Vincent and Mary Price Chinese Style Purple Plum Duck

Name: Vincent and Mary Price Chinese Style Purple Plum Duck
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 45 min
Total time: 1 h 15 min
Yield: 4 serving(s)
Ingredients: 4 lbs ducklings (1 bird, drawn weight); 1/2 cup soy sauce; 1/2 cup peanut oil; 1/2 cup canned purple plums, pitted, skinned, and mashed (syrup liquid reserved to equal 1/2 cup); 6 slices fresh ginger; 1/3 cup chopped green onion top; 1 garlic clove, mashed; 2 tablespoons Chinese duck sauce (optional, original recipe called for "Chinese sweet sauce") or 2 tablespoons brown sugar (optional, original recipe called for "Chinese sweet sauce"); 1/4 teaspoon salt; 1 -2 tablespoon cornstarch; 2 tablespoons plum juice

Submitted by Julesong

"From the vintage cookbook "Come into the Kitchen Cook Book" (1969) by Mary and Vincent Price comes an old Chinese style recipe that seems to have been popular amongst cooks of the 1960s. The chapter "Westward Empire" features recipes from 1820 to 1890, and includes Purple Plum Duck."

Download

Ready In:: 1hr 15mins
Ingredients:: 11
Serves:: 4

ingredients

4 lbs ducklings (1 bird, drawn weight)
¹⁄₂ cup soy sauce
¹⁄₂ cup peanut oil
¹⁄₂ cup canned purple plums, pitted, skinned, and mashed (syrup liquid reserved to equal 1/2 cup)
6 slices fresh ginger
¹⁄₃ cup chopped green onion top
1 garlic clove, mashed
2 2 tablespoons Chinese duck sauce (optional, original recipe called for "Chinese sweet sauce") or 2 tablespoons brown sugar (optional, original recipe called for "Chinese sweet sauce")
¹⁄₄ teaspoon salt
1 -2 tablespoon cornstarch
2 tablespoons plum juice

directions

Clean and disjoint the duck. Dip the duck into soy sauce.
Over high heat, cover the bottom of a heavy skillet with peanut oil to about 1/2 inch deep.
When the oil is hot ("sizzling") add the pieces of duck and brown it evenly on both sides. Remove duck from skillet and drain on paper towels, pour out extra fat from pan, then replace browned duck into pan. Lower temperature to medium low.
Mix the remainder of the soy sauce with the mashed canned plums, reserved plum syrup, ginger, chopped green onion, garlic, sweet sauce (if using), and salt. Pour the mixture over the browned duck pieces in the pan, cover, and let cook over slow heat for 30 minutes or until the duck is tender.
Mix together the cornstarch with 2 tablespoons plum juice and stir until smooth.
Remove the duck and thicken the sauce in the pan over low heat by gradually stirring in the cornstarch mixture. Cook until smooth and clear.
Pour the sauce over the duck and serve.
Re "Chinese sweet sauce": the recipe nor book do not give any further info on the "sweet sauce" used, but I imagine that such substitutions could be made as an Asian based sweet duck sauce, plum sauce, or simply a tablespoon of brown sugar for each tablespoon sweet sauce.
Note: in these health conscious days I would probably not use peanut oil to brown the duck, but rather olive oil. If I did use peanut oil, I certainly would not use 1/2 cup of it, as duck is a meat which is quite full of fat to begin with. It's up to you how you'd like to brown your duck and what amount of oil to use, but I've presented the recipe as originally given in the cookbook.

Questions & Replies

Got a question? Share it with the community!

Reviews

Have any thoughts about this recipe? Share it with the community!

RECIPE SUBMITTED BY

Julesong

Tukwila, 87

It's simply this: I love to cook! :) I've been hanging out on the internet since the early days and have collected loads of recipes. I've tried to keep the best of them (and often the more unusual) and look forward to sharing them with you, here. I am proud to say that I have several family members who are also on RecipeZaar! My husband, here as <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/39857>Steingrim</a>, is an excellent cook. He rarely uses recipes, though, so often after he's made dinner I sit down at the computer and talk him through how he made the dishes so that I can get it down on paper. Some of these recipes are in his account, some of them in mine - he rarely uses his account, though, so we'll probably usually post them to mine in the future. My sister <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/65957>Cathy is here as cxstitcher</a> and <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/62727>my mom is Juliesmom</a> - say hi to them, eh? Our <a href=http://www.recipezaar.com/member/379862>friend Darrell is here as Uncle Dobo</a>, too! I've been typing in his recipes for him and entering them on R'Zaar. We're hoping that his sisters will soon show up with their own accounts, as well. :) I collect cookbooks (to slow myself down I've limited myself to purchasing them at thrift stores, although I occasionally buy an especially good one at full price), and - yes, I admit it - I love FoodTV. My favorite chefs on the Food Network are Alton Brown, Rachel Ray, Mario Batali, and Giada De Laurentiis. I'm not fond over fakey, over-enthusiastic performance chefs... Emeril drives me up the wall. I appreciate honesty. Of non-celebrity chefs, I've gotta say that that the greatest influences on my cooking have been my mother, Julia Child, and my cooking instructor Chef Gabriel Claycamp at Seattle's Culinary Communion. In the last couple of years I've been typing up all the recipes my grandparents and my mother collected over the years, and am posting them here. Some of them are quite nostalgic and are higher in fat and processed ingredients than recipes I normally collect, but it's really neat to see the different kinds of foods they were interested in... to see them either typewritten oh-so-carefully by my grandfather, in my grandmother's spidery handwriting, or - in some cases - written by my mother years ago in fountain pen ink. It's like time travel. Cooking peeve: food/cooking snobbery. Regarding my black and white icon (which may or may not be the one I'm currently using): it the sea-dragon tattoo that is on the inside of my right ankle. It's also my personal logo.

View Full Profile