Duck, and time! Allergy free aromatic crispy duck!

It's our first time doing aromatic crispy duck in celebration of the new year for chineses, and we had to try a combination of recipes found on the internet as unfortunately neither Larousse nor the Barefoot had a recipe for it. It is also adjusted to be completely allergy free, so a triumph for me! It replaced traditional Sunday lunch, and I must say I have not been as full up since 2010 which is unsurprising as the build up to the actual eating of the duck took three full days, so much so that I rushed the last and most important bit of the cooking process in my glee and haste to tuck in. And tuck in we did.

Apart from time and candles, there have been other sacrifices too, as we have been unable to spend too much time in our open plan kitchen / living room in the last 24 hours and the Italian has been hiding in the spare room for most of that. But was it all worth it? You bet! Our inability to carry ourselves post "yum cha" style lunch proves it. 

It is an unusually long post but with a three day preparation time, did you expect anything less?

As it was our first time and this also serves as a food diary, here are some pointers for future versions:

1) definitely get a small and skinny duck. We got a porker of a 2kg duck and not only was it rather difficult to wield, a smaller duck would also be tastier, 

2) fry with a full pot of oil and for at least 8 minutes for the first fry,

3) a sweet sauce is non negotiable - I was going to skip it as I could not be bothered to make plum sauce.. But I made a last minute allergy friendly concoction which we thought made a big difference!

Recipe, to serve four as a starter or with other dim sum dishes:
Marinate (48 hours)

Dry roast 5 tablespoons of salt, 2 tbsp Sichuan pepper, 2 tbsp black pepper, 2 tbsp cumin seeds, 1 star anise and 1 tbsp five spice until smoking. Pound to fine dust in a pestle and mortar or in a spice grinder. Rub the seasonings all over the inside and outside of a 1.2kg small and skinny duck. Put in a pan and cover with parchment paper and refrigerate for two days, turning half way through.

Steam (2-3 hours)

After two days, remove duck from fridge and let it come to room temperature before stuffing five thick slices of ginger (slapped with the back of a knife) and 3-4 spring onions into the cavity. Drizzle 5 tbsp dry vermouth (or GF rice wine if not allergic to rice) all over the duck (in and out). Place the duck on a plate and let it lie flat if possible. Steam duck for 2-3 hours, removing fat from the plate and topping up on water levels every hour. 

Our duck was steamed in an decidedly un-oriental manner, in one of those pasta pots which comes with an inbuilt "colander", which in turn impacted steaming time. Our 2kg porker was steamed for three hours on gentle steam the first two hours then fierce steam for the last. A 1.2kg duck should steam gently for at least 2 hours. Remember to ensure the pan never runs out of water as that would be extremely dangerous. I placed a foil container at the bottom of the "colander" to save the rendered duck fat and juices. The "fatty juice" was cooled which allows the fat to separate from the essence and these were then bagged and stored separately. Some of the essence will be used to make the sweet sauce (scroll down). When the duck is ready, it's leg should wiggle easily and you should be able to see it's shin bones as the flesh would be shrunk up to the thigh by then. Try to keep windows open for the duration of the steaming stage, both for ventilation and your sanity. 

Air dry (8 hours)

Let the duck cool on a cake rack for at least 8 hours (after which, it could be refrigerated for a couple of days). Ideally, during that 8 hours, the duck should be hung and a fan pointed at it to air dry but this was impractical for obvious reasons. I hand fanned it for about ten minutes before I was decidedly bored... I could tell this impacted the end result and might borrow a stand-fan for the next version, unless there are very cool and edgy, preferably copper, stand-fans out there...?

Home run fry (30 minutes)

When ready to serve, cut the duck into quarters, removing the back bone for other use (bone broth etc.). Prepare a slurry made of 5 tbsp cornflour and 4 tbsp water plus 1 tbsp fish oil (since I'm intolerant to soya as well as gluten, otherwise a gluten free soya sauce may be used) and rub into the duck. Leave on cake rack for ten minutes to drain then dust cornflour liberally over the duck pieces until they are completely covered. In the mean time, in a casserole pot, heat up enough rapeseed oil such that the duck pieces would be completely submerged. Test the heat of the oil by putting the tip of a wooden chopstick into the pan - if bubbles rise from where the chopstick meets the pan, then that oil is at about the 170degree C mark. When the duck pieces are carefully slid into the oil, the oil should immediately froth up around the duck, quite like a submarine emerging from the sea. Fry two pieces of duck at a time for at least 8 minutes, the breast pieces could stay for a further 2 minutes. Do continuously ladle oil over if duck is not completely submerged. When all four pieces are fried and excess oil drained and blotted, raise the temperature of the oil to 185degrees C - this would be where oil froths when you put in the wooden chopstick. Re-fry the duck quarters for about 30 seconds each. 

Serve immediately with sweet sauce, julienne whites of spring onions and cucumber (and rice pancakes for non-freetarians). For an authentic yum cha experience, shred the flesh of the duck with two forks whilst at the table.

My surprise sweet concoction

Rather unprepared for the sauce aspect of the dish, just before frying the duck, I looked into the cupboards and fridge for a "hoisin" / plum sauce substitution and found some mince meat (of the Christmas kind) in our fridge - I made this for Christmas mince pies so there were allergy friendly. Two heaping tablespoons of that was heated with four heaping tablespoons of duck essence and thickened with one teaspoon of the drained cornflour slurry. Unexpectedly yum.