Totally ducked out. Yup, I reckon I overdid the duck today, with duck soup and pan-fried duck breasts with an awesome sauce.
And I am exhausted. It is one of those days where..I am tired, lethargic, don’t feel so good, and I think my right eye is kinda bruising from one of the random many headbutts I received from Ollie whilst co-sleeping. And one of those days we run out of 五香卷 *gaaaasp!* So off it was to the market to grab some ingredients and breakfast before heading home to do the rolls.
It was one of those days where I felt I was constantly picking up toys after toys, books after books and foam alphabets..urggh. Didn’t help that I had family coming over tonight so I had to make sure the house was in some kind of decent condition. Can’t have family thinking I am a lazy bum at home, can I? Not that they do..but yeah.
Anyhoos..I leave you today with the soup of the day, 雪黎炖鸭汤 / Double-boiled Snow Pear with Duck Soup, and the duck dish, pan-fried duck breast.
雪黎炖鸭汤 / Double-boiled Snow Pear with Duck Soup (adapted from Xin Flavours, No.4, Mar-Apr 2011)
Ingredients
1/4 duck
1 snow pear
8g bei qi (I used about 4 pcs)
20g huai shan (Chinese yam)
8g wolfberries
1.2l water
salt to taste
1. Remove skin of duck and cut into chunks. Blanch and set aside. (As with the other soups I cook, I don’t blanch the meat and just throw everything in frozen. I also did not remove the skin of the duck, and got a slightly more oily soup).
2. Cut snow pear into 4 pieces. Set aside.
3. Add bei qi, huai shan and wolfberries in a double boil pot. Add duck meat, snow pear, water and seasoning. Cover and double boil for 2 hours.*
*Anyone would be hard pressed to find a pot that can fit into another pot to double boil. I did not double boil the soup and used a claypot. Worked fine. =)
Pan-fried Duck Breast (adapted from Food & Travel magazine, Feb 2010)
pan-fried duck breast
Ingredients
2 pcs duck breast fillets
2 cloves garlic, crushed
2 tbsp oyster sauce
3 stalks fresh coriander leaves, chopped finely
2 tbsp dark soy sauce
2 tbsp honey
1 tsp ground black pepper
1/2 cup water
1. In a non-stick pan, dry-fry the duck breasts for 5 minutes on each side. The meat will render out its own fat.
2. When most of the fat is rendered, remove duck breasts from the pan and set aside.
3. Remove half of the fat from the pan.
4. Add garlic and saute for 5 minutes. Then add oyster sauce, coriander leaves, dark soy sauce, honey and water.
5. Simmer for 3 minutes, then add black pepper.
6. Return duck breasts to the pan and cook for 10 minutes, until the sauce thickens and reduces by half.
7. To serve, slice duck and pour the remaining sauce over.
I have a love-hate relationship with dark soy sauce, because there are two kinds in Singapore: the syrupy kind and the fluid kind. And whenever a recipe calls for dark soy sauce, I am in a conundrum as to which kind I should use. For 三杯鸡, I discovered that using the syrupy kind worked really well and gave me the kind of consistency I wanted for the dish, meaning lesser water. So I am guessing, where the dish needs to have a thickened kind of sauce/gravy, the syrupy kind should be use to reduce the amount of liquid in the dish; where more liquid is required, then I should use the fluid kind. In this case, I should have used the syrupy dark sauce sauce so I would have lesser sauce in my dish.
Who would have thought soy sauce would be so complicated. *grumbles*