Duck · 6 August 2004
Having grown up with an electric coil-element stove (no quick temperature control, uneven heat, blech), and having enjoyed cooking with gas later on, I was always satisfied that gas cooking was the best possible method: the smell of lighting matches, the satisfying paff of a new flame, the vague sense of danger. All that heat.
We just moved to a house with no gas hookup, however, and being unwilling to truck to the store for bottled propane every few days, we needed, like Bob Zimmerman in the days of yore, to go electric.
So we bought an induction cooktop. The idea is pretty seductive: instead of making something hot and then transferring that heat to a cooking surface, you remove one step and simply heat the cooking surface, via magnetic induction. Far more efficient, as there’s less heat lost to the environment, and thus far more appealing when cooking in summer.
Whereas on our old gas stove bringing a couple litres of water to a rolling boil took about ten minutes, and bringing it back to a boil after tossing in noodles or frozen peas or whatever would be several minutes more, this baby just screams: the same pot of water boils in about three minutes, and it stays boiling. In fact when cooking noodles you need to crank it down unless you enjoy gluten foam erupting all over the place.
Of course a gas oven was impossible as well, so we got one with a convection fan. Still getting the hang of that.
THIS IS THE RECIPE PART
The quest is for a lot of fast heat for browning (which as you know is where all the flavour comes from), and fast dry heat in the oven for roasting.
Plan on a single, trimmed, good-sized duck breast for every two people coming to dinner. By trimmed, I don’t mean with the fat and skin cut off. You want the fat and skin. Yes you do.
You also want char siu sauce: the stuff that flavours the BBQ pork and duck hanging in the windows of chinese restaurants (the pork gets its bright purple colour from food dye). The flavour is entirely unmistakeable: honey sweet, with five-spice and star anise and other distant things. I’m sure there are recipes for making the sauce yourself, but as it’s cheaply available in jars, to do so would be like making your own ketchup.
A day in advance, put the duck breast(s) in a ziploc bag with a generous pour of char siu sauce, squish and squodge until it’s all evenly distributed, squeeze out the air and let sit, zipped, in the fridge.
Now, for the browning, you’ll need quantity of fat for the pan; oddly enough the ideal fat for browning duck is duckfat. Rendered duckfat is right below butter and cream in the canonical hierarchy of reasons why a fat-free diet is for knobs. I once read some words about how it’s rich in ‘good’ cholesterol and anti-oxidants or something, but it’s so good I’d use the stuff even if it were guaranteed to make your toes turn blue. Try an egg fried in about a quarter inch of it, with the fat spooned over top of the yolk until it becomes milky-translucent. And O mama: potatoes fried in duckfat.
Get the pan and oven as hot as possible, melt a couple soup spoons of fat in the pan, and lay the duck breasts in, skin down. The key thing here is browning, so don’t go muddling things up with tongs or spatula: just leave it be for a good few minutes, then check to see that the skin is crispy-brown. Once it is, transfer the duck breasts to a plate, drain off the burnt fat, then, skin-up, place dinner back in the pan.
Baste with char siu sauce: thick swathes of it from your basting brush, and into the oven it goes. Depending on the thickness of the meat and the heat of the oven, the entire roasting time shouldn’t be more than 10-12 minutes. Baste with sauce every two or three. During this time the remaining fat on top of the meat will continue to caramelise and render its goodness downwards. Things at this stage tend to smell rather good.
Once out of the oven, let the duck breasts rest on a carving board for at least ten minutes, before slicing crosswise every four millimetres with a bitter-sharp carving knife. If you don’t have a really sharp knife, get out of the kitchen.
Serve with some nice white rice, or some egg noodles fried in peanut oil, and some broccoli sauteed in garlic, let’s say.
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