Noodle pulling was my first ever blog. Whenever the restaurant has been quiet though, i have always knocked up a quick batch of dough to see if i could improve the basic recipe of water and flour. Was there a problem with the initial recipe? in theory there wasn't, however i always felt that the cooked end product was always a bit on the mushy side. This may be the desired finish as i had a bowl of similar end product at a very famous London restaurant a while back.
I was always stuck in the dilemma of 'is it authentic?' Then recently i was having a chat to a student when i found myself, completely unintentionally advising him that 'regardless of tradition, its more important that you like the taste of the end product.' I took this advice home with me and subsequently whipped up a batch of noodle flour with the addition of an egg! yes, you've got it, contrary to the thousands of recipes that i have searched through over the years for Chinese pulled noodles, i decided to add an egg. I'm sure that there are many village Chinese chefs spitting at the screen whilst reading this, asking themselves 'why waste an egg on noodles when you can use it as a garnish instead?' I DONT CARE! the egg created a texture that was similar to that of Italian pasta, it pulled easily and in my opinion had a better mouth feel.
So without further delay, the recipe is as follows:
100g plain flour.
400g strong bread flour
1 beaten egg.
enough bottled water to create a wet dough.
pinch of salt
why am i using bottled water? well, London's tap water is filtered through limestone and therefore inherently is quite alkali in composition. In using bottled water, we are making up the dough using a neutral pH solution. But the addition of alkali is important in increasing the hydration of the flour proteins you ask? (if your a geek) well, egg white is weakly alkali, and i have found that it is alkali enough to serve the purpose more accurately then the previously added Potassium carbonate or Kansui solution.
The mixture needs to be kneaded in a mixer for 12 minutes and then rested for 1 hour before pulling. The end result however is incredible. Its fun to pull and the noodles have a fantastic bite and texture after blanching.
The past week has been quite the revelation for me professionally. The event that took place has restored my faith in chefs, more importantly though 'Chinese chefs'. I was having a lovely lunch when my dear friend invited me into the kitchen to have a chat with the chef responsible for their roasted meats. I was expecting the same old, familiar routine of looking around, asking a few questions, having blank faced responses and then a 'sorry i cant tell you' bullshit from the chef. To my amazement though, it was the complete opposite. I was faced with a chef that was welcoming my interest in his work and was openly telling me the processes that he took the meat through to achieve the fantastic end products. This was my equivalent of winning the lottery, i could not believe what was taking place before my very eyes. The dishes that i had been experimenting with over the past few years were about to have a grand impetus of fact and theory. I wanted to whip out my notepad right there, but i thought that it might scare the chef into thinking i was an immigration officer so i withheld the temptation. I was all ears............
Suckling pig.
i. Blanch the whole pig in boiling water.
ii. Brush on the wet marinade which i think is made up of 2 tsp maltose, 2 tsp red vinegar, 2 tsp white vinegar, 1.5 tabs water, 1.5 tabs chinese rice wine.
iii. Dry in front of a fan until the skin feels like leather.
iv. Cook in a low heated oven for 2-3 hours (the inside of the piglet will have black, charred bits so i assume that the temperature is about 150C)
v. If there are any blisters on the skin forming, pierce them from the inside of the piglet to allow the built up oil to leak out meat side.
vi. Dry the pig and freeze until needed.
vii. Defrost the piglet and dry in front of a fan again until really dry to the touch and tough in touch.
viii. Over a soft and then high heat, blast the piglet until the skin crisps up and the beautiful glass like crackling is formed.
Pork belly.
i. Let a stock pot filled with boiling water and add 1 percent soda, otherwise known as sodium bicarbonate.
ii. submerge the belly in the boiling water and take off the fire for 1 hour to partially cook through.
iii. Wash the belly in cold water/
iv. Poke holes using the Chinese torture tool.
v. Brush on some lemon juice onto the skin and then add some salt and soda to the skin, rubbing deeply.
vi. Rub the flesh side with duck spice mix.
vii. Hang up the belly in front of a fan until it is completely dry.
viii. Roast over a high temperature and blacken the pork belly.
ix. remove the belly and scrape away the black, charred crust leaving you with an amazingly crunchy skin and moist meat.
i cant thank the chef enough for being so generous with his knowledge, the idea of using soda powder as a meat tenderizer is not a foreign concept as i have seen it done in restaurants to make beef topside texturally similar to fillet.(at a tenth of the cost) However, i had never come across a pork belly recipe that used it. Most cook books describe how one should braise the belly first before crisping the skin. Its all just an another example of how people love posting recipes, claiming authenticity when in fact, they are about as Chinese as sesame prawn toast. (good luck finding bread in China back in the day)
I never thought that i would find myself saying this, but thank you Chef for passing on your knowledge. Do not fear, i do not intend to use this knowledge to steal your job and make your homeless. I merely want this knowledge to aid my culinary education in the hope that one day, after first being able to roast these meats as well as you and as consistently as you, to maybe find new ways of heightening these dishes to the next level. Maybe find a suckling pig recipe that creates the same glass like skin, but a more moist flesh. (ive been trying it already by confitting pork belly for 12 hours at 60C and then finishing in a pan) thank you, thank you, thank you!
ps. having just come back from Hotelolympia, i have just had my first interaction with a new age combi oven from Rationale. All i can say is 'fuck me!' those things are about one silicon chip away from telling chefs to 'piss off' when they do something stupid. The oven had 61 languages programmed into it, it has humidity controllers, self cleaning facilities and even has a program in it called 'Beijing duck' (how very politically correct of them). After listening to the sales speal, i must honestly share with all my Chinese peers working in restaurants around London that these things really are the future. Throw those traditional, over sized, bullet shaped duck ovens away, they don't talk, they don't walk, and more importantly they are inconsistent. I'm awaiting an afternoon to carry out some Peking duck trials in one and i can barely contain my excitement. yeeeehaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!
I found the following article online and it really epitomized the Chinese mentality to me: Do whatever to get maximum output. There is a fact that is left out of the article though, the fact that the workers can completely debone a chicken foot in 4 seconds. Give any chef in the world a chicken foot and i can guarantee that if they even knew how to tackle it, it would take them at least 10 minutes. Speed is the key being that they get paid per foot deboned. Im sure that you are all disgusted by the fact that there were traces of saliva and Hepatitis on the produce. However, i can assure you of this, once the inspector has either been paid off and passed the factory with government certificates, i promise you that the workers will rip off their gloves, put the knives to one side and start gnawing away again. The frozen packs of chicken feet that you see in China town probably come from the same factory (closing a factory in China is only a PR thing, money can buy anything). How can this product get into the UK, well like most 'exotic' products from China, dried scallops, sharks fins, dried abalone, bleached flour, they are barred from entering the UK. However, if a Chinese supplier was to bypass UK importation law non EU countries by delivering to Holland first (all European goods coming into the UK usually get held up at the major ports in Holland before being allowed through the boarder) the UK have very little problems with permitting its entrance into the country considering that it is a delivery from a 'fellow EU country'. My opening statement epitomized the Chinese mentality to me as these rules on trade epitomize the British mentality; if you cant see the problem, it doesn't exist and therefore there is no problem to fix. Can hepatitis be removed from heating a product?? my guess is that it probably can, therefore finding traces of it on the raw product do not in fact lead to the conclusion that it is present in the packaged goods.
Well, make your own decisions, im going to keep on ordering them and more to the point, continue to research their uses in the search of my perfect chicken foot dish, sorry i meant 'phoenix claw.'
CHINA: Processing plant closed after workers found deboning chicken with their teeth
By: just-food.com editorial team | 5 August 2002
Health officials acting on a tip-off raided a food-processing plant in the south-western city of Chengdu last week, to discover that workers were using their teeth to debone chicken feet of meat intended for sale to restaurants.
The officials' report explained that they entered the plant to find two women gnawing at chicken claws beside a basket full of bones.
One worker told the officials that the act of deboning by teeth was an efficient procedure. Common practice at the plant was for workers to half-boil the feet in water, slit along three spots with a knife then remove the bones with their teeth. It only takes four to five seconds for a fast worker to debone one foot, meaning that it is possible to "process" over 100kg of chicken feet every day.
The officials have now closed the plant however and are trying to locate its owner. They confiscated over 250kg of chicken feet after discovering traces of saliva. Some of the workers carried Hepatitis B, which can be spread by body fluids.
Blandest thing on the menu right? correct! however there are reasons. The majority of those packaged tofus that you see in oriental supermarkets are imported from Asia. The very fact that the expiry date is some time 2013 probably allows us to assume that it was probably made months and months ago. Would you expect a piece of beef to retain good flavour if it was left in a box for 10 months before consumption? If you ever have the urge to burden yourself with the most annoying process in the world, give tofu making a go! it is however definitely worth it. Fresh tofu does have nutty notes and a really unique texture that is a million miles away from the almost rubbery texture you may be familiar with.
I bet your expecting me to leave you a recipe right? WRONG. I have spent the last 3 days pissing about with dried soya beans and a chemical called GYPSUM powder, apparently some derivative from a rock that is actually calcium sulphate. All i know is that if you eat too much, your teeth begin to feel like they are erroding.
So if im not going to leave you with a recipe, whats the point of this posting? My tofu experience is just another example of how the world of molecular gastronomy is but a refinement of oriental cooking methods, whether it be the use of various gelling agents such as gelatine, agar agar or carageenan, or the mysterious case of the soup filled Shanghai dumpling,or the use of milk curds which seems to be so popular these days at Noma, Elbulli etc. (effectively the process that has been used for hundreds of years in China for making bean curd skins) or even the use of every type of starch under the sun from wheat starch to tapioca starch to sweet potato starch. Chinese cuisine is so much more then just chilli, spring onion and ginger, the science behind some of the processes would humble even the likes of Heston.
Why the video at the top of the posting? well, most of the video is pretty irrelevant, barring the part at 1 minute 10 seconds when the trampy looking village boy appears to put a microscope up to his face and look at something. What is he doing, and why is he looking at the stars whilst at work in the tofu factory? Well, having unsuccessfully been attempting to make tofu, i found a little part of recipe in 'modernist cuisine' that said that the beancurd mixture must have a Brix reading between 10-12. Thats right! our village boy, although dressed as though he was getting ready to mop the place down, was in fact using a REFRACTOMETER to measure the Brix reading of the tofu, to ensure that is was of the correct water content before adding the coagulating agent. Who uses one of them? well if you were travel the land, you would probably find that the only chefs who could 1.know how to pronounce 'refractometer' and 2. know what use it would have in a kitchen would be the top pastry chefs, and Heston and his crew.
Chinese cuisine, you never fail to amaze me! Chinese food in London, you really are selling our cuisine so short these days, lets get back to the days of using refractometers and making our own tofu. Sat Bains and Tom Kerridge both got their 2nd Michelin stars today, why is Hakkasan the only Chinese restaurant with any stars? well too much chef squatting and spitting in the back alleyways of kitchens and not enough refractometry is the answer!
After 18 months now and 100 ducks, i have finally achieved what i went out to do all those months ago. I have finally managed to get the breast skin crispy and lacquered with the flesh moist and juicy. How you ask me? well here is a brief breakdown of the method. I have no bothered to go into too much details as much of it is mentioned in the original post on Peking duck.
1. Defrost the duck overnight (as mentioned previously, frozen ones yield a better finished product)
2. Remove the gizzards.
3. Cut off the wing tips and use this as an entry point for the nib of a pump.
4. Pump air through here and also through the flap at the bottom of the breast.
5. Stick your finger in between the flesh and skin and carefully tear the skin away from the pivot bone of the flesh.
6. Blanch the skin with boiling water, each time alternating between the boiling water and an iced water bath.
7. Insert corks in between the skin and the flesh, one at the top of the breast and one at the bottom.
8.Dip the duck in liquid nitrogen allowing a few minutes in between each dip.
9. Hang the duck in front of a fan for 1 hour to dry out the skin a little, allowing the glaze to stick better.
10. Now for the glaze:
i. 1500ml water.
ii. 3 tbs maltose.
iii. 2 tbs Shaoshing wine.
iv. 2 tbs red wine vinegar.
bring this mixture to the boil and then thicken slightly with corn flour, it should however not be gloopy at all, it should still run like a viscous liquid. Pour the cooled glaze over the duck several times to avoid missing any patches, paying special attention to the area under the wing.
11. Hang the duck in front of a fan and leave to blow dry for 24 hours.
12. After this drying period, the skin should be dry, dark in colour and have a waxy finish.
13. Hang the duck in the oven (or do a DIY job in enabling your oven to be able to accommodate a hanging oven)
14. Set the oven to its highest temperature and cook for 40 mins, checking every 10 mins for the appearance of dark batches, in which case, the duck will have to be turned. ( this ultimately is the advantage of the oval shaped ovens used in China, to allow an even distribution of heat around the duck, preventing uneven cooking and therefore dark patches on the duck where extra heat has been able to penetrate the duck.
15. After 40 mins, the duck will be golden, reddish brown in colour, crisp as hell and there will be a pool of clear duck fat on the base of the oven.
16.Leave to hang for a few minutes before cutting and giving yourself heart failure with copious amounts of crisp skin that will be eaten.
FINALLY, in the words of Gordon Ramsay, 'Peking duck DONE'
If you ever wanted to know how to carve it, here is a demonstration from Hong Kong's 3 michelin star Lung King Heen. In all honesty, this duck looks the bollocks, but the skin is nowhere near crispy enough, if you want the ultimate duck, here is a better video below.
Look at the gap in between the flesh and the skin, this is the secret behind getting the ultimate Peking duck!
For all those who may feel inclined to try this at home, don't bother, just get your wallet out and go to Beijing!
Nakita, as Nathalie in the video ask a very valid question, 'what the hell are you doing?' I often ask myself the same question when i find myself spitting liquid nitrogen out of my mouth or burning stacks of hay on the streets of SW1, with passing traffic thinking that the riots have finally hit Victoria.
If there was one thing that i hope this blog shows, i think that it would be that i dont easily give in! its been nearly a year now and im still on the question that started this whole blog, 'how to make the perfect Peking duck?'
So why the liquid nitrogen? Well the theory behind the madness is FREEZER BURN. Ever looked into your fridge and found that chicken breast from last year, all dessicated and elderly looking :-) well the reason for this apparently, is that the water molecules from the chicken breast have escaped the meat in search of a preferentially colder part of your freezer. This is one half of my theory.....
The second half of my theory is that when water molecules freeze, they expand. Now, the thing that prohibits the skin from a duck from going crispy is the moisture within. Therefore, if i freeze the skin, the water molecules from within the skin will expand, swell and upon melting, leak out of the skin, and hence dry the skin.
Why not just stick the duck in the freezer and forget the really really really expensive liquid nitrogen. (many thanks to Peter from Mansfield Cryogenics who has not only lent all the gear to me, but having seen me, still think that im responsible enough to be using something that has a boiling point of -196C. Peter says it best, one second in the liquid, your natural heat and oil from your skin will repel the liquid nitrogen, 5 seconds and your going to get frost bite, 25 seconds and you better get down to A and E as your finger is snapping off like a strawberry flavoured ice pole!) Let us return to to the question at hand, why not stick to whole duck in the freezer? Well, placing the whole duck in the freezer would not only freeze the skin but also the meat, with food hygiene it is deemed dangerous to let substances freeze more than once. However by using the liquid nitrogen, i only freeze the SKIN each time, with the flesh unaffected and therefore i can repeat the process several times without having to worry about poisoning people.
I dont claim to be Herve This, so this could all the bullshit! But theory aside, we will never know until we try!!!!
Forget poulet en vessie, Bocusse's truffle consomme or even Heston's Alice in wonderland soup, the dish that beats every single one of them has got to be the dish dating back to 1330, the mother of all dishes, the most laborious of all has got to be PEKING DUCK.
6 months down the line and 40-50 ducks gone to staff meals for testing, i am still only about 75% towards the final product.
WHAT IS THE DESIRED END PRODUCT?
My quest has taken me all over London, trying every Peking duck that i can get hold of. Just for the record though, Peking duck is not the same as crispy aromatic duck that you see in every Chinese takeaway in the country, the deep fried duck that is served with plum sauce and pancakes. Peking duck, although coming with the same garnishes is a dish that comes from the Imperial kitchens. Imperials kitchens? the kitchens where a bad meal would result in execution, the kitchens where there would be 100 plates of food cooked each night only for the emperor to nibble at one or two and the rest being sent out to village diplomats around the province by underage bitch boys. (all should read 'The last Chinese chef' if they want to find out more) In an Imperial kitchen, time and money are of no importance, it didnt matter if the dish took 100 men to cook and a custom built oven that required another 100 men to dig a 50 foot hole with their teeth, anything went!
So what is it? Peking duck is a dish whereby the whole duck is brought to the table, oak brown skin, crisped up like glass. This is the important thing 'glass like skin!' if the skin is limp, your eking duck is shite! the dish in Beijing will have someone wearing a mask skinning the duck table side which will be served as an individual course with pickles and granulated sugar. The rest of the duck will be sliced into 108 pieces to be eaten with the spring onion, cucumber and pancakes.
Dont concentrate on my brother, take a look at the super crisp piece of breast duck skin sitting on the side of the table like a full blooded lob on. I can tell you now that getting this slice of skin crispy is without a doubt the hardest part of the duck to crisp due to the moisture of the breast meat under the skin.
Anyone ever watch Heston's program on the perfect Peking duck? well if you did, he used Irish Silver Hill ducks and after numerous trials he gave up and separated the skin from the flesh in order to get the required glass like skin. My opinion? well If the duck isn't in its entirety when it comes to the table, it just is not a Peking duck. Imagine what the emperor would say if instead of bringing out the mahogany roasted duck, he was presented with a plate of limp breast meat with some chards of skin on the side. Let me put it this way, it would be congee and testicle meat balls for breakfast.
SO HOW IS IT DONE?
This section is a culmination of 6 months worth of trials and errors, eating so much duck that i can taste it in my sweat, talking to other chefs, and talking to scientists about the possible pit falls. Herve This offered some advise: that creating a layer of air between the skin and flesh would aid skin crisping as well as acting as a thermal insulator for the meat, preventing it from drying out in the roasting process. Secondly he advised that adding more and more layers of maltose sugar mixture would aid the crisping as it would in essence increase the thickness of the skin.
So here it is:
1. Because ducks in from Europe nearly always have the rear ends opened in order to remove the guts, it is not possible to use the Chinese method of removing the guts through a small incision under the armpit.
2. I use a pump to separate the skin from the flesh, making sure not to rip the skin. (holes in the skin allow moisture from the flesh to leak out during the roasting process, dripping down the skin and preventing the skin from crisping)
3. Wash the outside and inside of the duck with water, again flushing the gap between the flesh and the skin. (i was advised to use washing up liquid for this step which aids a more even colouring of the finished product! the choice is yours!)
4. get either a wooden rod or from my trials a inflated balloon to keep the separation between the skin and flesh. (the balloon will result in an alien looking duck)
5. Using boiling water, ladle over the duck to tighten up the skin.
6. Heavily season the inside of the cavity with salt, sugar and five spice and stitch up with metal skewer.
7. Using a solution of maltose, water, red wine vinegar, isomalt and corn flour, ladle over the duck again. Dont do this for too long or you will end up partially cooking the duck and the health inspector will be all over you like a rash! the thicker this solution ie. the more corn flour you use, the more thick the coating on the skin will be, which in turn will result in a better finish. Repeat this process as often as you can during the drying process.
8. Hang the duck in front of a fan a blow for hours and hours and hours. By 24 hours, the skin will have a matt touch to the finger. After 48 hours, there will be a dark brown colour emerging from the skin. Leave it for 72 hours and you will get really dry skin but a finished duck that will not only poison you buy also give you a skin that is too dry.( you need a small layer of fat under the crispy skin in my opinion on the finished product)
9. Hang the duck in an oven(laying it flat will not give you a good crispy finish, all those websites telling you that its ok are talking shit! it is impossible to get a crispy end product with the underside being steamed in the oven as it roasts) put the oven to 100C and dry out for 1.5 hours. You will see some of the fat render down during this process. Some say that it is good to fill the cavity with a duck consomme during this process to steam the meat and give it a super moist, flavorsome finish.
10. The final process is where the debate lies. In China, or at Da Dong (world famous Peking duck restaurant) there would be a wood fire oven with fruit wood finishing off the duck at the stage. The fire in essence is supplying the 250C+ required to crisp up the skin. A domestic oven just does not have heat circulating around the duck uniformly which will result in patches of the duck burning whilst others not crisping up enough. This step could also be done on a spit roast. However due to the fact of my kitchen not having a wood fire oven or a spit roast, i found the best result being obtained by heating up some oil to 180C and ladling it over the ducks skin until the crisp, mahogany colour is obtained.
The end product results in the duck having a really crisp back and under arm area, however the breast skin is still below par.
How do you get the super crisp finish seen in Beijing?
SIMPLE, the only way that this can be achieved is by breaking every food hygiene law in the UK. At Da Dong they alternate the duck from a -5C drying room to a +5 meat ageing room, my local food safety officer would have my balls for dinner if they saw me doing this. The process however results in a constant freezing and condensation that removes moisture from the skin of the duck.
This is definitely a no no in the UK, however studies in the US have shown that the Peking duck end result is safe to eat (duhhhh, Chinese restaurants have been selling it for the past 40 years) this is due to the fact that the inside of the cavity is so heavily seasoned and therefore in essence curing the meat whilst drying the skin.
An alternative would be to dry the duck in a meat aging room whereby the humidity is kept below 50% ( a normal fridge or walk in would have a much higher humidity level, therefore wetting the skin if it was left inside)
one other point to mention is that in China, Peking ducks are a especially bred specifically for the dish's requirements ie. lean meat and not too much fat. Ducks are slaughtered between 60-65 days compared to the 75+days seen for Gressinghams or Chalans. I can vouch for the fact that this indeed is the most influential factor of all. Using a Gressingham duck would require divine intervention in order to turn it into a Peking duck, no amount of air drying would give the fat layer of fat a crisp glass like finish,
