INGREDIENTS

INSTRUCTIONS

This is an article from the San Francisco Chronicle by Bruce Cost
about the Chinese philosophy of cooking duck.  Cooking a duck can be
intimidating to home cooks.  Unlike chicken,  there's a layer of fat
that can cause problems.  When duck is simply  roasted, it often cooks
unevenly, leaving a lot of excess fat.  In  addition, much of the
potentially delicious skin is discarded.  Chinese cooks solve these
problems by applying two or more cooking  methods to melt away most of
the fat while enhancing the flavor of  the meat. As a bonus, this
technique can produce duck skin that is  succulently crisp.  For
example, a duck may be seasoned and hung overnight in a cool, airy
place, then steamed, perhaps smoked, and finally fried to a golden
brown. Or, a duck may be browned over high heat in a wok full of oil
(which melts away some of the fat), drained, and finally simmered in  a
wine/soy/rock sugar sauce, which is reduced at the end of the  cooking
time to a syrupy glaze.  Sometimes just the skin is stuffed  with boned
duck meat, which has been mixed with glutinous rice or  barley,
mushrooms, Chinese dates, lotus seeds and ham; then the whole  thing is
steamed. The famous Peking Duck, which many rank as one of  the world's
greatest dishes, begins by easing the skin away from the  meat then
pumping in air so the whole duck inflates like a balloon.  The duck
then is scalded in a honey-vinegar mixture and hung  overnight to dry
before being cooked. This dish is not a good choice  for the home cook
because the duck is best roasted suspended in a  special clay-lined
oven. The lacquered-looking ducks that hang in  Chinese delicatessens,
sometimes mistakenly thought to be Peking  ducks, actually are
Cantonese roast ducks. After basting the skins  and hanging the ducks
overnight, they are roasted to golden brown  perfection ++ a sauce of
five-spices, star anise, wine and garlic  simmering in their cavities.
For not much more than the price of an  uncooked duck, these, by the
half or whole, make excellent take-out  food.  The method that follows
for making Sichuan Crispy Skin Duck is  typical of Chinese duck
cookery.  It requires a few steps over a  couple of days, and two
cooking procedures, but it's not difficult -  although frying a whole
duck in a wok full of oil may be a new  experience.  by Bruce Cost -
S.F. Chron. l987  Posted by Stephen Ceideburg Feb 1 1990.  File
ftp://ftp.idiscover.co.uk/pub/food/mealmaster/recipes/cberg2.zip

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