Green tea and spice smoked duck.

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Ok, well it has been a long time between ducks I know, so here is a quick little recipe to whet your appetites again. Steamed, smoked and roasted duck. Allow 2-3 days.

Inspiration came from the recent Chinese new year celebrations (have a good year all you dragons). Before I start here is two things you should know about smoking duck inside your house (and I have learnt from experience) use an extraction fan, and when I say line your wok with tin foil, you should really do it.

You will need: 1 duck, 2 tblsp. Sichuan salt and pepper, 3 slices ginger, 3 star anise plus 1 tblsp. for the smoking (you can use broken ones for this), 1 tblsp. Shoaxing, 4 tblsp. green tea, 1 brown cardamom pod, 1 tblsp whole mace blades, 1 tsp. soy sauce, 1/2 tsp. sugar.

To start with you need to rinse the duck under cold water and dry with paper towel then chop off the tail, wing tips and neck so she will fit on a plate in your steamer. See here for my steamer set up on a different post. Sprinkle the inside and outside of the duck with 1 tblsp. Sichuan salt and pepper. Put the ginger,  3 star anise and shoaxing in the cavity of the duck, put the duck on its plate in the steamer and steam over plenty of water for 1 1/4 hours. Reserve the juices from the plate and the cavity for later.

To smoke the duck, line a wok with two layers of tin foil, put the tea, rest of the star anise, cardamom and mace in the bottom of the wok. Put a round wire cake rack in the wok 2 or 3 cm. above the tea and spice (you may need to cut it to size with tin snips). Rest the duck on the rack, put the wok over a high heat, turn on your extraction fan and wait for the smoke. When there is smoke happening, put a lid on the wok and smoke the duck for 10 minutes. Turn your oven on to 220 degrees or crank it as high as you can.

This is before smoking:

This is during:Next you need to roast the duck to render more fat and brown the skin. So to roast the duck, put it ion a rack in an oven tray lined with foil and roast for 20 minutes, rotating, or until you get an even brown, crisp skin. Reheat the reserved juices from steaming the duck and mix with the tsp. of soy sauce and the sugar to make a sauce for the duck.

Chop the duck and serve with the Sichuan salt and pepper and the sauce you just made if you were listening properly. I have served this duck with a soy bean and tofu stir fry that I will tell you about on the other blog at some time.

Spice Road.

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I thought I had better explain my absence since I have been asked ‘what the hell is going on with the blog’ from a few people.

Spice Road has been released out into the real world after proving itself at my shop in the Central Market for the last year. I have been busy trying to push the product into kitchens around Adelaide and, through Icons store at the airport, interstate. This means I have been busy cooking for tastings and not imagining up duck recipes. I am keen to get back to my other life (cooking, styling, photographing, eating of duck) but don’t foresee much happening before Christmas. You never know though.

This photo is of the three recipes on the Spice Road to Spain recipe card. Ole.

Sour cherry polow.

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I didn’t mention duck in the title of this dish for a reason, in Persian rice dishes the meat is just for protein, the star of the dish is the rice. They like duck in Iran, particularly in the North where the rice is grown, around the Caspian sea. They grow some extraordinarily good varieties of rice in Iran, I am told, but I will have to go there to find out as there is never enough for export. For Persian polows which are flavoured rice dishes (barberry, lentil, dill and broad bean, the King of them all the jewelled rice, all great with duck, particularly the broad bean polow) and chelows which are plain or saffron flavoured, you can use the best quality basmati you can find. To find the best go to a Persian or Indian shop and ask which is the best rice they have.

Look I know you know what cinnamon, rose petals and saffron look like and probably dried limes too but the photo was rather fun to make. Dried limes are made by boiling the fresh limes in salted water then drying them in the sun. They have a really weird but loveable smell. The inside is black as you can see which leads to the name black limes, they also get called Omani limes as they are originally from Oman. They are particularly good when cooking duck, being slightly bitter and slightly sour.

The preparation and cooking of the rice is the same for all the polows and chelows, basically soak, boil then steam. All for good reason, the rice is so light, tastes delicious and surprisingly nutritious. But first for the spice blend for the rice which can be used in many of the other polows and keeps well if air and light ‘tight’.

Spice blend for Persian rice dishes: 2 tsp fennel seeds, 1 tsp coriander seeds, 5 green cardamom pods, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 2 tsp dried rose petals. Dry fry the fennel, coriander and cardamom until fragrant then pound in a mortor and pestle, pick out the casings from the cardamom seeds. Add the cinnamon and rose petals then pound some more, the rose petals will not break down much but it doesn’t matter.

For the Polow:

4 duck legs

1 onion, peeled and quartered

2 cloves garlic, crushed a bit

2 dried limes

¾ cup dried sour cherries (unsweetened)

1 tbsp white sugar

2 cups basmati rice

¼ cup raw pistachios

¼ cup blanched almonds

1 tbsp olive oil

2 tbsp salt (not your best flakes but something reasonable)

2 tsp spice blend

a pinch of saffron

Put the duck legs straight into a  heavy pot with a lid add the onion, garlic and enough water to cover the legs plus a bit extra on top. Poke a few holes in the dried limes so they don’t just float around on the top not doing anything and add to pot. Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to a simmer and simmer 1 ½ hours. When the duck is cool enough to handle take the meat off the bones in large pieces and reserve the remaining, strained duck stock. Skim the stock for fat or if you have time refrigerate the stock and remove the congealed fat. Reserve 1 cup of stock for the polow.

When you are ready to assemble the polow, (the above steps can be done well in advance), wash then soak the rice in plenty of cold water with 1 tbsp of the salt for about 20 minutes or until it looks opaque instead of translucent. Simmer the cherries in 2 cups of water with the sugar for 15 minutes. Strain the cherries keeping the liquid, and stone them if they are not stoned already. Soak the nuts in the cherry liquid for 10 minutes then coarsely chop them, keep the liquid.

Bring a large pot of water to the boil and add the rest of the salt. Boil the rice for 3 minutes then strain it. Wash the rice with cold water and gently run a fork through the rice to separate the grains.

If you have a rice cooker then perfect, otherwise assemble the polow in a large pot in the same way. Put the olive oil in the bottom of the bowl of the rice cooker and swirl it around to coat. Sprinkle about 1/3 of the rice in the bowl then put in the duck meat, half of the cherries, half of the spice blend, half of the saffron and half of the chopped nuts. Pour over all of the duck stock. Loosely add another 1/3 of the rice, building the polow up in a pyramid shape, then add the rest of the cherries, spice blend and saffron. Top this with the remaining rice. Sprinkle over the top some of the cherry liquid, it is up to you how sweet you want this dish but I don’t use all that much, maybe 1 tablespoon altogether. Poke three holes in the rice with the end of a wooden spoon to help with the steaming. Wrap the lid of the steamer in a tea towel then turn the rice cooker on. Once it flips onto the warm setting leave the polow to steam for 15 minutes, after this time you can leave it on warm for another 15 minutes or so until you are ready to eat.

If you are using a pot on top of the stove it will pay off because you will get a really crisp tah dig, the bottom browned layer of rice. Put a tight lid on the pot, turn the heat initially up high to get the steam happening, about 7 minutes, then turn it down to as low as can go for 15 minutes to finish steaming.

To serve tip the polow onto a platter and gently mix the rice to disperse pockets stained yellow by the saffron. Sprinkle the remaining almonds and pistachios over the top.

Duck Rillettes.

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Rillettes are pork, rabbit, goose or duck cooked in fat, their own if they have it or pork fat in the case of rabbit, the meat is shredded then potted and served as a cold starter. In Tours and Anjou, France, pork rillettes are known for their deep colour from almost caramelising the meat adding a rich, sweet flavour. I make rillettes from confit of duck and since I over-cooked my confit to the stage of caramelisation I shall call my rillette ‘in the style of Tours and Anjou’.

From the confit stage, pull the meat off the bones and remove the skin. Season to taste and add a pinch of quatre epices. Shred the meat by hand and press into a ramekin or other pate sized pot. Cover the rillette with a layer of the duck fat to preserve. To serve bring to room temperature, scrape off the layer of duck fat and serve with either caramelised onion, cornichons, a pear/ apple/ or other savoury fruit preserve and fresh baguette or toasted bread. 

Clay pot duck with salted plums, (for Cheryl).

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Hi Lucy, one of my favouirte dishes from Cafe Kowloon is their bayberry duck, am having trouble finding a recipe to try and create it at home – any ideas? do you sell bayberrys at Jagger?
See you at the market
Cheryl

I responded with this:

Hi Cheryl, I am on to it. Firstly there is such a thing as a bay berry but it is only used for making candles, not duck recipes. I have been talking to the staff/ owner of Cafe Kowloon and the main flavouring in this dish is the salted, dried plum. The bay berry name is just the name of the sauce (their name anyway). I have ordered the duck and am having it tonight but from a quick tasting, and it is yum, I can make something up for you that you can make at home. I will send you my findings asap and will probably post a recipe as well. Lucy

Turns out I was quite wrong! Bay berries are grown in China and Japan, I even bought some when I was in China, they were a beautiful looking strawberry coloured fruit served in a newspaper cone and had a tart strawberry flavour. I guess this is where Cafe Kowloon got their name for the dish even if it does not contain the actual fruit it is the sweet and sour flavour that is important and it comes from salted plums, soy sauce and rock sugar.

This recipe can take either one or two days depending on your time. What you need: 1 duck, 3 cm ginger roughly sliced, 1 clove garlic crushed, 2 pieces tangerine peel, 1 piece licorice root, 2 star anise, 1/2 tsp whole white pepper corns, 2 tsp shoaxing, 1 tbsp light soy sauce, 2 1/2 tblsp dark soy, 15 salted dried plums, pitted, 2 walnut sized pieces yellow rock sugar, roughly crushed in a mortar and pestle.

I bought a Waechters duck from Feast in the Market. Rinse the duck in cold water, pat dry with paper towel, cut the extra fat from the cavity. Heat a pan with a little oil and brown the duck all over. Put the duck, breast down, in a Chinese Clay pot or other oven pot with a lid. Add the rest of the ingredients and enough cold water to reach the 3/4 mark on the duck.

Put in a 150 degree oven and cook 2 hours, turning over after 1 hour. Leave overnight to develop flavours, again, if you have the time. Cut the breast off the duck and slice. Serve the legs chopped Chinese style, through the bone or just in two pieces sliced through the joint

Cassoulet.

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I used to think cassoulet was all about the confit of duck or goose but like a risotto or paella is all about the rice and the other ingredients are merely flavourings, cassoulet is all about the beans. And the caramelisation of the surface. A cassoulet is not a soupy or stewey type of dish. There is a tender balance when adding the stock the beans were cooked in, to the beans and meats for the final cooking, it can not be drowned or left too dry. Cassoulet is country fare and while it is raved about like it contains angels wings and good drugs, it really is, when you follow the rules, rather extraordinary.So the rules are, (and there are rules) according to the Etats Generaux de la Gastronomie, the ratio should be 70% beans and flavourings to 30% confit and meats. The pot it is cooked in (cassole) is similar to the Spanish cassuela (above) but taller with no handles, earthenware and also glazed on the inside only. The beans must be blanched then cooked with the pork and pork rind, onion and a bouquet garni. The stock made from cooking the beans goes into the final dish for a 3 hour cooking with the beans, confit of duck and pork and garlic sausage. One region of France adds lamb shoulder cooked in wine instead of pork. Breaking the crust several times while cooking is a must and breadcrumbs on the surface are a must not! You really don’t need them.

This is what I did. During the week I made the confit with four duck legs, see here for confit of duck.

Next part: You need 1.5 k pork belly, 400g haricot beans, 1 bouquet garni, 1 onion, peeled and quartered. Slice the rind off the pork belly and cut the belly into 4 cm cubes. Put the haricot beans into cold water, bring to the boil, then boil for 5 minutes, strain. Put the beans back in the pot and cover by 50% with water, add the rind from the pork belly, the pork belly, the onion and the bouquet garni. Season with salt and simmer gently, one hour then strain into another pot so you retain the cooking liquid.

Next bit: You need 3 pork and garlic sausages. Take the confit from the duck fat it is nestled amongst. Use some duck fat to brown the sausages and when the pork belly has simmered (as above) take it out of the beans and also brown in the duck fat for flavour. Line the pot you will cook the cassoulet in with the pork rind, add 1/3 of the beans in a layer then the confit of duck, pork belly and the sausages (cut the suasages into 4 cm pieces first). Cover with the rest of the beans or whatever will fit in the pot. Fill to just above the beans with the cooking liquid from the beans (reserved before). Drizzle the surface of the cassoulet very meanly with duck fat. Cook in a 150 degree oven for 3 hours.

Every hour for the first two, break the crust that forms on the surface and top up with bean liquid if it seems too dry. Most recipes say to assemble the cassoulet and cook for the required 3 hours then refrigerate and reheat to scalding to serve. I did this as I thought the overnight must enhance the flavours even more but to tell the truth I could not stop eating it as it came out of the oven the first time, I don’t think it really improved all that much the second day and you lose the first and most delicious crust.

A note on shopping today compared with the 1800s. I used pork belly for the pork ratio in my cassoulet and of course it comes with pork rind which is in all the traditional recipes. The pork rind, containing heaps of gelatine, is a natural thickener . In Australia, instead of Toulouse sausages which are never quite right here, try to find a pork sausage with garlic from a good butcher. I bought pork, garlic and fennel sausages from Barossa fine foods in the Market which were perfect. The addition of a ‘small piece of rancid fat’ (Larousse) is obviously not what would happen in any household today, but duck fat from the confit drizzled on the top of the cassoulet is delicious and integral in forming the final crust.

Finally, I raided the family silver to recreate the cassoulet photo in my Larousse. Purely for fun!

Neil Perry’s ‘Crispy-pressed duck with mandarin sauce’.

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I have been calling it 3 day duck (for the last 3 days). And look, I know that it is not what you would call normal to want to go home after a long day at work and chop a duck in half lengthways, marinate it overnight, steam it the next day, de-bone it completely, press it under a 4k weight for another night, coat it in whisked egg white then flour, steam it again, have you lost me already?  It does not stop there, next you deep fry it, chop it and serve it with a mandarin sauce. Not normal behaviour really, but  Niel Perry makes it sound so simple. What I will attempt to do with this post is give you photos for some of the steps as a photo tells a thousand words, or the extra few hundred we need to make it actually simple, not just theoretically simple. Broken down into 3 days does actually make it less daunting. Thank you to Kasia, the generous provider of such a stunning cook book and to Neil Perry of course.

Day 1, Get your whole duck, chop it in half and marinade it overnight (preferably, but you don’t have to which would cut the process back to 2 day duck): Make the marinade first as it needs to cool before being rubbed over duck.

Marinade: 1 1/2 tbsp light soy sauce, 3 tbsp shaoxing (Chinese rice wine), 2 spring onions, white part finely sliced, 2 pieces dried tangerine peel, 1 knob ginger, peeled and chopped, 1 star anise, crushed, 1 tbsp yellow rock sugar, crushed.

Dried tangerine peel can be sold as dried citrus peel or orange peel. The rock sugar is easy to find in Asian supermarkets as well and both the sugar and  star anise can be crushed in a mortar and pestle. Heat all the marinade ingredients in a saucepan and simmer a minute to infuse the flavours, then cool.

To prepare the duck firstly chop off the neck and the wings to the first joint. Using a heavy clever and I use the wooden pestle from my mortar for extra muscle, using knife in one hand and bashing down on the clever with the pestle in the other hand, firstly chop through the breast bone. Then remove the back bone by chopping down both sides. This will remove the tail as well which wont fit in the steamer anyway. Now you have two halves of duck with breast and leg, when removing the back bone try not to cut away any of the thigh. Put the duck on a plate that will fit in a steamer and rub the marinade all over the duck. Cling film and refrigerate overnight.

Day 2, Steam, de-bone and press duck: I have cut the bottom out of one bamboo steamer to get a double height, so two on top of each other then the lid on top of that, it is the only way to fit in a whole duck. The bases are sold separately to the lids so you can pile them on top of each other and they are not expensive. The other option to steam a whole duck is the metal steamers from Chinese shops. Put the plate with the duck and all its marinade in the steamer and steam for 1 hour (from the time when the water is boiling). Let the duck cool enough to handle then turn skin side down and remove the rib bones and leg bones with a small sharp knife, remove the wing entirely if it is easier. You are trying to achieve two pieces of boneless duck without cutting through the skin. Wrap each piece loosely in cling film and place on a chopping board that fits inside a plastic container. You need another container that fits in the first one. On top of this you need 4k of weight, I used my mortar and pestle filled with some rice, pasta, flour etc. To the fridge overnight again. Here is my set up and the finished pressed duck.

Day 3, Crust duck, deep fry and make sauce: You need 2 egg whites, 4 Tbsp corn flour and 2 Tbsp rice flour (I used brown rice flour) for the crust and 1 litre of oil (I used grape seed) to deep fry. See below for the sauce as you should be ready to make this while the duck steams again.

Unwrap the duck and put the 2 halves back on the steamer plate. Sift the flours together. Whisk the egg whites until fluffy but before soft peaks form, coat the skin side of the duck halves in the egg white then sift the flour onto the egg white coated duck, blowing off the excess. Steam again for 25 minutes.

For the sauce you need: 5 mandarins, 4cm ginger, 3 tbsp grated palm sugar, 2 1/2 tbsp fish sauce. Peel 2 mandarins with a vegetable peeler then julienne the peel. Peel off the rest of the peel and rub the pith off the outside of the 2 mandarins then slice between the segments to remove each segment without the adjoining white pith. Juice the remaining 2 or 3 mandarins to make 2 1/2 tablespoons of juice. Peel and julienne the ginger. Heat the palm sugar with 3 tbsp water in a sauce pan until the sugar dissolves. Add the julienne mandarin and ginger and cook until the sugar is a deep, almost burnt brown, then add the juice, fish sauce and segments of mandarin. Take off the heat but keep warm or zap over a high heat for a few seconds again when serving. Use a good fish sauce like the Megachef brand endorsed by David Thompson, there is so much of it in the sauce it needs to be good.

Heat the grape seed oil in a wok to 180 degrees and deep fry the duck until attractively golden brown and crisp, about 1 1/2 minutes. Use a slotted spoon to take out of the oil and put on paper towel on a chopping board. Slice into 2-3cm thick slices and serve with the sauce, some on top but most on side to keep the duck crisp. I didn’t fry them together because the oil would have cooled too much.