Peking Duck and other Chinese Delights
Post date: 18-Nov-2009 14:12:37
Yes, even though I am a great fan of real ducks and collect rubber ducks, we had to try the famous Peking Duck (I also ate duck twice before arriving in China).
The Peking Process
The Peking duck dates back to the Yuan dynasty where it was listed in royal cookbooks as an imperial food. The Qing dynasty fell in 1911 and the former chefs opened restaurants that serve Peking duck.
1. Inflate the ducks by blowing air between the skin and body.
2. Prick the skin and pour boiling water over the duck.
3. Rub the skin with malt sugar to give it an amber colour and then hang the duck up to dry.
4. The duck is roasted to become crispy on the outside and juicy on the inside.
5. The duck is cut into 120 slices and is served with fermented bean paste, cucumber, green onions and light pancakes.
We ate our duck at the Da Dong Roast Duck restaurant where you can even pick your own duck for an extra 20 Yuan.We spent $100.00 on an extremely large and fancily presented meal. It was a treat to ourselves for our last night in Beijing. It will be nothing but cheap Mr. Lee's and McDonald's for us in Shanghai.
We shared half a roast duck. The restaurant prides itself in having the leanest duck and our duck was definitely not greasy. Our waitress presented us with our duck and 8 different condiments and then she asked if she could introduce the duck to us. We said sure. However, Colin and I both had rather selective hearing when we compared what she said to us. Colin thought she said "Your duck's name was Stewart and this is how we enjoy the skin by dipping it in sugar." I heard "Your duck is dipped in sugar. The skin is traditionally enjoyed by dipping it in sugar." The crispy duck skin in the succulent sugar was our favourite.
Next, our waitress dipped a piece of duck in hoisin sauce for us and then spread the sauce on a little rice wrap and added garlic, cucumber, and dragon fruit. The duck reminded us a bit of turkey because of the dark meat but it didn't taste like turkey or like chicken. It tasted like a poor little duck that was once flying freely with his friends in the park or the ducks I used to feed bread to when I was little...
Anyway, we didn't just eat the poor duck. We also had melt in your mouth sweet succulent chicken with candided walnuts, some type of white fish that was deep fried into a ball with his tail sticking out. He was served with a nice mixture of fruit. We also had spicy prawns that were bursting with flavour and served with peanuts and green onions.
We also had Asparagus and Sea Urchin soup. The sea urchin didn't really taste like much. It was quite mushy and tasted really fishy.
Tomatoes stuffed with mushrooms
We also tried for free a dessert called black sesame seed pudding. It was either that or porridge. It smelled really burnt and tasted strongly of sesame seeds but also of something else muggy. It looked like a large bowl of thick mud. We ate the fresh fruit for dessert instead.
It was great food but the dining experience wasn't very relaxed because we had at least 4 servers looking after us and they were constantly looking at our bill and checking off what we had received and what we
hadn't received. The food also came out really fast. We did have the nice typical service of covering over our jackets on the back of our chairs with a protective cloth cover and we also had a little duck to use as our chop stick rest too.
You can get as many types of food in China as you can inCanada. We've had barbecue cooked for us on a grill where an egg with green onions inside the shell was cooked for us over a grill, we've cooked our own food over a pot of charcoal on a grill. We ate better pizza then we've had at home from a New Zealand pizza place. We had chicken pizza with litte chunks of cream cheese, apricot sauce, and pine nuts. Crazy.
We ate two noodle bowls at Mr. Lee and they were really good. I also had a cool drink that was cold unsweetened bubble tea, but instead of tapicoa balls there were lentils in the bottom of the cup. It was delicious. I would go back again just for the drink.
We ate at a local restaurant in a little village not to far from the great wall. We had 25 pork dumplings, 25 mint, green onion and basil dumplings, and homemade noodles with meat and soya sauce and tea for 20 Yuan which is $4.00 cdn. It was one of the best meals we have had in Beijing.
The most interesting meal we had in Beijing was when we went to the Dong Hua Men night market. At the market, you could get fried ice cream that was not like our fried ice cream. It was a piece of white bread dripping with oil, with a meringue crust that encased the ice cream inside. It looked really cool though.
We tried bubble tea which was really more like a green tea pop and it didn't have tapioca in it. We could have also had any type of bug we wanted. However, we didn't have the stomach for it. Some things are not meant to be eaten, even if you can skewer them. There were beetles, centipedes, scorpians, silk worms, sheep penis, snake meat, starfish, sea horses etc.
There are many interesting flavors of chips in China too. We tried Blueberry, kiwi, cucumber, Italian red meat flavor, Mexican chicken flavor, and sweet and sour tomato.
To see a summary of all the places we visited in Beijing with a few pictures, click on the balloons on the map below: