Tea-Smoked Duck Salad with Cucumber, Chilli, Lime and Mandarin Pancakes

Since it's been quite hot this week, I thought I'd try out this salad recipe that caught my eye. I had also never tried to smoke any type of meat at home using tea leaves (or anything else for that matter). It's much easier than I thought it would be, but very effective. I've also found this recipe online as well, so give it a shot yourself, it's quite easy and very tasty. The pancakes can be a little time consuming, but get someone to help you and it will cut your prep time in half. Even though they take a little while, the pancakes are actually quite easy to make, so don't be put off! Just in case you were wondering, Mandarin pancakes have nothing to do with Mandarin fruit!

First you need to mix your tea leaves, rice and brown sugar together. The Green Tea I bought already had roasted rice in it, so I'm not sure how much difference this made to the taste, but it was still great.


Line your wok with some foil and put your tea mix in the bottom. Place your duck breasts on top of the tea, skin side down and then cover with the wok lid. Place the wok on a medium - low flame and heat for 5 mins until smoking. Once smoking, leave on the heat for 15 mins, then take off the heat - don't remove the lid or else your remaining smoke with escape. Don't worry about the smoke escaping and filling your room, because it wont happen, just make sure the foil covers the edges of your wok and you should get a snug fit with your lid.

This is what the duck will look like once it's been smoked. It's still not cooked though, you'll need to cook the duck, skin side down in a dry, oven proof frying pan, until the skin is really crispy. Make sure you brush off as much of the tea mixture as you can before frying.


You'll then need to cook the duck in the oven for about 8 mins or so. Until it's just cooked, it should still be pink inside.


Here is the duck once it's been cooked in the oven and rested for about 5 mins, then sliced lengthways.


Once you've made your salad and dressing, mix the duck with the salad and plate the salad up. Serve on individual plates with the pancakes on the side. You then eat the duck and salad like a Peking duck. The dressing is kind of like a runny BBQ duck glaze, so it really is like a Peking Duck Salad. You could easily serve this as an main course, but I served it as an Entree - absolutely delicious!