Hinata, in this wonderful, picture-filled post at Aventures d’une cocotte, describing a meal at the famous Yung Kee restaurant on Wellington Street in Hong Kong, has inspired me to record my own thoughts about the place.
Sometime during every one of the eight culinarily-inspired trips I’ve made to Hong Kong, some food-savvy local has always mentioned […]
Christmas Eve dinner (the pancakes are not yet steamed in this picture):
It was delicious, roasting mistakes and obstreperous pancakes notwithstanding. The duck skin was nearly black in places, but did not taste at all of char, and in fact was so tasty that it made me wonder if 20 minutes of roasting at 450 […]
The defining moment of the Peking Duck experience is this: You take a warm, thin pancake, brush it with a little hoisin sauce, place some browned duck skin on it, maybe some meat, a few scallion shreds, then roll it up and take a bite. Firm texture that yields in layers. Richness of duck skin […]
I don’t know what I was thinking. The roasting instructions called for me to put a cup of water on the bottom of the roasting pan, and roast the ducks at 450F for 20 minutes, then 350F for 40 minutes.
Duck #1: I followed the instructions on the first duck, but I left the cover […]
On one of my visits to Hong Kong, I got to go to a famous roast goose restaurant in the New Territories. They cooked their geese in a tall clay oven, shaped like a vase, widening from the bottom, then narrowing at the top. There was a wood fire in the bottom, and the geese […]
The ducks’ skin finally dried.
According to Ken Hom’s Fragrant Harbor Taste (see this post), it’s supposed to feel “like parchment.”
4 hours with a low fan aimed at the ducks didn’t do that. Well, it’s the rainy season. Turned the fan up high, and in another hour, I had my “like parchment” skin. Well, except in […]
I basted the ducks with hot water, which I’m pretty sure is for tightening up the skin, and hung them:
Ok, I don’t have anyplace to hang them from, so I had to put a chair/stool on the cutting board. I directed a fan on them to dry quickly.
Update: The swordsman is cooking Peking duck […]
I’ve been cooking Chinese food as a hobby for 25 years now. I’ve done it in all sorts of conditions, including barebones apartment kitchens with generic stoves. Now I’m doing it in my Dream Kitchen, on a 30,000 BTU wok burner:
Do I get better results with this burner? Oh, yeah. The outsides of things are […]