently in its skin like this is mild and delicious. The tender cooked garlic is pressed from its skin and disappears into the broth to give a mild and warming flavour.

      The chilli cooked with the lentils adds the merest hint of heat to the broth.

      The combination of root vegetables add to the earthy flavour.

      The last-minute addition of chopped parsley is refreshing and fresh-tasting.

      Serves 6–8 400g lentils

      1 carrot, peeled and quartered

      1 onion, peeled and studded with 1 clove

      6 unpeeled cloves of garlic

      1 sprig of sage

      1 whole mild red chilli

      1 bouquet garni

      50g butter or 3 tablespoons olive oil

      1 medium onion, peeled and cut into 5mm dice

      2 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 5mm dice

      4 sticks of celery, cut into 5mm dice

      2 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed to a paste

      Maldon sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

      1.7–2.3 litres duck or chicken stock

      Every scrap of flesh scraped off the roast duck carcass, or 1 roasted duck leg

      2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

      Put the lentils into a saucepan with the quartered carrot, clove-studded onion, unpeeled garlic, sage, chilli and bouquet garni. Cover generously with cold water and bring to a simmer. Simmer the lentils for about 20 minutes, covered with a lid, until they are tender. Keep an eye on the water level in the saucepan and add a little more water as necessary. If the water is just simmering you should not have to add any more liquid. When cooked, the lentils should be tender, but still retaining their shape. Don’t allow them to collapse and become muddy. Remove the carrot, onion, sage and bouquet garni. Press the garlic through a sieve back into the lentils. Reserve the cooked lentils in any remaining cooking water.

      Heat the butter in a saucepan and allow to foam. If using olive oil, heat it to a shimmer. Add the diced vegetables and crushed garlic, season with salt and pepper and coat in the fat. Cover with a butter wrapper or greaseproof paper and the saucepan lid and sweat on a very gentle heat for about 10 minutes, until the vegetables are starting to become tender. Add the stock and bring to a simmer. Now strain the lentil cooking water from the lentils. Retain the cooking water. Add the lentils to the duck broth and bring to a simmer. Taste and correct the seasoning. At this point a little of the strained lentil water can be added to the broth if it all looks too thick. Remember, this is a broth not a stew.

      Add the scraps of roast duck and warm through gently. Taste and correct the seasoning again, add the chopped parsley and serve in hot old-fashioned soup bowls.

      Pumpkin, leek, tomato and fennel broth with parsley pesto

      This is a comforting, robust and nourishing broth for autumn and winter. Choose a ripe and firm pumpkin. I like the variety called Uchiki Kuri, also known as Red Kuri. The flesh is close-textured and a deep golden orange colour. The flavour is intense and nutty. It also roasts well and makes an excellent purée. Butternut squash is an excellent replacement for the pumpkin. Even though we are using robustly flavoured ingredients here, the resulting broth is surprisingly delicate. The recipe makes a large quantity, but you can successfully halve these amounts if you wish.

      The ingredients

      Use a richly coloured pumpkin or squash for this recipe, such as a Red Kuri pumpkin or a butternut squash. Always exercise great care when peeling these tough-skinned curcurbits, and try to always have your knife pointing down and away from you, so that if it slips it hits the chopping board and not you. I usually cut the squash or pumpkin down into a few manageable pieces before removing the seeds and then the tough skin.

      The tomatoes should be dark red and ripe. I am happy to use best-quality tinned or bottled tomatoes if the fresh ones are not up to scratch.

      The fennel seeds, with their aromatic and aniseed flavour, should be carefully roasted before being coarsely ground.

      The chicken stock should be sweetly and delicately flavoured, exactly the result you will get from following the chicken stock recipe.

      Serves 10 450g pumpkin or squash, peeled and deseeded, weighed after peeling and deseeding

      4 tablespoons olive oil

      2 teaspoons fennel seeds, lightly roasted and coarsely ground

      3 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed

      225g leeks, washed and thinly sliced against the grain

      225g potatoes, peeled and cut into 1cm cubes

      Maldon sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and sugar, to taste

      300g very ripe tomatoes, peeled and chopped, or tinned tomatoes

      1.8 litres chicken stock

      2 tablespoons chopped flat-leaf parsley

      1 recipe quantity of Parsley Pesto

      Cut the pumpkin into 2cm dice. Heat the olive oil in a heavy-based saucepan until it shimmers gently. Add the pumpkin, fennel seeds and garlic. With a wooden spoon, stir to coat in the olive oil and cook on a gentle heat for 2 minutes. Add the leek and potatoes, season with salt and pepper and cover with a butter wrapper or greaseproof paper and the saucepan lid. Sweat on a very gentle heat for 10–15 minutes. Anything more than the gentlest heat at this stage can render the vegetables to a mush, and that would be a disaster. The vegetables should be just beginning to tenderise.

      Add the tomatoes, a pinch of sugar and the stock. Cover again and bring to a gentle simmer. Cook until all the vegetables are tender – about 15 minutes should do it. Do not allow the soup to boil furiously, otherwise the stock will reduce and become too strong, the vegetables will break up and the soup will disintegrate into a mush. Taste and correct the seasoning.

      Just before serving, add the chopped parsley. Serve with

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