I thought I would take a break from my recent attempts at Caucasus cuisine and do something different. I get a bit tired of chicken so I recently bought a duck – a first for me. I could have just bunged the whole thing in the oven, I suppose, but I decided to go down this rather lengthy process of braising the brute and then actually cooking it, hoping it would cut some of the fat for which duck is notorious.
Someone, I don’t remember who, once told me that duck can have an unpleasant back flavour if not cleaned and prepared properly and the best way to prevent this is to rub the bird all over, inside and out, with grated ginger before giving it a good wash, so that is what I did, leaving it smothered in grated ginger root over night because I didn’t have time to deal with it then.
The next thing to do was cut it up into pieces, legs and wings gave me four pieces plus the actual body which I hacked rather clumsily into four pieces, which along with the neck, gave me a total of 9 largish pieces.
Heat some oil – I used rice bran – in a large pan and braise the duck pieces for about 7 minutes on each side. Because the pieces were quite large, I could only fit three or four pieces in the pan each time so the whole process took about three quarters of an hour.
I drained the duck pieces on kitchen paper and then poured off most of the oil into an old tin can and then peeled and julienned a decent size lump of ginger and stir-fried that in the remaining hot oil until fragrant.
While that was happening, I mixed about 500ml 
of boiling water with the fish sauce and sugar along with the ground white pepper. I chucked in a few small red chilies from a plant in the garden, not knowing how hot they might be so I only used about 4 small whole ones, seeds and all.
I put the duck pieces into a large pot on top of the julienned ginger and then poured the water, fish sauce, white pepper, salt and sugar on top, turned the heat up and brought the lot to a simmer before banging a lid on the pot and letting it gently simmer away for half an hour or so.
I took the lid off and continued to simmer for another 30 minutes or so until the sauce reduces.
Drain the duck pieces and transfer to a serving plate, and decorate with some (more) red chilies and a handful of parsley, celery or coriander leaves (whichever you have handy). Serve on a bed of white rice and drizzle some of the ginger sauce over the duck.
Ingredients
1 Duck – about 2.5 kg.
A knob of ginger about the size of your thumb, grated.
2 Tablespoon oil.
2 Tablespoon fish sauce.
1 Tablespoon sugar.
1 Teaspoon of ground white pepper.
1 Teaspoon of salt.
500 ml boiling water.
Some red chilies, at least one but as many as you like.
Another knob of ginger peeled and cut into thin strips.
Red Branch Chronicles 