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Duck in tamarind sauce is a wonderful Thai dish that marries up slices of sweet meat with the fruity and savoury flavours of the tamarind fruit. This is definitely a staple that appears more regularly on a Thai restaurant menu, but here there is no need for the take-away. This is a simple tamarind duck recipe that brings the exciting flavours of Thailand right to your own dinner table.
Quick and easy tamarind duck
The bustling food markets of Bangkok are a feast for the senses, hot and pungent with the exotic notes of sweet fruits and spices dancing on the air, loud with chaotic calls from market traders and the clattering of pots and pans from the street food sellers. The colours are varied and vibrant and your ears ring with the whistle of steaming grills and sizzling meat and seafood.
Chatuchak market, which is Bangkok’s largest market, has over 11,000 market stalls where just about everything is sold. The food however is something else and on another level completely. On one small table in one small corner of the market where you sit on white plastic patio sets, the street food sellers brey for your business.
Waiting patiently however for the busiest server is the best practice. Here, you can have green curry, tom yum or traditional Thai fish cakes but other dishes that don’t normally make the roll call of popularity can be had such as clams in holy basil and red chilli and “ped toon nam ma-khan” which is a simply incredible dish of duck stewed in tamarind sauce. It is a Thai version of a sweet and sour dish. This duck though is heady with aromatic flavours, meltingly tender and altogether sweet and tart at the same time. It is this flavoursome dish that we are presenting to you. The Flavourise version though is cooked relatively quickly and very simply with no lengthy stewing like the original but with all these authentic flavours bursting through, it is a wonderful mid-week treat.
Making this tamarind duck recipe easy and approachable yet with a totally authentic flavour there are a few differences. Firstly we use duck breast rather than the darker meat from the legs. In Thailand, it is common to cook the whole bird and then chop it to pieces, bones and all, but for our tamarind duck dish, we just want succulent and tender duck breast meat. This is cooked with crispy skin then thinly sliced and laid over a bed of greens.
We have used stir-fried sprouting broccoli but good alternatives such as bok choi or kale can be served instead. The traditional dish deep-fries the greens to create what in Thailand is referred to as mock seaweed. Duck breast on broccoli hardly screams of Thailand but the secret, of course, is in the sauce and this tamarind sauce is full of Thai ingredients that are no longer an enigma to the shopping list.
Ingredients to use in tamarind duck
The incredibly flavoursome ingredients you will need are:
Tamarind
Tamarind is a pod fruit native to Africa but grown in tropical regions such as Thailand. India is the most prevalent grower of the fruit and due to the acidic and sweet flavour this fruit commonly flavours chutneys and often used in highly spiced dishes. In Thailand tamarind is a popular flavour for savoury dishes such as this duck dish. The fruit commonly comes in three forms, a pressed block, raw pods where the pulp is extracted and in concentrated forms such as pastes available in mainstream supermarkets. The block needs to be dissolved in water but a good paste is a more convenient product which is what we recommend.
Nam Pla
Nam pla is Thai fish sauce and used in foods very much the same way we use salt or soy sauce. It has a strong pungent odour as it is a condiment made with fermented salted fish. Despite what can be an unpleasant smell, the flavour it actually imparts is very tasty and adds a deep umami flavour to its recipient dishes. Fish sauce is used as the base of many dipping sauces and would be Thailand’s most signature ingredient.
Holy Basil
Also known as Kaphrao, Thai holy basil is used in curries and dishes across south-east Asia. It has a spicy clove and peppery like flavour and it is this unique flavour that is hard to replicate. Holy basil has been lauded for centuries and has revered qualities that are religiously celebrated. It is a different cultivar to “Thai basil” or ocimum basililcum which is more predominant in the shops and it will most likely be this that you will know for its more liquorice, aniseed flavour. This too is used widely in Thai cuisine so still authentic, but worth hunting out holy basil from an Asian store.
Ginger
Ginger is widely used in Thailand and known as “khing”. It is often blended with garlic to make a paste that is added to many dishes. Ginger originated in Southeast Asia and was one of the first spices to be traded around the world with the ancient Greeks and Romans using it in their recipes. It belongs to the family Zingiberaceae which also includes galangal (a mild variety of ginger) which is often used in its stead in Thailand although both are authentic Thai ingredients. The sweetness and spiciness of ginger compliments tamarind and adds a depth to the sauce.
Lemongrass
Long thick dry blades of lemongrass bring an aromatic herbal aspect to the dish. It is sweet and perfumed and regularly used in Thai dishes such as Tom Yum Gai and Tom Kha.
Chilli
Adding a bit of heat and spice into a dish like this just brings everything Thai flavoured altogether. Add as much or a little as you like. If it’s not hot in Thailand it’s not Thai.
All these beautiful flavours that are very easy to find are simply added to the pan juices used to cook the duck with some stock and the flavours meld together and bubble down to create the most perfect accompaniment. Just prepare some rice to serve alongside and to make things easier, the broccoli cooks in the sauce. It really is very easy.
The best duck to serve is a beautifully tender and succulent duck breast with a crispy skin.
How to cook the best tamarind duck
Cooking the duck so that the flesh remains soft and pink with very crispy skin is an art, but simple to do. The crispy skin comes from rendering the fat down into liquid which can be then poured off. This is done on a very low heat skin side down so that the flesh at this stage hardly cooks at all, this is the secret to perfectly cooked duck.
First, score the skin making sure the knife doesn’t cut the flesh and rub salt into it. Then place the duck breasts in a cold frying pan, importantly with no oil and skin side down. Next turn on the heat on your hob at a very low level.
Fry the duck for 25 minutes pouring out the liquified fat regularly and gently applying a little pressure to the duck to ensure the skin is always in contact with the pan as well as basting the ducks to keep them moist. Quite a lot of fat will liquefy away, but this leaves the skin much thinner to go nice and crispy.
The flesh side of the duck which will have remained on the top side will look almost as if it hasn’t been cooked at all, but the heat will have gone through and primed it perfectly for the last part of the process. Take the ducks out of the pan and turn the heat up to medium-high, allow the pan to get hot then cook the ducks for one minute on the skin side down. Then turn them over and cook on the flesh sides for 2 minutes. Finally, turn them over for one more minute to finish the ducks so that the skins are golden and crisp.
Take the breasts off the heat and rest them skin side up for at least 5 minutes before slicing. The time it takes to rest the ducks will be just enough time to make the tamarind sauce and broccoli.
How to make tamarind sauce
Once the ducks have come out, the pan will be very hot. Throw in the broccoli and they will instantly sizzle away and start to colour. After a minute or so add some chicken stock, or beef stock for a deeper flavour and the Thai ingredients of tamarind paste, ginger slices, smashed and chopped lemongrass, fresh holy basil, chilli and fish sauce, we add a little soy sauce too for seasoning.
This will just bubble away for about 5 or 6 minutes and the broccoli will be cooked tender but still with a bite and the ducks will have rested properly so that they can be sliced and the juices will not run.
Serve with some boiled jasmine rice (¼ of a cup per person before boiling will be fine) and garnish with a bit more of the Thai holy basil and some sesame oil. Enjoy!
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The most incredible tamarind duck recipe
Ingredients
- 2 duck breasts
- 200 g of sprouting broccoli
- 100 g or ½ a cup of jasmine rice
- 400 ml or 1 ¾ cups of chicken or beef stock
- 5 teaspoon of tamarind paste
- A thumb sized piece of ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
- 10 g or ¼ cup of holy basil
- ½ of a lemongrass stalk, bashed with a knife and chopped
- 1 red chilli, de-seeded and sliced
- 2 teaspoon of nam pla, Thai fish sauce
- 1 teaspoon of soy sauce
- A dash of sesame oil
Instructions
Start with the rice
- Wash the rice in cold water a few times and drain off. Pour in fresh water to the cleaned rice in a ratio of 2:1.
- Place on a medium heat and bring to the boil. Once the pan is on the boil, turn the heat down very low and place a lid over the rice. Cook the rice until it has absorbed all the water and set aside.
How to cook the perfect duck breast fillet
- Score the ducks through the skin making sure you do not cut the flesh. Rub salt into the skins.
- Put a cold pan on the hob and place the duck breasts in skin side down. Turn on the heat to a very low setting.
- Cook for 25 minutes keeping the ducks skin side down. Apply a little pressure to the breasts to ensure the skins keep contact with the pan and regularly baste the ducks and pour off the fat that accumulates.
- After 25 minutes, remove the duck from the pan and pour out any remaining fat.
- Return the pan to the hob and turn up the heat to medium high. When the pan starts to smoke, place the breast back in skin side down for 1 minute. Turn them over and cook for 2 minutes. Turn once more on the skin side down and fry for 1 final minute. Take the ducks out of the pan and rest them on a wooden board.
Make the tamarind sauce
- In the same pan, throw in the broccoli and stir fry for 2 minutes to brown.
- Add the stock and the remaining ingredients reserving the sesame oil and some holy basil leaves for the garnish.
- Keep the heat on a medium to medium high and simmer down the sauce for 5-6 minutes until it has thickened.
- Slice the duck thinly and arrange it over the broccoli, pour over the sauce and garnish with sesame oil and a few holy basil leaves. Serve with the rice on the side.
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