Name: Birthday Duck (窩燒鴨)
Yield: Serves 3–4 as a main course, 5–6 as part of a multicourse meal.
Cuisine: Chinese
Ingredients: 1 thumb-size piece fresh orange or tangerine peel, scraped clean of all white pith, or home-dried orange or tangerine peel (optional) about 10 cups boiling water, to cover; ⅓ cup water chestnut powder; 3 large egg whites, beaten to a light froth; 1 teaspoon corn or peanut oil; 4 tablespoons sugar; 2 tablespoons Chinese rice wine or quality, dry sherry; 6 tablespoons unseasoned Chinese or Japanese rice vinegar; ⅓ cup freshly toasted chopped almonds; 2 teaspoons cornstarch dissolved in 3 tablespoons cold water; sprigs of fresh watercress; 8-ounce can pineapple chunks, preserved in its own juice, no sugar added (to yield ½ cup pineapple purée); 1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine or quality, dry sherry; ⅓ cup cornstarch; 2 tablespoons thin (regular) soy sauce; 2 medium whole scallions, cut into 3-inch lengths; 3 quarter-size slices fresh ginger; 3½–4½ pound duck, fresh-killed best (weight after removal of head, neck, feet, wingtips, tail, and oil sacs); 1½ whole star anise, broken into points (to equal 12 points); 5–6 cups corn or peanut oil, for deep frying; 2 tablespoons coarse kosher salt; 1 large clove garlic, stem end removed, lightly smashed and peeled

Preparation info

Serves
3–4
as a main course .

Difficulty
Complex

Appears in

The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking

By Barbara Tropp

Published 1982

About

When I was a sophomore at Columbia, suffering through my second year of Chinese, my parents took me for my birthday to an elegant Chinese restaurant in Manhattan’s East Village. I had rehearsed my lines for a week, and when we walked through the door I looked brightly at the beautiful Chinese woman facing us and said—in what must have been preposterously bad Chinese—“We are three people. Have you table or not?” The woman beamed and led us to a table, then helped us to order a pressed duck g