Recipe - Information: Banquet Dishes

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ALTHOUGH many Chinese banquet dishes are within the range of the home
cook, several are not often prepared at home because they demand special
skills and facilities. These include shark's fin and bird's nest soups,
Winter Melon Pond and Peking Duck.

Shark's fin soup, for example, requires particular culinary skills to
produce a dish which is creamy, yet not heavy; rich in fragrance, yet still
mild; with the shark's fin soft and gelatinous, but not completely
dissolved. Bird's nest soup, made with one of the rarest and most expensive
of Chinese ingredients, must also be delicately prepared and served in a
festive setting to match its rarity. Winter Melon Pond (a soup cooked right
in the melon itself) poses physical rather than culinary problems. The
melon's cumbersome size requires expansive stove facilities, and a strong
back is needed to transfer the melon's great weight to the table when the
soup is done.

The most demanding of all is Peking Duck. Considered one of the greatest
Chinese dishes and the high point of every Peking banquet, it calls for
special cooking facilities and training on the part of the cook. It also
calls for a specific breed of duck, known as Imperial Peking.

In China, students of the Peking cuisine were required to take a oneyear
course devoted exclusively to the art of preparing Peking Duck. In addition
to mastering the actual cooking techniques, they learned to raise and
fatten the birds: the ducks were forcefed and housed in small cages to
keep them inactive so that they would be plump and tender. The apprentice
cooks also learned to slaughter and dress the ducks: the heads and necks
had to be intact and the birds wetdressed (plucked, singed and drawn while
freshly killed), with the innards carefully removed so that the skin
remained smooth and unbroken.

Peking Duck has no peer among barbecued ducks. Its skin is uniquely crisp,
fragrant, glistening and golden. The secret of the skin's special quality
is airair which is forced or pumped between the skin and meat of the
breast before roasting. This air, introduced through a shallow cut made in
the side of the neck, is blown under the skin until the entire duck is
inflated. Originally this was done directly or through a paper straw; now
mechanical blowers are used. (The bird's neck is tightly tied with string
and the bottom opening sewn or sealed to prevent the air's escape.)

The inflated duck is next scalded with boiling water, brushed with a
maltsugar or honey syrup and hung up to dry in a cool, airy place until
its skin is quite hard. (Under ideal conditions and at controlled room
temperatures, this drying process takes about 24 hours.) The duck is then
suspended vertically in a special cylindrical pit made of brick or
concrete, or in a heavy insulated restauranttype barbecue box. It is
roasted overmoderate heat until glistening and golden.

The skin, which is the primary delicacy, is cut from the duck in small
squares or rectangles and either arranged on a serving platter or placed
back on the duck in its original form. It is eaten immediately after
roasting, while still hot and crisp (accompanied by steamed buns and small,
thin, flat wheatcakes called Peking doilies; and by scallions and a dip,
usually hoisin sauce). The tender meat, which is of secondary interest, is
cut up and served later in the banquet as a separate dish, or else eaten at
another meal entirely.

From The Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook, ISBN 0517658704. Downloaded
from Glen's MM Recipe Archive, http://www.erols.com/hosey.