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Roast Duck: Tips, Techniques & Tradition


Fat Guy

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I love roast goose, when I can get it.  Teochew style goose braised in soy sauce, cloves, 5 spice powder etc is available in some restaurants, but roast goose is harder to come by. My favourite Cantonese restaurant calls me whenver they have deliveries of geese and my (even more preferred) favourite pigeons- apparently the birds travel as hand luggage, so there is usually only 10 pigeons and even fewer geese each time.

I don't know why roast goose is not more commonly found. It may be that it is more fatty and gamy than duck. I know some people have problems with duck so goose would be unthinkable for them.

Where are you located/talking about?

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I love roast goose, when I can get it.  Teochew style goose braised in soy sauce, cloves, 5 spice powder etc is available in some restaurants, but roast goose is harder to come by. My favourite Cantonese restaurant calls me whenver they have deliveries of geese and my (even more preferred) favourite pigeons- apparently the birds travel as hand luggage, so there is usually only 10 pigeons and even fewer geese each time.

I don't know why roast goose is not more commonly found. It may be that it is more fatty and gamy than duck. I know some people have problems with duck so goose would be unthinkable for them.

Where are you located/talking about?

I am in Singapore. Actually I am a Malaysian, but am more or less permanently settled in Singapore.

My favourite Cantonese restaurant in Singapore (other than fancy Golden Peony in Conrad hotel) is Lei Garden on the 9th flr of the Orchard Plaza building. The other restaurant that serves Teochew braised goose is East Ocean restaurant, the mothership outlet is on the 2nd flr of the Shaw building on Scott's Rd. Coincidentally, East Ocean and Lei Garden are well known restaurant names in HK, so these are the overseas branches.

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I think the geese we find in New York, at least, are larger than the Hong Kong variety.This might explain why we do not see them much in Chinatown. I remember only one restaurant in Hong Kong where we had roast goose a few times. That was Yang Kee in Central and it was delicious. Generally speaking I find that duck has more flavor than goose, surprising really, as the meat is much darker. Since with both birds most of the flavor is in the fat, I sometimes wonder if the dense meat of the goose is less able to absorb the flavor from the fat when it is cooked. :unsure:

Ruth Friedman

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My favourite Cantonese restaurant in Singapore (other than fancy Golden Peony in Conrad hotel) is Lei Garden on the 9th flr of the Orchard Plaza building.

What floors should I avoid ? :biggrin:

anil

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My favourite Cantonese restaurant in Singapore (other than fancy Golden Peony in Conrad hotel) is Lei Garden on the 9th flr of the Orchard Plaza building.

What floors should I avoid ? :biggrin:

??? Floors, or you may know it as storeys.

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I can't speak to the specifics of the Chinese market, but I've read that the reason why you rarely see goose in the US is because unlike chickens, turkeys or ducks, geese can't be raised in the intensive, factory-style methods of poultry production that are dominant today; accordingly, there are few commercial goose producers. (That's also evidently why roast goose, once a staple of Christmas dinner, has been replaced by turkey.)

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  • 4 weeks later...

What Steve said. I love roast goose and would definitely order it at Bo Ky if I saw it on the menu.

Say, Makanmata, what a name. Whose eyes are you eating? :unsure::biggrin:

Selamat datang ke eGullet.

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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Say, Makanmata, what a name. Whose eyes are you eating?  :unsure:  :biggrin:

:biggrin::biggrin: Mata Mata is a Malay word for police. As children we used to call the police "Maa..Taa". So Makan Mata literally translates to "police who eats"!!!!Or a detective who sniffs out the good eats.

Other word for foodlovers: Makan kaki. Kaki is the word for leg, we use this word interchangeably with companions, e.g. mahjong kaki, football kaki .....

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I know mata-mata are police, but I've never heard "makanmata" as a policeman who eats or something.

This reminds me of the time when my mother told the proprietress in what became our favorite restaurant in Kuala Terengganu:

"Saya tak suka makan hati." (Literally "I don't like to eat liver"; idiomatically: "I don't like to eat [someone's - my] heart out.")

Her sympathetic response: "Siapa suka makan hati?" ("Who likes to eat one's heart out?")

Once my mother realized what she had said, we all had a good laugh about it, and she clarified that she meant chicken liver. :biggrin::biggrin:

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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I know mata-mata are police, but I've never heard "makanmata" as a policeman who eats or something.

This is a new word, or rather, slang. You would not find it in the official school text books, in fact, the teacher will probably penalise for use of this word.

There is a website called www.makansutra.com, started by a really nice photographer called KF Seetoh. His foodie friends and him eat their way around all the hawker centres in Singapore and rates them anonymously. These reviewers are called makanmata; it certainly sounds catchy!! :biggrin::biggrin:

Edited by tonkichi (log)
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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...
In Beijing it is called "Beijing ca ya",  I don't know if that is the right way to spell it, but that's how you say it. :unsure:

This translates to: Peking Roast Duck

When my wife and I still lived in Beijing I asked her why do they have two names Beijing and peking? She said she never heard of peking before. That would lead me to beileve that is just another western misinterpretation.

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In Beijing it is called "Beijing ca ya",  I don't know if that is the right way to spell it, but that's how you say it. :unsure:

This translates to: Peking Roast Duck

When my wife and I still lived in Beijing I asked her why do they have two names Beijing and peking? She said she never heard of peking before. That would lead me to beileve that is just another western misinterpretation.

basically that's probably right.

also, individuals you were talking to might not have been around when peking was more widely used among westerners.

or they weren't fluent enough in english at the time.

the growth in use of english in china is really only within the past 20 years, and the use of peking predates that.

the fact that a very popular dish emerged with peking in the name is just random chance.

can we end this? i'm chinese, and i actually never thought there was any major brouhaha over this until this thread popped up.

Herb aka "herbacidal"

Tom is not my friend.

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Not really a misinterpretation, justa different system of transliteration. Peking is the name transliterated using the Wade-Giles system, Beijing is pinyin.

The confusing system is that in Wade-Giles English letters are pronounced exactly the same as the equivalent characters in English, so if you were pronouncing Peking properly accord to the system it would sound like, well, Beijing. Of course when people don't it sounds like, er, Peking

cheerio

J

More Cookbooks than Sense - my new Cookbook blog!
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  • 5 months later...
Not really a misinterpretation, justa different system of transliteration. Peking is the name transliterated using the Wade-Giles system, Beijing is pinyin.

The confusing system is that in Wade-Giles English letters are pronounced exactly the same as the equivalent characters in English, so if you were pronouncing Peking properly accord to the system it would sound like, well, Beijing. Of course when people don't it sounds like, er, Peking

cheerio

J

this is correct, there are only a few times in China where Peking is still used, and the only 2 I can think of are Peking duck and Peking University

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  • 11 months later...

I was thinking of trying to make Peking duck for the first time at home. Now I know it won't be as good as at a restaurant, but I'd like to try. One problem I've run into in my planning, is finding a way to "plug" the duck's cavity. I understand the duck's cavity is filled to about 2/3 with water and then "plugged" to keep the flesh moist. How are they "plugged" in restaurants?

-- Jason

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I use poultry skewers to close the cavity. Pull up the "pope's nose" and tuck it into the cavity. Then pull one side flap of the bird to overlap the other side and secure it tightly with a metal skewer from one end of the cavity to the other end.

You may still lose some liquid, but more through seepage. The amount will vary, depending on whether you are hanging the duck or laying it on a rack to cook.

I hope you are putting in more than just water. :unsure:

Dejah

www.hillmanweb.com

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Peking duck is too difficult to replicate faithfully at home. In a restaurant, they have the proper ovens and several young cooks with lung power to inflate the quackers. :laugh: All that huffing and puffing, hanging and drying...ahh screw it :rolleyes: . For taste, Peking duck does not come close to a good duck done Cantonese style . The major aspect of eating Peking duck that appeals to me is having it served to me by a gorgeous young lady in a long forgotten restaurant in Hong Kong, hmm, all pulchritudinously wrapped in a tight chipao and white gloves :wink::wub:

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