Peking Duck (北京烤鴨)

[All photos: by Big Frank Dickinson]

Big Frank has been eating a lot of duck lately. All his life up to yesterday he had never eaten Peking Duck, and now he's eaten it two days in a row! Here, in China, of course, it's called Beijing Roast Duck - in traditional Chinese: 北京烤鴨. It dates back to at least the 14th century, and maybe earlier.

Below is Big Frank's host, Jack, with his son, Frankie. The menu for the evening is open on Jack's lap. It has lots of full color pictures, showing exactly what you are ordering, and the menu is always at least 20 pages long with an amazing amount of choices. Jack ordered Peking Duck, and of course about 15 or 20 other courses. The picture at the top show who ate with Big Frank and also how the first courses looked upon the table.



Here's the routine with the duck: the cooked Peking Duck is carved in front you. Then the meat is served with steamed pancakes, scallions, cucumber sticks and sweet bean sauce. It's kind of like making a taco: you spread the sauce over the pancake, which is wrapped around the meat with the vegetables and then it's eaten by hand (although I've seen Chinese hold this duck/pancake/vegetable wrap with chop sticks - something Big Frank did not attempt.

Big Frank took the following pictures during the meal (see below) to show you how this is done, and no, the Chinese I was eating with thought nothing strange of this; they thought the photographs appropriate - hey, it's Peking Duck! So - if you can find the duck (baked hanging in an oven) then you can make this yourselves at home.