31. 武鸣柠檬鸭 (wǔ míng níng méng yā)
Wuming Lemon Duck
This one I take personally. I’ve written about it here before, so I’ll just summarise.
武鸣 (wǔ míng), Wuming is a town south of Nanning city, Guangxi’s capital. It is very much a Zhuang stronghold and is considered to be the source of the southern dialect of the Zhuang dialect. At some time in the 1980s, a local speciality was born. Precisely who was responsible is open to debate (I suspect it just evolved and there is no one inventor) but it is certainly clear who popularised it.
One of my closest friends is from Nanning, but her maternal family home is Wuming. In high school, she had a classmate, also originally from Wuming, whose grandfather had a tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Nanning. Early on, his daughter, classmate’s mother introduced the dish to the restaurant and it became widely popular. Now that hole-in-the-wall is a hugely successful chain with several branches in Nanning and beyond. There is a branch here in Liuzhou.
Not a Hole-in-the-Wall. They've got their own walls now. Several of them.
I first tasted the dish in 2008 in their flagship restaurant when the classmate hosted my friend and I along with a couple of other friends. Details of that meal are here.
The dish, 武鸣柠檬鸭 (wǔ míng níng méng yā), Wuming Lemon Duck, consists of stir fried duck with preserved lemon and spices. The lemons can take years to reach perfection in their eyes. I have a couple at home which are now 25 years old! Just about ready, I guess! There is a recipe for making the lemons written by my friend here
Zhuang Preserved Lemons
Finally, there is a recipe for the finished dish, wrested from the restaurant by guile, deceit and fraud. The internet now has a few recipes, too. I’ve just spent the morning reading them. They are all garbage. One even insists on Peppadews, as if Nanning is in South Africa! Idiots.
