Entertaining year begins with a pig and duck comfort food double bill

"You live to eat, and I eat to live," a very thin and supercilious woman once said to me.

I was hurt and ashamed at the time, but those feelings quickly grew into rage.  How could she?  And then the rage mellowed to pity.  What a pale, pitiful life, if food is no more than a fuel source.  So much joy, discovery, creativity and delight eliminated from the human experience.

Sure, I wish I was thin.  Thin ... er.  I wish I didn't spend my life battling between the love of creating and eating fine food, and my inability to get into "normal" sized clothes or jog a few miles with agile abandon.  But I think I have the better end of this argument.  I will continue to fight to keep things in some sort of balance, but will not do so at the expense of serving up an exquisite meal to good friends.

Because life is short.  And that lady who ate to live?  She's already dead.

These reflections come from the afterglow of our first party of the year.  And our first Sunday lunch, breaking the mould of our usual Saturday night extravaganzas.  We noticed no real difference in the amount of effort or the time taken from the weekend; only a decrease in the (otherwise prodigious) consumption of alcohol.  And a decrease in laundry, as we tend to end up with lots of house guests on a Saturday night.

It being February, we were still in hearty comfort food mode, and my francophile husband designed the menu.  First up, pork rilletes.  (Pictured above.)  I hadn't realised just how easy this French country staple was.  As long as you have the time for the slow cooking.  Yesterday, the whole house was infused with an overpowering funk of porcine goodness,  A noble pig's belly rendered down to tender shreds.  To be served up today in little pots beside a tart rocket salad, cornichons and pickled onions.  Unable to decide on our wine match we sampled three white options, but the table's consensus came down on a delightful Gruner Veltliner.

On to roast duck from Tom Kerridge's Proper Pub Food.  My husband gave me this cookbook for Christmas because I am always bemoaning how rubbish I am at producing Anglo-Saxon classics.  (I will continue to try, but my soul will never understand why anyone would bother with roast meats and potatoes when there is pasta and pan-fried veal scallopine in the world.)  Tom's duck with a slight Asian influence is very good, the accompanying potato pancakes were stunning.  We swapped out cabbage for the recipe's little gem lettuce because that's what was in our Riverford Organics delivery box and we're all about seasonality chez Bencard.  (And we couldn't face a special trip to the grocery store for one item.)  This went with a shocker of a red wine:  Bulgarian pinot noir.  Our local shop and usual suppliers, Caviste, suggested this and they were spot on.  Fabulous, and half the price of an equivalent French red.

I turned to Tom again for the sweet course, a lemon posset so easy I almost wish I hadn't discovered it.  Tempting enough to get yourself into real trouble should you happen to have double cream, lemons and sugar in the house.  I matched that not with Tom's suggested fennel biscotti but with lemon and poppyseed lollypops.  First, because I have an excess of poppy seeds I really need to work through. Second because I bought one of those "cake pops" pans last year and hadn't used it.  Thought I should.

The verdict?  Even for a foodie who's unfazed by the prospect of whipping out her pastry bag for a bit of piping, the hassle outweighs the benefit.  It was a novel serving idea to have people pluck their own bite-sized globes of cake from the central display, but doing mini cakes in muffin pans would have been  a third of the effort for the same taste.  Whatever the presentation, the light lemon duo after the two manly, meaty courses worked well.

And now, we just have to do the dishes and get ready for the work week ahead.  Six days 'til we're hosting eight for an Ireland-England Rugby themed dinner party on Saturday.  That's just he way we roll chez Bencard.

We don't necessarily eat to live.  We live to live.  In all its glorious, celebratory variety.  I can't imagine that picture without great food and wine. Carpe Diem.