Rick Stein served up a tasty French duck cottage pie (Parmentier de confit de canard) with Comte cheese, mash potatoes, preserved duck legs and Mexican dried chillies on Rick Stein’s Secret France.

The ingredients for the pepper spice mix (optional): 1 chipotle chilli, seeds removed, 1 pasilla chilli, seeds removed, 2 tbsp black peppercorns, 2 tbsp white peppercorns, 2 tsp Szechuan peppercorns and 1 tbsp salt.

For the cottage pie: 4 confit duck legs, from a tin, 4 shallots, finely chopped, few fresh thyme sprigs, leaves picked and chopped, 175ml red wine, 200ml chicken stock, handful fresh flatleaf parsley, chopped, 800g potatoes, peeled and cut into 5cm chunks, 100–125ml warm milk, 150–200g Comté cheese, grated, salt and pepper spice mix (see above) or freshly ground black pepper and green salad or freshly cooked green beans or carrots, to serve.

See Rick’s recipes in his book titled: Rick Stein’s Secret France available from Amazon now.