Duck stir-fry

As I mentioned, I was at the butcher’s yesterday and bought some liver and a duck breast. What a difference in price. I hadn’t bought poultry liver in ages and actually wondered what was wrong with it that it only cost 8 złoty a kilo. Maybe it wasn’t very classy to mark Women’s Day with a budget dish, but I still maintain that liver and onions is good for the heart. And it sends a clear message: Here’s to a healthy liver!

I can’t really see any connection between duck and Women’s Day. Actually, if anyone knows, tell me: is it a female duck’s breast or a drake’s? Do we eat any part of a drake, or does it make no difference? We eat chickens, after all, not hens, so eating drakes would be logical, wouldn’t it? No idea.

Back to my duck. I’ve called it a stir-fry, but it’s really a sort of kung pao duck. It’s missing a few of the ingredients and tastes completely different, but if you’ve already made my kung pao chicken, you’ll have no trouble making this.

This was my first time cooking duck this way and, believe it or not, it turned out fabulous. It’s quite a different beast from duck cooked the traditional way. Pretty spicy, too. Give it a try, I recommend it.

At a glance: 

Preparation time: about 15–20 minutes

Serves: enough for me (two small portions at a pinch)

Calories: oh, who cares

Ingredients for spicy Chinese-style duck:

• 1 duck breast (previously frozen)
• 1 red bell pepper
• half a hot red chilli
• a 7 cm piece of leek (the light green part)
• a 10 cm piece of fresh cucumber
• two small handfuls of cashews
• a 1 cm piece of ginger
• two large cloves of garlic
• 1 stalk of lemongrass
• half a bottle of hot sesame sauce
• a tablespoon of lime juice
• a tablespoon of light soy sauce
• two teaspoons of sugar
• olive oil
• ground black pepper

Method (quack quack):

I bought the breast yesterday and the first thing I did was put it in the freezer. Otherwise I wouldn’t be able to slice it thinly enough for it to come out tender after a quick stir-fry.

Today I took it out about an hour before cooking so it could thaw a little. After an hour I washed it thoroughly under warm water to make it a little less rock solid. I dried it with a paper towel.

This bit’s important! Duck breast has quite a thick layer of skin and fat. I cut a few very thin slices with the skin on, then removed the rest of the skin. I didn’t want the dish to be too fatty. And with this way of cooking duck, don’t expect crisp skin or the flavour you’d get from it. That’s not what we’re after here. We want tender meat.

So I cut the breast into very thin slices. I put them in a bowl and seasoned them quite generously with ground black pepper. I crushed the garlic with a chef’s knife and chopped it very finely. Into the duck it went. I did the same with the ginger. I peeled the lemongrass (here’s a great guide to preparing lemongrass) and chopped it just as finely. I added everything to the duck and poured a tablespoon of lime juice over it (I don’t squeeze limes, I buy bottled lime juice from Thailand). I set it aside.

I chopped the vegetables. The cucumber into 2 cm cubes. The sweet red pepper into fairly big squares. The chilli into small pieces and the leek into thin strips. I put them aside in a bowl.

I got the soy sauce, hot sesame sauce, nuts and sugar ready so they’d be within arm’s reach.

I got the olive oil good and hot in a frying pan (my “heat” was at 8 on a scale of 1 to 10) and threw in the duck with all its seasonings. I kept everything moving (stir-frying is pretty much constant stirring, you know). After about two minutes I poured in a tablespoon of soy sauce. More stirring. When most of the sauce had evaporated I tossed in all the vegetables and added two teaspoons of sugar. I stirred again.

After about 2–3 minutes I added the cashews. I gave it another stir and poured in the hot sesame sauce. I turned the “heat” down to 6 (on a scale of 1 to 10) and kept stirring and frying for about 2 more minutes (maybe even less). All done. Perfect with jasmine rice in a separate bowl and, of course, eaten with chopsticks. Enjoy!