Duck Stew - Weds, 13th Feb 2008

Here are the simple ingredients to make the stew.

Brown the duck carefully on all sides and add ginger, garlic and shallots to the hot duck oil.

Add mixture of oyster sauce, dark soy, sugar, five spice powder, black pepper and water. You can add star anise and a cinnamon stick but I didn't.

Oops, with my mind wandering all over the place, I forgot the red preserved bean curd,

so I had to fry it separately in a pan and add it onto the duck AFTER I had poured the sauce over it.

The preserved bean curd should have gone into the pan after the ginger, garlic and shallots have browned slightly.

Here is the duck braising slowly in the gravy.

And here it is resting - when it has cooled I will pop it into the fridge to store and to allow the flavours to steep into the duck and develop further. Update when we eat the duck, either tomorrow or day after.

That's just ginger on top of the duck, I put them into the cavity after this pic was taken and poured quite a bit of sauce inside too.

p.s Don't mind the newspapers, metal guards, etc, in the background - I was cooking in the garden and wanted to protect the table from oil spills, etc.

p.p.s. I actually wanted to make duck confit with a closely guarded secret recipe but changed my mind as I didn't think I could cook/concentrate properly now with all these issues coursing through my mind. But I will give it a go as soon as I have solved them all!