Tea smoked duck with smoked walnuts

4 servings

Ingredients

Quantity Ingredient
¼ cup Soy sauce
2 tablespoons Chinese Black Tea
2 tablespoons Szechuan peppercorns; toasted and crushed
1 teaspoon Five spice powder
3 cups Water
1 Whole duckling (4.5 lbs); split
12 Whole walnuts; unshelled
½ cup Chinese Black Tea
½ cup Hickory chips
½ cup Brown sugar; packed
Chinese plum sauce
Mandarin pancakes or flour tortillas
6 Scallions

Directions

Mix soy sauce, 2T black tea, peppercorns, and five-spice powder with 3 cups of water.

Remove all visible fat from duck halves. Place duck in non-reactive bowl.

Cover with tea mixture and add additional water if necessary to barely cover. Crack walnuts lightly, but leave in shell and add to marinade.

Marinate, refrigerated for 24 hours.

Mix ½ cup black tea, hickory chips, and brown sugar. Put in smoker tray.

Smoke-cook duck at 200F for about 2 hours or until meat thermometer registers 170F at thickest point. Add cracked walnuts to the smoker 15 minutes before duck is ready.

Preheat broiler. Remove duck and walnuts. Shell walnuts. Broil duck briefly skin side up to crisp skin if desired. Slice from bone and serve with Chinese plum sauce, mandarin pancakes, whole scallions and smoked walnuts.

Serve warm or at room temperature.

NOTES : This recipe is verbatim from the Cookshack cookbook. Here are the changes I usually make:

1. Often, I leave out the walnuts and it still is great. 2. Rather than crisping the skin under a broiler, I use a propane torch to give a more uniform result. 3. I prefer flour tortillas (the small, handmade ones from Trader Joes that I steam-heat in the Freshomatic). The paper-thin mandarin pancakes you can get frozen at Asian stores dry out very quickly. 4. I prefer duck sauce over plum sauce for this dish. 5. I jullienne the scallions. 6. Each person makes their own "taco" by spreading a little duck sauce on the tortilla, then adding a few pieces of duck and some slivers of scallion.

Recipe by: Smoked Foods Cookbook, Vol⅒ by Cookshack Posted to bbq-digest by Bill Ackerman <ackerman@...> on Apr 8, 1999, converted by MM_Buster v2.0l.

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