Chinese New Years: Peking Duck

Today is Chinese New Years, so we figured we'd go for Peking Duck, unfortunately, it cost 120 CHF here, so we figured we'd do it ourselves. After getting the ingredients and a quick read, we were off.

The first step was the massage the duck to lossen the skin. After that you had to inflate the duck with air. Here's Keegan blowing the duck while Felix gropes it.



Once it was all inflated we had to set it for a while. The frozen duck we got had a hole were the neck and butt was so we had to plug it all with clamps from work. We inflated it with a hydration tube for a water bottle and used a balloon to keep it inflated while some air leaked out.



After a quick dip in some water, vinegar, rice wine, and corn starch, we had to hand dry for a couple hours. We decided to speed things up by using the de-humidifier in the laundary room.


While we were waiting we whipped up a quick snack. Congee, fermented bean curd, bean sprouts fried with salted fish, mixed veggies, and salted duck eggs.


We had to cook the duck more or less hovering in the oven (not on a pan), so we suspended it with wires.


We also had to make the pancakes for it.


Next a quick bath in hot hot oil to crisp up the skin. Keegan has the headlamp on cuz our oven lacks a light and we needed to get the duck outta there (got a few questions about that).


Felix was feeling left out.


The duck is done.


Here's the first course. We had no cucumbers so we used carrots.


A complete one.


yum!


Unfortunately, we were too tired to make the other courses, so we'll do it tomorrow. We did manage to make an original bread creation. Those who don't know what Yakitate Japan might not get this, but here's Japan #73: Fried bread filled with congee (which we added red bean paste to it afterwards). Yum.


We also prepared some red bean paste to make red bean cakes from our co-workers. We also made some soup. yum.


We'll, that's all from me. Hope everyone had a good year of the dog and all the best in the new years.