STEAMED PRESERVED DUCK THIGH: 蒸臘鴨肶 JING LAAP NGAAP PEI

One of my acquaintances was laying it on thick, talking about organic baby vegetables harvested fresh from the soil, to be lightly steamed, and eaten with gluten-free noodles.
Oh so delicious! And pure! How could I not love it!
A meatless and sacramental meal.

Well, given that gluten-free makes me giggle, especially when combined with the word 'noodles', he's right. He's also out of his Vegan mind, lord help him, and utterly goofy, but yes, I love it.
Purely as a funny concept.

Stupid white Vegans from suburbistan don't know how to eat.
And shouldn't be allowed anywhere near a kitchen.
Steaming, btw, is NOT for vegetables.

It's for meat.

Such as the lovely dry-preserved duck thighs, dense and delicious, that you can buy in Chinatown. They're made by adding curing salts, soy sauce and rice wine, then wind-drying them for a few days. In so many ways they define satisfying winter food.

The commonest way to utilize them is by steaming them on top of rice.


蒸臘鴨肶飯
Jing laap ngaap pei faan

One fatty preserved thigh.
One Chinese sausage, skinned and cut diagonally.
Two or three re-humidified black mushrooms.
Two cups rice.
Shredded ginger.
Shredded scallion.

Rinse the thigh in cold water, then dunk it briefly in boiling water.
In addition to shocking the meat with moisture, this also washes off dust and shrotzim, and sterilizes.
Then take your cleaver and whack across into thinnish chopstickable chunks.
Put these on a bed of parboiled rice that you have placed in a clay pot, strew some shredded ginger and scallion on top, place the lid on the pot, and cook till done. Let it sit for a few minutes.

Many people don't chop it till after the steaming, but I think the heat permeates it better, and the grease renders easier into the rice, if you do it my way. In either case, the result is a beautiful well-flavoured and fragrant rice, and chewy tender rich meaty duck.


The two premier places to purchase such lovely duck legs, as well as several other kinds of preserved meat products, are Mow Lee and Wycen Foods. Both produce beautiful high-quality laapmei.
I would suggest going in and selecting some stuff at random, then taking it home to experiment. Dried meats have a deeper flavour than fresh, are used in smaller quantities, and are considered perfect warming food.
For heavens sake, do NOT point and ask goofy questions!
English is not their greatest skill set.
Don't be a tourist.


茂利腊味
Mow Lee Company
774 Commercial Street
San Francisco, CA 94108.


祥發臘味
Wycen Foods
832 Stockton Street
San Francisco, CA 94107.


I also bought some bitter melon while in C'town today, and a huge bag of crispy crunchy fresh Jalapeños (尖椒 'jim jiu' ). Bold veggies are excellent with preserved meats. And chilies are, of course, a vegetable.

Instead of lapcheung I will add two or three soaked dried oysters (蠔豉 'hou si') to the top of the rice before steaming, gout be damned.
Besides rice, a vegetable dish is essential. I love bitter melon, as well as chilies. Both are good for the blood.
And rather than all long-grain rice, I plan to "borrow" some of my apartment mate's Arborio, which she purchased for an experiment with risotto over the holiday season, and hasn't used since.


I'm looking forward to dinner.

And leftover rice tomorrow.

With a fried egg on top.

And raw chilies.

Lunch.



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