For the Love of Duck

Xuan, a friend who was a visiting instructor from China, and I passed a duck pond once in Carlisle, PA.  She asked me if anyone ever stole the ducks.  At the time, I thought it an odd idea - because, of course, most Americans don't give the ducks much thought at all.  Now that I've lived on the other side, though, I see just where she was coming from...and the culinary possibilities we westerners are ignoring. So much so that I seriously considered writing this post as an ode.

My appreciation for the deliciousness of duck is at an all-time high.  The meat is delectable, of course - and in Beijing, Todd and I had one of those memorable-for-a-lifetime meals of lean Peking roast duck, expertly carved, crispy skin separated from succulent flesh with an artist's hand, that we still talk about often.  Indeed, one of China's trademark meals is roast duck resting atop steamed white rice, which can be found from fancy restaurants to the eastern equivalent of fast food joints.  And yet...there is so much more to a duck than just its meat.  Living in China has taught me to devour animal parts that I previously didn't consider edible.  With just the duck as an example, let's talk about:

Duck blood  

Trust me, I didn't want it when I first heard of it, either.  In fact, I turned it down when Nicky suggested it during my second Thanksgiving in China.  Mistake.  When Melody and I went to Nanyue with Pei Pei a few weeks later and were making our way though the spread on the round table, there was one dish in particular that made both of our tastebuds, and the angels above, sing.  (Cue "Hallelujah.")  It turned out that this miraculous concoction was 血鸭 xue ya, or duck in its own blood - tender hunks of meat simmered in a sauce of spices, peppers, ginger, and...well, its own blood, which is actually more brown than red.  I began to order this dish whenever I saw it - as an after-school dinner with colleagues, for Christmas lunch... Though there was a good twist on blood duck in Hongjiang, the best one so far is from a place Stacy introduced near Nanhua University, a mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall down a narrow, twisting alley, run by a Chinese Uncle Nick.  It's worth the headache to find it when the duck arrives, in a large iron pan, blood frothy, meat sizzling, less bones than other varieties.  Todd should do an internship at this joint just to learn this dish. One has to learn to make it in the spring (it requires a duck less than two years old, which apparently can't be confirmed in the winter).  Beer duck is famous, beer duck is good, but this, this is the dish that did it for all other duck parts.  

Duck tongue  

Don't gag.  Spicy basil duck tongue, duck tongues Sichuan-style with five spices...duck tongue is a little crunchier than one might imagine at first.  It comes with the two ceratobranchiale (I googled the anatomy of a duck tongue) still attached - two little spindly cords hanging off the muscle itself, making it look somewhat like a silly putty wishbone.  If you're like me, you probably never thought once about ducks having tongues until (perhaps right now) someone put the idea right in front of you.  Most likely, you've never thought about eating one.  You should.  Duck tongue was my favorite snack for a good while.  The students and I ordered it online and it arrived in little vacuum-sealed pouches, marinating in peppers.

Duck neck

At the local supermarket, I really enjoyed getting the ready-made duck wraps.  They came with plum sauce, sliced cucumber and scallion, and little rice paper circles.  Often, the butcher would chop up half a cooked duck right in front of the customer.  At first, I only enjoyed the skin, meat, and ribs...but eventually, because I always saw people on trains eating them with little plastic gloves, I decided to try the neck.  It's  difficult to eat, yes - but the trick is to hold the ends of the spine between one's fingers and bite in the middle of the vertebrae cogs.  There's quite a bit of meat in there, and it's tender and delicious.  Duck neck can be bought in little pouches as a snack, or snagged with tongs at little take-out buffets of cold food.  As far as I can tell, it's one of the few foods in China that are usually eaten cold.

Duck skin

As noted above, in the gourmet world, duck skin is often served crispy, and separated from the moist duck meat with a sharp knife before being laid gently atop it.  In the grocery store and the train stations, however, one can buy thick, fatty duck skin all by itself, in - you guessed it - little foil pouches.  The dimpled, pimply flesh, feathers removed, slightly dried with just a hint of spice, is another snacking delicacy.  I've even seen it advertised on buses.  The Sinhua company has quite the monopoly.

Duck legs  

These don't sound so odd and don't merit much of an explanation beyond "duck drumsticks," but really, when was the last time you saw one?  On your dinner plate or in a bag next to the potato chips?

Duck paws

I still consider duck feet the hardest part of the animal to consume, based solely on the sheer level of difficultly rather than any lingering aversion to their ingestion.  There is no meat on a duck foot - just a thin layer of skin, cartilage, a single nail, and many teeny tiny bones.  It's hard to be elegant when eating a duck foot, especially with chopsticks.  Yet, the Chinese are so good at it, leaving nothing behind but a clean little pile of bones on the floor by their plastic streetside stool.  I can barely even bite off a section, much less work it clean in my mouth.  I am always tickled by the fact, however, that even English teachers adorably refer to the duck's feet as "paws."  Ever since Kitty encouraged (pressured) me to buy some in Fujian, I've had more practice and have gotten much better.

Duck eggs  

When one is too impatient to wait for the duck to actually exist, one can eat duck eggs.  They're more flavorful than chicken eggs by a long shot.  They're a little bigger, a little darker, and, sadistically, often served with the duck itself.  One of my favorite treats is the salty duck egg - not a duck egg sprinkled with salt, mind you, but a duck egg more or less "marinated" in it for a considerable length of time. Naturally, one can buy these in little pouches, too, for convenient travel.

Even after all this preaching, though, I'm still not quite a fan of duck kidneys.  I tried them, and they aren't bad - they're much better in a restaurant dish than from a foil pouch - but the texture of organ meat isn't really my thing.

The bottom line here is this:  If the ducks go missing from your local hospital pond, don't call the police - come over for dinner.