Roast duck mango salad

[abcdefg]

Summer is approaching fast and, as the days get warmer, a hearty salad sometimes hits the spot for supper. Here's one of my favorites. Cannot really call it Old School Yunnan cooking, but it nonetheless is a fine fusion of some classic local flavors. 

 

The duck was one of our prized Yiliang birds, purchased from the market for 25 Yuan. The type of bird and the method of cooking it are different from the more famous Beijing roast duck. The bird is very succulent, with crisp skin, partly attributed to being roasted in large, free-standing clay ovens. They originated east of Kunming, not far from Stone Forest in the small town of Yiliang 宜良县城 but now are widely found in Kunming as well. We old timey locals brag that they put Beijing ducks to shame.

 

The vendor usually  chops them into pieces for you, but today I asked him not to. Was a little surprised that it was a trick to find the right verb. They don't call it qie 切 or duo 剁，instead using kan 砍。"老板请不要砍" got the job done.   

 

 

 

(Remember you can click the photos to enlarge them.)

 

 

 

 

The mangoes were from Thailand, and cost 12 Yuan a kilo. Price will come down a little next month. These are "sheng de long" mangoes 圣德龙, a sweet, sought-after variety. The seller will help you select a couple that are ready now, today and tomorrow, and a couple others that will be ripe towards the end of the week. Took me most of my first mango season to master this simple trick of "strategic spaced purchasing." 

 

 

 

 

 

Transported my bounty home in the basket on the handlebars of my bike. Wasn't feeling terribly ambitious, but fortunately this dish is really easy to make and doesn't even require turning on the stove. 

 

Bought a sweet Bermuda onion 洋葱 and a small bunch of fresh cilantro with the stems 香菜。A crisp Asian cucumber 黄瓜 and a couple limes 青柠檬。These cucumbers are long with tender skin that isn't bitter. I only partly peel them. The limes have less bite than Chinese lemons. Rough cut half of the onion. 

 

 

This ginger is different from what is usually exported: it's fresh 生姜 instead of dried 老姜。It has a milder flavor; you can use more of it with impunity. Coarsely sliced a big piece of it, the size of two thumbs. Doesn't need to be peeled. 

 

 

 

I usually buy cucumbers from the same lady. For whatever reason, hers are always fresh and sweet.  She also has the bigger English-style cucumbers for sale; you can see them in the right front of her display. I partly skinned one Asian cucumber and cut it in half the long way. Scooped out the seeds with a spoon and sliced it into pencil-sized slivers. 

 

 

 

Put the cucumber and onion in a bowl, added salt and a pinch of sugar. Squeezed two limes and added the juice along with two tablespoons of olive oil. Cut a few stalks of fresh coriander, stems plus leaves.

 

 

 

Tossed it all together. 

 

 

 

 

Skinned and sliced one ripe mango 芒果。It was so sweet and juicy that it required considerable self control not to just wolf it down immediately and forget the rest of the meal.

 

 

 

 

Tossed it together with the vegetables, making sure the mango slices got well coated with lime juice. Let the flavors marry while cutting up the duck. 

 

 

 

I cut and tore the tender breast meat off the bone. One of the hallmarks of well-made duck is that the juices stay in the meat, trapped by the golden crispy skin. I added a sprinkle of salt. If you didn't have roast duck readily available, you could use roast chicken, although it wouldn't have quite as full a flavor. 

 

 

 

 

Home stretch now. Just toss it all together. This is enough for two hungry people as a main course. Great for a summer evening when you don't feel like firing up the wok. Hope you will give it a try before too long. You won't regret it. 

 

 

[abcdefg]

I just returned from a trip to northern Thailand, which might be why the mangoes caught my eye at the market yesterday. Even though now back in China, afraid I still have mangoes on the brain. It was peak mango season right when I was there, early May. 

 

Just couldn't stay away from that lovely mango sticky rice. Had it at every turn. Cost 50 Baht from street carts, and 120 at my hotel restaurant. But cheap at twice the price. What a terrific blend of flavors and textures. The rice was dusted with toasted yellow mung beans and drenched with concentrated coconut milk. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a glorious combination of textures and flavors. 

[Luxi]

I am soooo envious!

[Alex_Hart]

Makes me wish I ate meat! I guess the yellow mango would be too sweet without the balancing of the duck? Wonder if I could substitute something like 五香豆腐丝？

[Christa]

abcdefg, you are a Chinese food Jedi.

[abcdefg]

Thank you Luxi, Alex, and Christa! Glad you liked this one. I'm not sure what to suggest as a non-meat-eater's version. Although it's not the same, the mango sticky rice desert pictured above sure does hit the spot without involving any meat. 

[mungouk]

6 hours ago, Alex_Hart said:

Makes me wish I ate meat!

 

Same problem here. Maybe Tempeh, if you can get it in China? 

 

(I mean the Indonesian-style stuff which has bits of whole soy beans in it.   As opposed to Seitan which I always thought was similar,  but the wikipedia entry seems to focus on gluten-based mock-duck etc... any of those canned gluten-based mock meats are hideous in my experience.)

 

 

[Alex_Hart]

Tempeh is hard to find in China; I've seen it on some Taobao shops, but the shops never looked legit enough for me to try buying it. It definitely has a different flavor from seitan, but I would note that real seitan can be quite tasty if done properly. I don't think it would be appropriate for this dish, however. I'm thinking something like 五香豆腐丝 might be good - I use it often in 凉拌 dishes, but I haven't eaten roast duck in something like 5 years so I'm not really sure what it does in this dish. Is it there for texture, as abc mentions the skin several times? There are several vegetarian versions of "duck skin" available here ranging from seitan to fried sheets of 豆腐皮；the 薄脆 you find in 天津煎饼 could be another option. Or just peanuts.   

[abcdefg]

Now that you mention it, I'll bet that crispy fried tofu skin 脆豆腐皮 would be good in place of the duck, even though it wouldn't be quite the same. We are getting more and more of these real sweet and tender "sheng de long" Thai mangoes 圣德龙芒果 and the price is coming down. Maybe I will try it again this weekend, using the tofu.

 

Right now I'm enjoying a home-made mango-banana-lime smoothie, spiked with white rum. Makes me glad I bought a blender last year. Makes me glad I live in the balmy subtropical highlands of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. 

[Alex_Hart]

23 minutes ago, abcdefg said:

Right now I'm enjoying a home-made mango-banana-lime smoothie, spiked with white rum. Makes me glad I bought a blender last year. Makes me glad I live in the balmy subtropical highlands of the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau. 

We hit 38 degrees today. I think I need that blender more than you do! 

[mungouk]

Go mango!

 

[abcdefg]

Haha! I get it!