Slow-Roast Duck Legs with Port and Cherry Sauce

January. Properly cold now. The kind of evening where you close the curtains before five and the kitchen becomes the warmest room in the house. This is when I want duck.

Duck legs are patient, forgiving things. You score the skin, season them well, and put them in a low oven where the fat renders out slowly and the skin tightens and crisps over a couple of hours. The kitchen fills with a scent that's hard to describe and impossible to ignore: rich, savoury, faintly herbal from the thyme, with that particular warmth that only rendered duck fat carries. You don't need to do much. Check on them once. Trust the oven. Trust the time.

The sauce makes itself while you wait. Dried sour cherries soaked in ruby port until they swell and darken. The whole lot simmered with stock and a splash of vinegar in the roasting tin, scraping up those sticky, caramelised bits that hold all the flavour. It reduces to something dark and glossy that tastes of winter fruit and woodsmoke and the sort of evening you want to stay inside for.

I wrote this one down in the notebook years ago. Just the bones of it: duck, port, cherries, Tuesday, rain. I've made it dozens of times since, and the only thing that changes is what goes alongside. The duck stays the same. A recipe is a conversation, not a contract, but sometimes you arrive at something that doesn't need revising.