The waxed ducks have landed!

Forgive the title. I am very excited to see Chinese New Year delicacies in the shop today.

The above are two pieces of waxed duck drumsticks imported from China. I was at the dried food stuffs shop and the shipment has just arrived. The kind old Chinaman owner gladly hacked open a tin to sell me two pieces. Cost only RM7.60. This shop has such good business that even before Chinese New Year, all their stocks will be sold off. One cannot get waxed ducks at other time, other than Chinese New Year.

Well, I better start eating them now before the bird-flu scare blows out of proportion and then, everyone will have to say bye-bye to all kind of birds, ducks included.

Frankly, I have no idea why they are called waxed duck. Probably, in the olden times, these ducks are air-dried by the dry north winds in China and then the ducks are coated with wax to preserve them. Now, all I see are lots of fats and salt. I bet these ducks are dried using modern factory equipments.

To prepare the duck, usually I would soak them in water for a long time to remove salt. After that, I trim off all the fats. Then, I boil them for a while to remove even more fats. Once done, there are several ways to enjoy them:

1. Throw the whole piece into the rice cooker while cooking rice. The rice will have a nice aroma with some oil.

2. Pull off the meat and cut into small pieces. Steam the meat with some sigoo. Add some sugar, rice wine and cut chillies. The bones can be used to boil soup with dried, preserved vegetables.

3. Cook yam rice with them.

I am planning to cook lotus-leaf wrapped rice with yam and waxed duck. If you have more recipes to share, please tell me.

Gee, the ducks got me drooling rather than the turkeys.