Ron Mackenna

CLEVER thing about the duck that comes with two-Michelin starred chef Simon Rogan’s meal is this: it’s impossible to muck it up. It’s confit, so precooked, it’s oozing, well, fat, so it starts to pop and sizzle and caramelise and crisp almost the minute it’s put in the pan.

Delicious aromas fill the kitchen. Okay, there are still four separate ingredients in at least three different boil-in-the bags involved in just putting the vegetables together. But everything is numbered. Hurrah.

But hang on. Is this mustard butter supposed to go in there too? Thankfully there’s a QR code on the menu which, when scanned with a phone, leads straight to a video of Rogan, he of the Great British Menu and once described as Britain’s best cook, preparing this very dish.

Or at least I think there is. As nobody in this house can be bothered watching any videos, we’re too busy putting the tea together, we never find out.

So … just one more bag with a corner to be snipped, releasing (No12) carrot puree that’s to be piped in little cheffy dots around the plate (sigh) and then toasted pine nuts (No15) to sprinkle over that too.

When it’s put together? Visually it’s an umm, a bit of a car crash but that’s entirely down to me. It eats very, very well. So too does the Cornish salt cod brandade, celeriac, buttermilk and dill. Oh, and smoked eel, puffed rice, celery, potato, mussel and creme fraiche (you get a full list of ingredients with a posh home delivery).

There’s a bit more bag-boiling, a modicum of sauce-heating, using ingredients numbered from three to nine, then it’s piled on a plate in the following order: celeriac, puffed rice, brandade, which is of course oil-poached cod and mash, cresses (noun; plural of cress apparently) and lastly the sauce now containing buttermilk, dill and smoked eel.

Hold on. This really looks beautiful; shimmery green sauce, herby bits, all cascading down and around a lovely posh mash; great to eat.

Now you’ll have noticed that cod, followed by duck, is obviously on page one of the Bumper Book of Home Delivery Menus for Posh Restaurants.

It’s certainly at least the third time we have had it recently, but the first time anyone has actually pulled it off. Page two of that very same book presumably contains this advice: when sending out the (obligatory) sourdough loaf the cunning addition of an exotic ingredient to the butter, or simply a windswept name, will make the whole thing sound so much better.

Last week it was Marmite butter and this week it’s something called winter tarn. Whatever.

After a soothing oven has coaxed the loaf into life and that butter melts over it, nobody here is complaining.

You’ll have spotted by now there are only three courses in this meal. Not necessarily a bad thing. It’s probably the maximum a home kitchen, or one with me near it anyway, can handle without the whole affair turning into an expensive timing fiasco.

Shall we finish up? No, they have not sneaked some ridiculously easy-for-them-toprepare nursery food onto the menu. Okay, they kind of have, but this is not just any old rice pudding and jam. It’s actually baked meadowsweet rice pudding, rhubarb and rose.

Yes, it’s one of the paradoxes of the new classy home delivery craze that desserts, usually a pre-prepared triumph in the best restaurants, are always pretty simple and kinda dull. This is both of the above.

Oh, there’s a footnote. I, er, embarrassingly also paid an extra £35 for 20 grammes of English truffle. Exciting? No. This turned out to be a cheap, flimsy and probably porous little plastic tub containing damp black crumbs utterly devoid of taste and aroma.

Not an issue which bothered Simon

Rogan At Home judging by the – to me anyway – patronising and dismissive reply to my email.

So be careful: customer service may not be their thing.

If you know a restaurant Ron should review, email ronmackennadefence@gmail.com

Clockwise from above: The Simon Rogan At Home kit; the chef in his restaurant L’Enclume; the tasteless truffle and the cod dish