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Fragrant Crispy Duck
My son and his girlfriend receive a weekly CSA type box of vegetables. The place they pick it up has is a little farmers' market set up where you can supplement what is in your box. There are people there with dairy products, different types of flours and last week, ducks. Hugh and Rebecca are both vegetarians, but they thought I might be interested in a duck sustainably and humanely raised on a small farm, so they ordered one for me. Hugh is a vegetarian because he objects to factory farming, so faced with a bird with such a green pedigree, he wanted to try it.
I don't have a lot of experience with ducks. I have cooked exactly one before. We are at the cottage for the summer, and I don't have an oven, so it was going to have to cook on top of the stove, or on the barbeque. I have a wonderful barbeque book that said duck is too fatty to put straight on the grill and it will burn before it cooks, so you have to steam it first. Then I came across a wonderful sounding recipe for crispy duck that had you steam it first and then quickly deep fry it. In 12 cups of boiling oil. I don't have a wok or mesh spoons here, but I do have two pots big enough, one for steaming, one for frying, but I just couldn't get over that huge amount of boiling oil. What if I couldn't safely lift it out of the pot and it fried to a crisp? What if I knocked the pot over trying to get the duck out and got covered in boiling oil? Nope, it wasn't going to happen.
In the end I adapted the recipe from the June, 2000 issue of Gourmet, and then tossed it on the barbeque and cooked it as directed in The Canadian Living Barbeque Collection by Andrew Chase. It perhaps wasn't authentic, but it sure was delicious. We didn't follow the recipe exactly. It suggested that the duck sit in front of a fan for 2 hours to air dry it. I couldn't condone the incredible waste of electricity it would take, and we are out in the woods and don't even own a fan. It was a beautiful breezy day, but with woods come bears, and the one that has been hanging around here lately might find duck to his liking, so sticking it outside to dry, or even close to an open window seemed foolish at best. We joked about taking turns blowing on it. It occured to me that the dryness was really only an issue if you were frying it, so we didn't worry about it and I've taken that out of the recipe. Just let it sit and dry out on it's own.We barbequed it for about 25 minutes after the initial steaming and the result was tender and moist and incredibly succulent.
INGREDIENTS
| 1 (4 1/2‑ to 5 1/2‑lb) | fresh Pekin duck (sometimes called Long Island duck) |
| 6 tablespoons | toasted Sichuan-peppercorn salt |
| 1 tablespoon | five-spice powder |
| 2 tablespoons | Chinese rice wine or dry Sherry |
| 6 (1/8‑inch‑thick) | slices fresh ginger |
| 4 | scallions, cut into 2-inch pieces |
| 12 cups | corn, peanut, or canola oil (about 12 cups) |
| 2 tablespoons | dark (black or mushroom) soy sauce |
| 1/3 cup | all-purpose flour |
PREPARATION:
- Cut off wing tips with poultry shears or a sharp knife. Remove and discard excess fat from body cavity and neck, then rinse inside and out. Pat dry inside and out and press on breastbone to break it and flatten duck.
- Heat peppercorn salt and five-spice powder in a dry skillet over moderate heat, stirring, until hot. Measure out 3 tablespoons and rub 1 tablespoon in body cavity and 2 tablespoons over outside of duck, including under wings and legs. Reserve remaining spiced salt for serving with duck. Put duck in a bowl and marinate, covered and chilled, 8 to 24 hours.
- Drain any liquid from cavity and put duck in glass pie plate. Rub rice wine over duck. Smash ginger and scallions with flat side of a large heavy knife, then put one third in duck cavity and scatter remainder over duck.
- Fill wok with enough water for rack to sit 1/2 inch above water and bring to a rolling boil. Wearing oven mitts, put pie plate with duck on rack over boiling water and cover wok with lid. Reduce heat to moderate and steam duck 2 hours, checking every half hour to siphon off fat and juices from around duck and in cavity with bulb baster and replenishing boiling water as necessary.
- Wearing oven mitts, remove pie plate from steamer. Discard ginger and scallions. Drain duck and cool in pie plate 15 minutes. Slide duck onto a rack set over a baking sheet (to catch juices) and pat dry with paper towels.
- Heat 2 inches oil in large wok or large pot until a deep-fat thermometer registers 375°F. Meanwhile, brush outside of duck with soy sauce, then dust with flour, gently knocking off excess. Dip mesh spoons in hot oil (to keep duck from sticking) before using them to gently lower duck into hot oil. Fry duck, spooning hot oil over top, 2 minutes. Carefully turn duck over and fry 1 minute more. With extreme care, remove duck from oil with mesh spoons, draining cavity, and transfer to paper towels to drain. Heat oil to 400°F and fry duck a second time, in same manner, until dark brown and crisp, 30 seconds to 1 minute on each side. Again with extreme care, remove duck from oil with mesh spoons, draining cavity, and transfer to paper towels to drain briefly.
- Alternately, heat barbeque and grill duck over medium heat for about 25 minutes, until the skin has browned and the meat is hot all the way through.
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