Following four months of travel in Central and South America, I spent the summer of 2006 living in Cape Town, South Africa. I showed up without a plan and within two days found a job serving at the Thai restaurant, Pon’s Noodle Bar, across the street from the apartment I shared with a friend in the Gardens neighborhood.
While I immediately liked working at Pon’s, it was evident within days that I didn’t walk away from my two summers at the Pita Pit with extensive serving experience, as my resume may have suggested. “You’ve never actually been a waitress, have you?” the manager asked me with his thick Africaans accent. “Well, not exactly, no.” They agreed to keep me on because what I lacked in serving ability I made up for in enthusiasm and foreign charm.
The pay was atrocious. The salary for one night of work (5pm until up to 1am) amounted to less than the cost of an issue of The Economist, which I, subsequently, rarely purchased. If I made decent tips, though, three nights of work would cover my food and (somewhat excessive) drink for the week. It wasn’t a bad deal.
Pon’s served pretty traditional Thai fare – noodle dishes and curries, coconut soup and various fried appetizers. Because it was in ample supply in South Africa, Ostrich had its own section the way Chicken and Beef did. There was one dish on the menu that I never ordered (it cost the same as my pay) but always salivated over in the kitchen: Crispy Duck with Hoisin.
I finally ordered it the night before I was set to leave on a three-week trip through Namibia. As predicted, it was heaven. The duck skin was perfectly crisp, the meat, tender and delicious. And the hoisin sauce… There is no better combination than crispy duck and hoisin.
I thought about the duck all the way through Namibia. When I introduced myself to the tour group I even told them about it – “When you get back to Cape Town, you have to go there and you have to try the duck.” It should be noted, though, that I do have a tendency to ramble during go-around-the-room-and-say-something-about-yourself moments.
I did get to eat Pon’s crispy duck one last time before leaving South Africa for good. The kind Thai owner of the restaurant, Khan, wouldn’t even accept my money.
With time, the memory of the Crispy Duck began to fade, until one fateful night in February at Chinatown Brasserie. This restaurant did accept my money, in fact, they wanted lots of it. But when the taste of duck dunked in hoisin hit my lips I would have paid any price. They serve their Peking Duck on a platter with sliced cucumbers and scallions, accompanied by their homemade Mandarin pancakes. You roll the whole party up moo shu-style and take no prisoners.
We decided last week that it was time to take crispy duck into our own hands. I own a Jamie Oliver cookbook called Jamie’s Dinners (Christmas ’07 – Thanks Mom!), and in the sandwich section he offers a very simple and surprisingly quick recipe for at-home peking duck. Favoring the simplicity of Jamie’s recipe over the bike pump inflating complexity of the Cooks Illustrated version, we decided to try it.
At 325 degrees, our duck needed only about 2 hours and 20 minutes. The skin wasn’t perfectly crispy and the meat was a teeny bit overdone, but we had pancakes from Happy Family (the Chinese restaurant around the corner), sliced scallions, cucumbers and hoisin, which made for a very satisfying at-home meal.
The duck cost $20 at Citarella (on the Upper West Side) and we had a ton of leftover meat and skin. With all the fixin’s the price tag still came in under $30. For a first attempt we were happy, but next time I’ll try the bike pump, if only just to see what an inflated uncooked duck looks like.
Also, check out how much duck fat we rendered as it cooked. This came in very handy for frying the duck spring rolls we made the next night…
make dinner tonight and bring your lunch tomorrow 