Cantonese · Main
Siu Ngo
- Advanced
- 70 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, acid holding everything up to the light, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 1 young goose, about 3.5 kg
- 60 g ground bean sauce
- 25 g caster sugar
- 6 g five spice powder
- 20 g ginger, finely grated
- 6 cloves garlic, crushed
- 4 spring onions, bruised
- 30 ml Shaoxing wine
- 12 g fine sea salt
- 3 L boiling water
- 80 g maltose
- 100 ml rice vinegar
- 40 ml hot water
Equipment
Parchment · Sheet pan · Grater / zester
The skills inside
Allergen screen
Found: alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Mix the bean sauce, sugar, five spice, ginger, garlic, spring onions, wine and salt to a thick paste, push it all into the cavity, and sew or skewer the opening tightly shut so that not a drop can run out.
- Separate the skin from the breast: work a pump nozzle in at the neck and inflate until the skin stands clear of the meat, then knot the neck flap. Sit the bird in a colander in the sink and ladle the boiling water over it in slow passes, front, back and both flanks, until the surface blanches and draws tight. Blot it dry.
- Stir the maltose into the vinegar and hot water until it runs off the spoon in a thread, paint the bird all over, let that coat go tacky, then paint it again. Stand it uncovered on a rack in the fridge for 12 hours. It is ready when the skin has gone stiff and slightly see through, like parchment stretched on a frame. 600 min
- Sit the goose breast up on a rack with a tray of water beneath to quench the drips. Give it 30 minutes at 200C (400F), then turn the oven down to 170C (340F) and carry on for 1 hour 30 minutes to 2 hours, until the thickest part of the thigh reads 82C (180F). 30 min
- Rest 15 minutes, then snip the stitches over a bowl and let the cavity liquid pour out. Taste it, and if it has reduced to a glaze let it down with a splash of hot water or stock until it pours. Chop the goose through the bone and spoon the liquid over. 15 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Blanching & shocking 76 recipes
- A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
- Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
- The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
- It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
- Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.
Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Syrah (northern Rhône) or Nebbiolo
- Also Right
- The braising wine itself, better bottle
- From the Taps
- Belgian dubbel
- Zero-Proof
- Beet & blackcurrant shrub
Long-cooked beef trades bite for depth: savory, structured reds echo the pot; and pouring the braise’s own region is law.
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