Duck Roast
Ingredients: The split duck above is 2.63 lbs. Salt. Optional: clove, paprika, or five spice powder. Veggies optional: I used onions, zucchini and carrots.
Steps:
I trimmed the thicker fatty part off to make duck cracklings (see Duck Cracklings page.) Rub duck with salt and optional spice powder, this one I used five spice powder. Let sit overnight.
Veggies sprinkled with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Bake covered with aluminum foil in oven at 350F for 1 hour 10 min, then uncovered for 30 min. I bake the gizzard at T-30 min, liver T-20 min.
Chicken Roast
Ingredients for the marinade: limes, cilantro, miso, chili flakes, soy sauce, rice wine (or water.)
Steps:
Mix all ingredients, sample if flavor is good enough for you, toss in a bag, add chicken, let marinate overnight. Let dry for an hour before baking (helps with browning.) For a 4-lb chicken I usually do 375F for 2 hours with aluminum foil cover. I also toss veggies in the tray to bake with the chicken.
Meat dishes can be done even simpler with just salt and pepper. A bonus if you have lemon. Like below.
Squeeze lemon juice and sprinkle salt and pepper over the meat. Let sit for at least 30 minutes, longer if it's a thick cut. For the wings, I baked it in the toaster oven at 375F for 20 minutes and broiled for anther 15 minutes to get it golden brown.
If you are looking for a project, like this one I did for early Chinese New Year's dinner, try stuffing the chicken with sticky rice. Rice must be cooked first.
I usually eyeball the portions making the marinade. I measured this time to give you a better reference. My bird was ~4-5 lbs.
Ingredients for the chicken:
2-tablespoon miso (or soy sauce)
2-tablespoon hot water to dissolve miso (still add water if soy sauce is used instead of miso)
3-tablespoon soy sauce
2-tablespoon rice wine (any wine ok, or use water)
1-tablespoon rice vinegar (any vinegar ok, or use water)
2-tablespoon chili paste (I used Sambal Oelek chili paste. The amount is not spicy)
1 lemon, cut to wedges
Some parsley
Steps:
Dissolve the miso with hot water first. Chop the parsley, squeeze lemon juice, and mix all ingredients. Put chicken in a plastic bag and add the marinade. Let sit overnight in fridge. Turn over halftime or in the morning. Let marinate until 1 hour before baking.
Ingredients for sticky rice:
1 cup sweet rice
4/5 cup of peanuts (optional. Peanuts in sticky rice is traditional Taiwanese style)
1 cup of hot water (for peanuts. My 2-cup Pyrex glass container was about 80 percent full with the soaked the peanuts, so my guestimate for the water is 1 cup)
Steps:
Soak peanuts in hot water, let sit overnight. If no peanuts, just use chicken marinade (soy sauce if no chicken or no sauce if you want plain rice) and water in the steps below to soak the rice.
Next day, cook/simmer peanuts with the same water and cover lid for 10 minutes, let cool. Separate peanuts from water. Add 2-teaspoon of the chicken marinade to the peanut water.
Wash and drain the sweet rice, soak the rice in flavored peanut water for about 3 hours. Then drain any excess liquid from the soaked rice. Mix peanuts with the soaked rice.
To steam the rice, I boiled some water in my frying pan, sit my steam plate in the middle, and added the rice to stainless steel containers on top of the plate. Cover and steam with medium heat for about 40 min (rice turns translucent from white.)
The knockout combo:
Stuff the bird with sticky rice, try not to over-stuff because the space shrinks as the meat cooks. Add any vegetables you like to the tray (I used onion, Tahitian squash, and eggplant mixed with some olive oil, salt and pepper.) Similar to the baking process before, I did 375F for 2.5 hours with aluminum foil cover.
Juice from the roast gives the rice a beautiful amber color. And so tasty.
Pork Roast
Ingredients: Pork jowl (about 2 lbs, can use a different cut of pork), (mixed color) carrots, celery, onion, and sweet potato. Olive oil.
Spices: salt, pepper, paprika (optional)
Steps:
Season top and bottom of the pork jowl with salt, pepper, and paprika. Let sit in fridge overnight.
Preheat the oven to 400F.
Cut the veggies, sprinkle salt and pepper and a little bit of olive oil over them and mix. You could add a bit more veggies than what I used because they shrink a lot after baking.
Wash the salt, pepper, and paprika off the bottom (meat side) of the pork jowl. Arrange the veggies in the baking tray so you can sit the pork jowl in the middle, skin side up. Add 1.5 cup of water to the tray (the water, veggies and juice/fat from the pork will make some broth.)
Put the whole thing in the oven, lower the heat to 300F. Let cook for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Then I turn the meat up side down, mixed the veggies with the juice from roast, and let bake for another 15 minutes. Took the tray out of the oven, turn the meat again so skin side up and all done.
The skin is chewy and fat firm. If you feel it’s a bit more fatty than you liked, you can slice the roast, low-heat dry-fry (pan-fry with no oil added) to brown both sides of the slices like below. More oil will come out, and you can save the oil for stir frying veggies later.
I saved some lard in the fridge and some in freezer with a few rendered slices added.
Lamb Roast
A big batch I made for dinner with friends. Dinner was too far away. I dry-fried (pan-fry without oil) three thinner pieces (medium heat, about 3-4 minutes each side. Cover with lid.) Only two in the picture because I was really hungry... you can see the juice mark. Then added olive oil to the same pan and stir fried broccoli with a bit of water and salt. Plus rice, that's my lunch.
Ingredients: Lamb, garlic, lemon, mint leaves, salt and pepper.
Steps:
I cut the rack of lamb into individual chunks, then season with garlic, salt, and pepper. Let sit overnight in fridge. Next morning I add lemon juice (squeeze enough juice so each piece gets it, but not so much you are curing the meat) and mint leaves. I slice the lemon I used and place it on top of meat. Let sit in fridge until cooking time.
Preheat oven to 400F, then lower to 300F. Remove lemon and mint leaves (I feel the flavor is already in the meat, but ok to cook with the mint.) Cook for about 50 minutes. Adjust time per thickness and rare-level preference.
I usually pour the oil/juice from the roast into a stew or soup I'm making (example below) or save it for use later.
Ingredients for this stew besides water: onion, tomato, [ steamed butternut squash, potato, gold beet, ] and cabbage. I added a bit of chili flakes (optional) while it's simmering. Lamb oil/juice and salt at T-5 minutes.
Variation using Curry Leaves
Ingredients: Lamb, lemon, garlic, curry leaves, salt and pepper. Curry leaves have a nice aroma and taste nothing like curry.
Steps:
Similar to the above, but you can put the seasoning on the meat all at once instead of separate times if you like. I squeeze the lemon juice on the meat first before sprinkling salt, pepper, and rubbing chopped garlic and curry leaves over the lamb.
I made stew/soup with the juice from the roast. Stew ingredients: kuri squash, potatoes, carrot, and shallot. Delish by itself or with rice.
Rabbit Roast
I made my best friend's birthday dinner into an art project.
Ingredients: 2.7-lb rabbit, parsley, half lemon, whole garlic bulb, gold beets (keep the leaves,) sweet potatoes, parsnip, potatoes
Seasoning: Salt and pepper
Steps:
Remove the fat the rabbit has (however little) and set aside. Season the meat all over and let sit overnight. Chop parsley, garlic, place in a bowl, squeeze lemon juice, slice the lemon, mix and also leave it in fridge overnight (can prepare this in the morning if you like.)
Next day, dress the forest piece including the inside with the marinade and let sit in fridge for a few hours. Render rabbit fat - this is the smallest amount of fat I have ever rendered. See Duck Cracklings page if you don't know how to do this.
Cut the vegetables to whatever shape/size you like, I made it fries size. Heat up 2/3 of the rendered fat in a frying pan over high heat, add about 2-tablespoon of olive oil, mix in the vegetables except the leaves. Sprinkle salt and pepper and pan fry until some of the surfaces are golden brown. Transfer to a pot.
Discard the lemon slices from the rabbit, transfer the marinade to the fries and mix well. Heat up the rest of the rendered fat plus 1-tablespoon of olive oil over high heat, brown both side of the meat.
Bed the baking tray with the beet leaves if you have it and place the seared meat on top. Stuff the cavity and the tray with fries medley.
Bake the liver and heart the last 20 min. Cover the tray with aluminum foil, bake at 350F for 1 hr and 50 minutes.
A picture of the roast with the sides so we look less like savages.
The sides are broccolini, eggs with green garlic and zucchini.