JK Splash

Vietnamese Duck Braised in Orange Juice

Posted by Unknown on Wednesday, May 5, 2010


My mum is visiting from Malaysia at the moment, so I have a captive test subject to try out a few new recipes on. This recipe we caught on Rick Steins Far Eastern Odyssey on TV last night. It looked pretty good and I love duck, so I decided to give it a try tonight. I popped into Springvale during my lunch break and bought a whole duck from the meat market and a bag of fresh oranges. Well it was a great success - the flavors are awesome, the star anise and orange juice are a great combo with the duck, It is also pretty easy to put together. I highly recommend giving this one a go!

Ingredients
  • 1 Duck, cut into serving pieces
  • 2 tbsp Vegetable oil (or duck fat) 
  • 3 Cloves garlic, peeled & sliced 
  • 3 cm Root ginger, peeled & sliced 
  • 3-4 Spring onions, cut into 4 cm lengths 
  • 6 Star anise 
  • 3-4 Whole chillies 
  • 1 Stalk lemon grass, bruised
  •  2 tbsp Fish sauce 
  • 1 tbsp Palm sugar 
  • Juice of 3-4 oranges 
  • A “good grind” of black pepper 
  • Cornflour
In a large cast iron casserole dish or similar, sauté the duck pieces in the oil until the fat is rendered and the skin is browning and beginning to crisp. Pour off all but a tablespoon of fat.

Add garlic and ginger and stir, then add the orange juice, enough to not quite cover the duck. Add fish sauce, star anise, chillies, lemon grass, palm sugar and black pepper. Stir well and simmer covered until duck is tender(~1 - 1.5hrs). Add the spring onions about 10 mins before the duck will be ready.

Remove the lemon grass stalk and discard. Remove the duck pieces and spring onions to a warmed serving dish. Mix a little cornflour with some water and add to the sauce to thicken.

Serve.

I served it with some basmati rice and stir fried Bok Choy.

Beef Tataki - Aoba Japanese Cafe

Posted by Unknown on Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Caught up with a friend last night at Aoba Japanese Cafe in Malvern, I found the establishment on Urbanspoon after searching for Japanese in Malvern - it had very good reviews and was open Monday night so fit the bill!

Aoba is a quaint little casual Japanese cafe on Glenferrie Rd, a little more casual and small than I anticipated when I picked it out but as my dining partner commented "It's cute!"

I was tempted to order a Sashimi platter but decided to try something different and went for the Beef Tataki, of course preceded by some miso soup. Wow, I'm a major fan! The miso was basic but flavorsome - I have been making miso soup at home lately and now have a new benchmark to aspire to! The Beef Tataki was brilliant - clean crisp flavours with the ponzu sauce, I'm going to have to try it at home, although it will be hard after having the bar set so high already!

Prices were very reasonable for the quality of the food, a great little casual Japanese dining experience. I only wish it was closer to where live so I could make it a regular! Sorry I didnt get any food pics - was too busy chatting and eating!

Aoba on Urbanspoon