This Cantonese dish, traditionally served on Chinese New Year’s Eve, consists of a duck, fried and then steamed, stuffed with a collection of eight delicious ingredients, or “treasures”.
In Singapore, my friend Shem Leong’s godmother, Yip Choei Khau, has been perfecting her version of the dish for more than 50 years.
Eight treasure duck
serves 6–8
¼ cup (60 ml) vegetable oil
3kg whole duck, dried thoroughly
2–3 cups soaked fat choy (hair vegetable)
3 thin spring onions, sliced
Stuffing
10 garlic cloves, peeled
4 eschalots, sliced
1 cup (220g) pearl barley
1 cup (160g) dried chestnuts
1 cup dried lotus seeds
1 cup dried shiitake mushrooms
1 cup semi-cooked gingko nuts (vacuum packed)
200g lean pork shoulder, cut into 2cm cubes
4 spring onions, finely chopped
4 Chinese sausages (lap cheong)
1 cup (160g) water chestnuts
2 tbsp light soy sauce
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp sugar
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1 tbsp Chinese rice wine
Soak the pearl barley, dried chestnuts and lotus seeds separately in cold water overnight, then drain. Soak the dried shiitake mushrooms for 20 minutes; drain, then trim and discard the stems. Set aside.
For the duck, heat your wok over medium–high heat and add the oil. Fry the duck on all sides until the skin is golden. Reserving any oil left in the wok, place the duck in a deep, round roasting tin, big enough to fit the duck but small enough to fit inside a large pot or wok.
To make the stuffing, fry the whole garlic cloves and eschalots in the reserved oil in the wok over medium heat until golden, then remove and set aside in a bowl. Add the remaining stuffing ingredients to the wok in the order listed (adding the soaked ingredients together with the gingko nuts), and fry until fragrant, about 5 minutes in total.
Spoon the stuffing into a large bowl, trying to leave as much liquid in the wok as possible. Stuff the duck until tightly packed, capping off the end of the cavity with a few of the mushrooms to stop the stuffing escaping. Any remaining stuffing can be tucked around the outer edges of the duck.
Spoon the remaining liquid in the wok over the duck, then cover very tightly with foil, completely sealing the duck.
To double-steam the duck, place a steaming trivet in the base of a pot or wok of water large enough to fit the entire duck dish inside. Alternatively, this is easily done in a steam oven.
Steam for 1 hour, then remove the foil. Sprinkle the fat choy over the top of the duck and spoon over the juices collected around the duck. Cover with the foil again and steam for further 1½ hours, topping up the water as needed, until the duck is very tender.
Serve garnished with the spring onion.
Note: This is considered a lucky New Year’s Eve dish with the addition of fat choy, a green-black moss-like vegetable that looks a little like black hair and has a mild mushroomy flavour. “Fat choy” sounds similar to a phrase meaning “be prosperous”. You may have heard it in the traditional Cantonese new year’s greeting “Gong hei fat choy”, which means “Congratulations and be prosperous.”
• This is an edited extract from Adam Liaw’s Destination Flavour (Hardie Grant Books, $50). Next week, his golden crown pavlova recipe
