Sichuan · Main
Zhangcha Ya
- Advanced
- 70 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with wood-smoke running underneath, real fire that builds and stays, trailing gentle sweetness.
Ingredients
- 1 whole duck, about 2.2 kg
- 25 g fine sea salt
- 6 g Sichuan peppercorns
- 30 ml Shaoxing wine
- 30 g ginger, sliced
- 3 spring onions, bruised
- 40 g jasmine tea leaves
- 60 g raw long grain rice
- 60 g soft brown sugar
- 15 g fresh camphor tree leaves, or dried cypress sprigs. Never camphor blocks, camphor oil or medicinal camphor of any kind
- 2 L groundnut oil
Equipment
Wok · Parchment
The skills inside
Wok techniqueDry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsSteaming: basket, leaf and lidSalted water & the float testThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: peanuts · 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
- Toast the Sichuan peppercorns and salt in a dry pan until the pepper smells of citrus, grind them coarsely, and rub the mix over and inside the duck with the wine. Tuck the ginger and spring onions into the cavity and cure it uncovered in the fridge for 24 hours. 600 min
- Line a wok with foil, tip in the tea, rice, sugar and camphor leaves, sit the duck on a rack above and clamp the lid on. Open a window and run the extractor hard, because 15 minutes of wok smoking will fill a kitchen. Smoke over medium heat for about 15 minutes, until the skin is the colour of weak coffee, and cut the heat the moment the smoke turns sharp instead of sweet. 15 min
- Steam the duck on a plate over hard boiling water for 1 hour 30 minutes, until a skewer meets no resistance in the thigh and the leg is loose in its socket. 60 min
- Cool the duck uncovered on a rack in the fridge until it is cold through and the skin feels like parchment, at least 4 hours and better overnight. This is not optional: a warm, damp bird will throw hot oil out of the pan. 240 min
- Warm the duck through at 200C (400F) until the thickest part of the thigh reads 74C (165F), 35 minutes to 45 minutes from cold, while the oil comes to 190C (375F). Lower it in and spoon oil over any part that stands proud, about 4 minutes, until the skin is dark, blistered and rigid. Drain, rest 5 minutes, and chop through the bone into 3 cm pieces. 35 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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