Ginger duck with sesame oil and rice wine
Old ginger fried slowly in sesame oil, then braised with duck in rice wine until tender — deeply warming, with cabbage added at the end to soak up the broth.
- 1 hr 40 min
- Serves 3
- Braise
- Medium
Why it suits you: Yang-deficient people feel the cold, with chilly hands and feet and an achy lower back, and Hanlu's cooler mornings and evenings are the time to start warming up. Duck nourishes yin but is slightly cool; plenty of old ginger and rice wine turn it into a warming dish, with angelica and red dates to build blood. Warming without being too drying, it suits Hanlu's dry air.
Method
Prep 20 min · Cook 80 min- 1Put the duck in a pan of cold water, bring to the boil and blanch for 5 minutes, then rinse and drain.
- 2Scrub the ginger, leaving the skin on, cut into thick slices and fry slowly in the sesame oil over a low heat for 10 minutes until curled and golden at the edges.
- 3Add the duck and stir-fry over a medium heat until dry and lightly browned, then splash in half the rice wine and toss.
- 4Add the remaining wine, the water, angelica, red dates and sugar, bring to the boil, then cover and braise over a low heat for 50 minutes until the duck is tender.
- 5Add the goji berries and the cabbage cut into wedges and cook for 5 minutes more; season with salt.
Cautions
- Rice wine, ginger and angelica are warming, so skip this with a dry mouth, sore throat, spots or a fever, and avoid it in pregnancy; if you don't drink, replace half the wine with water.
Chef's tips
- Fry the ginger slowly over a low heat until dry to bring out its flavour, and keep the heat gentle so the sesame oil doesn't turn bitter.
The TCM view
Duck is sweet, salty and slightly cool, nourishing yin and the stomach; a generous amount of pungent, warm old ginger warms the middle, dispels cold and offsets the duck's coolness. Rice wine is sweet, pungent and warm, freeing the blood vessels and dispersing cold; angelica builds and moves blood; red dates tonify the middle; sesame oil moistens dryness.
