This Thai red duck curry is made with the Spice Road Thailand paste, recipe is here. I was doing some snaps for promotion and thought I would put up a quick post so you’d know I have not dropped of the face of the cyber earth.
The ingredients.
We all know and love the BBC from Ying Chow- don’t we? Well I have had a few requests for this dish and Sarah spotted it in the background of the last post on smoked duck so I thought I would give you my recipe made up from eating there so many times, and from frequent cooking, it is shaping up to be quite good. My freak of a vegan sister loves it and out of anything (I can cook) in the whole world she asked for BBC for her birthday ‘treat’. Weird.
Anyway, instead of buying fried tofu I buy firm tofu, slice it like haloumi, dry it in paper towel and fry it in peanut oil to get a nice golden colour and texture happening. After more time on paper towel to absorb the oil I slice it into the size shown in the photo below for the dish.
I should clear up the BBC thing, it stands for broad bean, bean curd dish, even though they mean soy beans.
To the recipe:
2 1/2 tbsp peanut oil
1 cup pickled cabbage, rinsed well and squeezed dry in paper towel
½ tsp sugar
2 (roughly) 6 x 6cm pieces of firm tofu, sliced into rectangles 5mm thick, press onto paper towel to remove moisture
1 tsp ginger, finely chopped
2 spring onions, white part only, sliced
1 cup fresh soy beans, (they come frozen in Chinese supermarkets)
1/2 tbsp soy sauce
1 fresh birdseye chilli, sliced (optional garnish)
Heat 1/2 a tablespoon of the oil in a wok and fry the pickled cabbage for a minute. Add the sugar and stir until incorporated. Tip the cabbage onto a plate and put aside for now.
Heat another tablespoon of oil and fry the tofu slices until golden brown, remove and slice ready for the dish.
Heat the remaining tablespoon of oil and fry the ginger for 10 seconds then add the spring onions and fry for another 10 seconds. Add the soy beans and stir fry for a minute then add the soy sauce. Return the cabbage to the wok and stir through then put the tofu into the wok, give it a stir around then take it off the heat once the tofu is hot enough and has absorbed some of the flavours. Serve straight away with smoked duck, or not. If you are vegan, just have it with a nice glass of water and some brown rice.
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:
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.
I found myself home with an almost completely empty cupboard tonight, I had frozen spinach, potatoes and rice. That’s pretty much it. So I made up a new Spice Road recipe, it was my only choice really and sometimes I like to humour the vegetarians.
What I did was fry a chopped onion, some ginger and garlic, then about 1 tablespoon of the Spice Road to India paste. About a cup of cooked and chopped spinach, 5 baby potatoes peeled and halved or quartered, a cup of water and a teaspoon of tomato paste went in. I simmered this until the potatoes cooked and the liquid was almost gone then added some halved cherry tomatoes, cream, salt and a bit of sugar. Simmered this a bit longer. The rice was steamed with stock and saffron.
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.
I accidentally bought buttermilk instead of normal milk (the carton looked the same and I wasn’t paying the least bit of attention) so I might as well show you a really good, easy and delicious dessert from Greg Malouf (and I will probably also make pancakes). I made this dessert when I had very little time left to come up with something to finish a middle eastern dinner and it was perfect, light, not too sweet thanks to the buttermilk and easy to make and serve. I halved the quantity below to make 6 glasses.
Rosewater and vanilla creams
500 ml pouring cream plus 150 ml pouring cream, lightly whipped
1 vanilla bean, split in half lengthways, seeds scraped out with a knife
75 g castor sugar
3 sheets gelatine
500 ml buttermilk
1/4 tsp rosewater
dried rose petals for serving
Put the 500 ml cream, vanilla seeds and sugar in a saucepan and heat gently to dissolve the sugar, bring to the boil then immediately take off the heat and cool a little. Soak the gelatine in cold water until wobbly, a few minutes, squeeze the water out then add to the cream mixture and stir to dissolve completely. Strain this mixture and refrigerate to cool completely.
When the cream is cold, add the buttermilk and rosewater then fold in the lightly whipped cream. Pour into glasses and leave to set in the fridge. They will set within an hour. Serve with the rose petals sprinkled over and around the glasses. Pretty
.
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.
