How Not To Wind-Dry a Duck

One of my most frequently used cookery books is Fuchsia Dunlop's excellent Sichuan Cookery. At the moment though, I don't feel there is much point in reproducing her recipes here. Unless you live near a good Chinese supermarket, you won't be able to find many of the ingredients. Even if you do, there are two key ingredients, Sichuan peppercorns and Facing Heaven chillis, which are almost unobtainable in this country. To be fair, it is fairly easy to get hold of the former, but they are almost tasteless, and they bear as much resemblance to the real thing as tinned spagetti hoops do to handmade pasta. Facing Heaven chillis can seldom even be found in ersatz form. In theory The Spice Shop (see my links section) both items, but in practice they rarely have the chillis and more often than not sell the easily obtainable inferior peppercorns. Luckily for me my brother lives in China and brings me lethally strong peppercorns, and I have had some success growing the Facing Heaven chillis myself.

Anyway, back to that duck: Sichuanese Roast Duck to be precise. This calls for some advance planning, not normally a feature of my cooking. Having bought the duck a day in advance, you stuff it and leave it to marinate overnight. The next day you pour some boiling water over it, dry it off, brush it with a glaze mixture and "hang it up in a cool place to wind-dry (I hang mine outside a north-facing window)... ...Leave the duck to dry for at least 6 hours until the skin feels papery". Our house doesn't have a north-facing window, but it does have some east-facing guttering. I hung my duck from this with a meathook, worrying about what the neighbours might think. The day was overcast and without wind, but at least it was dry. However, six hours later the duck was no more dry than when I had hung it up, although it had attracted a few flies. I then decided that wind was the missing component and brought the duck in to the conservatory. Here there is an electric fan heater. I hung the duck from a mop resting on two chairs and placed the fan heater nearby. When I returned an hour later to check on progress, I found a pool of fat under the duck. The fan heater was too hot and was gently cooking the duck. At this stage I gave up and proceeded with the rest of the recipe, ie put it in the oven. Happily it turned out quite well, so maybe all that wind-drying is unnecessary.