Peking Duck and Broccolini With Chinese Five-Spice Sauce

*Post by Angela.

Happy March, everyone! I'm happy to be kicking the month off with a cooking post, since we've been a little dull in the kitchen lately. For our Oscars-Sunday dinner, I decided to make a Peking duck. I suppose I could try to give you some convoluted story of how I took inspiration from one of the Best Picture nominees (a riff on Black Swan? an homage to the ugly duck story of The King's Speech?), but honestly, it was just one of those random cravings.

The idea of making Peking duck is really intimidating, so I chose this recipe from Martha Liao (via Martha Stewart) mainly because it included a video. Turns out, while the process involves a lot of time, it's really not that difficult. And for the luscious results it yields, it's worth the wait. I paired the duck with an Asian-inspired side, this broccolini with Chinese Five-Spice sauce.

List of ingredients for the duck:

• 1 4-5 lb duckling
• 4-5 green onions, trimmed
• 3 1/2-inch thick slices of fresh ginger root
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3 tbsp cornstarch
• 5 tbsp dry sherry
• 2 tbsp distilled white vinegar
• 2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
• Kitchen twine
• 1 empty 24-oz can of beer, top cut off

First, on Saturday night, I rinsed the duck, removed the neck and bag of goodies from the cavity of the bird, and patted it dry. I trussed up Oscar (the duck) sort of like he was in harness, plucked the few remnants of feathers and such, and hung him off the knob of one of the kitchen cabinets, placing a bowl underneath him. I left the duck resting there overnight (about 9 hours).

The next morning, I checked on the duck - the skin was nice and dry, and had kind of pulled taut over the meat of the bird. If you're having issues getting the duck as dry as it should be, you can use a fan or put the duck in a closed room and turn on the air conditioner. Because Oscar was just about as dry as I wanted, I combined 4 cups of water with 2 green onions, 2 of the ginger slices, and the honey in a pot over medium high heat. As I brought the water to a boil, I made a slurry by whisking together 1 cup of cold water with the cornstarch in a small bowl. I added the slurry to the water and once the liquid had thickened up to the consistency of a light gravy, I added in 3 tbsp of the dry sherry and 1 tbsp of the vinegar and took it off the heat.

I took Oscar down from his peg (leaving the twine harness attached),  plopped him in the pot and began spooning the liquid all over, including into the cavity. I continued to do this for about 5 minutes, making sure the bird was thoroughly coated, then re-hung the duck over a bowl for another 4-5 hours.

Just before I took the duck down, I preheated the oven to about 300 degrees. I got out my Macgyvered vertical roaster a.k.a. an empty tall beer can, and filled it with about 1 1/2 cup of water, the remaining 2 green onions, the remaining ginger slice, 2 tbsp of dry sherry, 1 tbsp of vinegar, and the garlic. I placed the can in the middle of a roasting pan.

I removed the duck from its harness, placed it over the top of the can and shimmied it down so that the can solidly supported the weight of the bird. Then I placed it in the oven to roast for about 3 hours.

After about an hour, the room started smelling like absolute heaven, which made it really difficult to wait the remaining time. But wait we did. While we were waiting, I whipped up the broccolini.

List of ingredients for the broccolini:

• 1 lb broccolini or Chinese broccoli
• 4 tbsp unsalted butter
• 4 tsp soy sauce
• 1/2 tsp Chinese five-spice powder
• 1/3 cup crushed dry roasted peanuts

I stuck the broccolini in our steamer to cook for about 15 minutes, then combined the butter, soy sauce, and five-spice powder in a small pan over medium heat. Once the butter had melted, I whisked the sauce and cooked an additional minute or two, then took it off the heat. I tossed the broccolini in the sauce, topped it with the peanuts, and set it aside to wait for the duck.

And after three hours, we removed the duck from the oven and let it rest about 10 minutes and then sliced into it. Gloriously crispy and slightly sweet skin, with surprisingly succulent meat for a bird that had spent 14 hours drying out and 3 hours roasting. And the sauce on the broccolini was incredible - the very definition of umami. We served the duck and broccolini up with some rice and settled in to watch the awards ceremony. I'm not exaggerating when I say the meal was the most exciting thing of the evening...

Comments

[KrisDub]

Damnit! I wish I had come over instead of going to SD. I've been wanting to make Peking duck, but I want to do it with the hoisin sauce and all the typical trappings. I have lofty goals. Wanna help?

[Angela]

Ooh, for sure. I can even show you how I made that duck sex swing with my kitchen twine.