Sunday, February 20th, 2011 08:04 pm
I think it's safe to say that the Eight Treasure Duck was a success.

It needed to cook longer (for more flavour) and mum thought it needed more soy sauce, but on the whole, it was delicious, the stuffing was just right, and the duck meat was nicely done.


The raw ingredients. There are supposed to be eight ingredients, but I only had five or six.


The stuffed duck before it went into the pot.


I had to do some extra surgery on the duck. They hadn't cleaned out his insides quite as well as they could have. I sewed up the neck, then stuffed the duck, and sewed up the tail. You can just see the needle near the knife.

Leftover stuffing:


The stuffing for the duck consisted of glutinous rice, lup cheong (chinese pork sausage), lotus seed, water chestnuts, chinese mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and dried shrimp. There's supposed to be two more ingredients to the stuffing - usually cooked pork and smoked ham - but I decided not to add the last two, mostly because mum was already cooking stewed pork and yams as a secondary dish, and there really is such a thing as too much pork.

Making fragrant ginger:


Heat pan, put a glug of oil in and heat, then toss in the ginger and stir around to get the flavour into the oil. I browned the duck before we started the broiling process - front, back, and sides.

At the start of the cooking process:
eight treasure duck - ready to cook!

The 'soup' is white wine, dark soy sauce, regular soy sauce, and chicken stock.

After 90 mins of cooking, I turned the duck over:
eight treasure duck - halfway through

My mother was not particularly amused when I said it looked like something alien had burst out of the duck's belly. Apparently I watch too much sci-fi. Whoda thunk it?

The silver foil package is the remaining stuffing, which I just wrapped up and cooked in the pot. It turned out very nicely!

Dinner!
dinner

Clockwise from top left. Red bean stewed pork and yam, eight treasure rice stuffing, eight treasure duck, water spinach.

It took all afternoon to prepare and cook, but the result was a hit. I wouldn't do it for anything less than a significant celebration, though, and probably not unless other people were also cooking things. My mum did the stewed pork and my stepbrother cooked the vegies (which I bought and prepared).

And it was a verrry nice dinner!
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Sunday, February 20th, 2011 10:11 am (UTC)
That looks delicious.
Sunday, February 20th, 2011 08:20 pm (UTC)
That looks quite yummy! I'm impressed with your ability to cook a whole duck. I've only managed duck breast so far.
Monday, February 21st, 2011 05:44 am (UTC)
Thank you for sharing the pictures. I looked up the recipe when you posted it, but there are too many ingredients (chief among them, the duck!) that I can no longer eat. Seeing the pictures and knowing the recipe means I can take a pretty good guess now.

Yum!