Spring Festival Pizza – Confit Duck with Chilli Jam, Pickled Peppers and Goats Cheese

It’s snowing outside here in Shankill – well just a flurry but it is real snow. In Urumqi it’s -19 degrees C, too cold for Dermot to venture out but Shan tells me he loves to play with the texture of a snowball gathered from the window ledge and stares in intense concentration as it dissolves in his warm fingers. Shane is already back working in Beijing where it is a mere -7. The Spring Festival is drawing to a close this weekend and China is grinding back to it’s normal winter rhythm.
I’ve had many Chinese meals over the past two weeks including the superb New Year’s Banquet at China Sichuan Dublin where we celebrated both the Chinese New Year and, in his absence, Dermot’s first birthday on 5th February. But I had this notion that I wanted to create a Chinese Pizza to mark the arrival of the Year of the Horse, one that I could cook on the Big Green Egg.
I love making pizza dough and normally use the recipe in this post for the base but, thanks to my Italian friend Solange, I’ve recently discovered Pizza da Piero by the Artisan Pizza company whose products are hand made in Rathmines. These thin, light bases short-circuit the work of preparing a pizza, especially on a stormy Monday night when the rain is teeming down outside. They come in resealable packs of three and cook in about 10 minutes to crisp perfection.
I had decided to build my topping around confit duck and I had consulted Twitter about what else to include in it. I got lots of interesting suggestions and my favourite came from Tom Walsh, head chef at Samphire@theWaterside. And so Confit Duck Pizza with Chilli Jam, Sweet Pickled Peppers, Goats Cheese and Rocket was born.
For ease of reference, I’ve set out all the steps in the recipe below. But in practice I make this pizza the day after I’ve cooked a batch of confit duck legs. I roast some off in the oven that day and serve them with puy lentils or duck fat roast potatoes and pickled red cabbage. I save the rest to make confit duck hash and pizzas.
Tom Chef’s chilli jam and sweet pickled peppers can also be made well in advance and these days I always have some of each in the fridge in kilner jars. You will find you can put them to all sorts of uses in Asian and western dishes.
With these ingredients to hand it takes just moments to make up the pizza and you can relax while your oven heats to temperature. In my case the most challenging bit of preparing the pizza was the dash outside to the Big Green Egg in the lashing rain. But then I delegated that… and proved, once again, that the Big Green Egg can cope with any extremes of weather, even if I can’t!
Confit Duck Pizza with Chilli Jam , Sweet Pickled Peppers, Goats Cheese and Rocket
(makes 3 pizzas)
Ingredients

3 Pizza da Piero bases
2 confit duck legs
Tom Chef”s Chilli Jam
Tom Chef’s sweet pickled peppers
1 log of soft goat’s cheese
a large red onion thinly sliced
3 large handfuls of rocket

Preparation

If using a Big Green Egg, place your pizza stone on stainless steel grill over the plate setter legs up and heat to about 220 degrees c. Alternatively heat your oven to 250 degrees c.
Shred your duck legs including some of the crispy skin.
Spread a thin layer of chilli jam on each base.
Scatter over pickled peppers, confit duck and sliced onion.
Break up some goats cheese and dot over the top of the pizza.
Bake for 7 to 12 minutes depending on your oven temperature until the base is crispy and the goats cheese just melting.
Scatter with rocket and serve.

Confit Duck Legs
Ingredients

6 duck legs
Enough duck fat to cover the duck legs when melted (about 4 jars)
About 6 cloves garlic
about 4 Star anise
Some springs of rosemary and thyme
A few bay leaves
Salt and pepper

Preparation

Dry out the duck legs at room temperature. Tuck the cloves of garlic, star anise, rosemary, thyme and bay leaves around them, season with salt and pepper and cover with melted duck fat.
Slow-roast them in the oven at 120 to 130 degrees for 3 to 4 hours until the meat is melting off the bone. Allow them to cool until the duck fat has set.
When ready to use, gently prise the duck legs out of the fat, saving the infused fat for glorious duck roast potatoes. Reheated the confit duck legs in the oven for about 15 minutes by starting them at 170 degrees C and crisping off the skin at 230 degrees C.

Tom Chef’s Chilli Jam
Ingredients

6-8 red chilli peppers chopped roughly
300g castor sugar
300g white wine vinegar

Preparation

Place all the ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to the boil and cook gently to reduce to a syrupy, jam-like consistency being careful not to burn.
Blend with a stick blender.
Store in a sealed container in the fridge.

Tom Chef’s Sweet Pickled Peppers
Ingredients

4 to 6 long pointy red peppers
400g white wine vinegar
400g castor sugar
6 star anise
a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil

Preparation

Slice the peppers into thin strips.
Pace the vinegar, sugar and star anise in a saucepan. Bring to the boil, add the pepper strips. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slowly.
When cool add a drizzle of olive oil to taste and store in a sealed container in the fridge.

The birthday boy

On Dermot’s first birthday he fulfilled the Chinese tradition of choosing his “destiny” from an array of objects – a ritual remarkably similar to the Romanian one we witnessed for twins Oli and Fredi at their first birthday party and which I wrote about in Images and Flavours of Tuscany last August.

From the array of items on display, Dermot first chose a golden pig (wealth), a statue (power) and then a jade bracelet. So much for literary pursuits (sigh). Ah sure go on Dermot… at this stage of your young life, you may as well aim to rule the world.

When two met one over a summer BBQ and Duck Spring Rolls

We’ve a little thing going on my four month old grandson and I. We dance around the bedroom to the same song, “Tiny Dancer”, each day of this his brief visit home. He joins in the fun as I sing along out of tune.
We converse. I tell him what I think is important, how I feel about him, what it’s like to have him snuggle against me and chew my shoulder with his teething gums, how I will never forget these moments. He stretches his legs, bounces on my lap and answers with intense concentration, with burbles and giggles and smiles as he struggles to articulate … He seems to understand….
I thought of that tonight as I listened to the writer John Banville in conversation with Olivia O’Leary. What distinguishes humans from animals, he said, is the ability to use words, the capacity to create sentences. I wonder what sentence Dermot will speak first and in what language…
We had our own little Gathering last Sunday, one of those days from which memories are carved.
We were joined for a BBQ in our garden by my Italian friend Solange, her Argentinian husband Agustin and their identical twins, just 10 months old.
The last time we adults had all been together was for Christmas 2011 when Shan came to visit us for the first time. That was very special as Claire and her Welsh husband Mike were also able to be with us from Australia for part of the time, an event described by one wit on Twitter as a cross between the Davos Convention and an international rugby tournament.
This time we were feeling the absence of Claire and Mike but the sun was beating down from a cloudless sky, and it was still a day to savour.
While she has attempted to teach me Italian, I have kept company with Solange through her journey into motherhood and she has supported me as I adapted to being a long distance granny, sharing hugs from her little boys. It felt important to introduce these three little people to one another with the hope that some day “i cugini” might become friends.

Well “introduce” might be pushing it a bit but they all got to eye one another up with varying degrees of interest while one set of parents remembered what it was like to cuddle a snuggly little person and the others imagined a day when their little man would be taking off on all fours at a rapid pace to explore a small urban jungle.
Between us we had at least 6 languages – English, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish, Romanian and Irish – and 5 nationalities, but the 3 little boys all hold Irish passports and are set to be multilingual citizens of the 21st century.

Ni hao Fred and Oli, or is it Oli and Fred…

In all the circumstances it seemed appropriate to have a barbecue that was a bit Irish, a bit Chinese and a bit Italian so a big thank you to Rozanne Stevens for the inspiration in her new Relish BBQ book.
From it I chose:

an Italianish main course of Norman’s butterflied leg of lamb with lively salsa
an Asian mushroom, pak choi and potato salad and
a Chinesish dessert of lychee jam jar cheese cake.

All were a resounding success.
For starters I recreated an Irish take on a Chinese classic – confit duck spring rolls from Chef Tom Walsh of Samphire at the Waterside in Donobate who gave me this recipe for a post I did for Taste of China during this year’s Chinese New Year Festival. Tom was one of the nominees for chef of the year in the Dublin regional finals of the Restaurant Association of Ireland Awards this week. Pay his restaurant a visit and enjoy his great food.
Tom Chef’s Confit Duck Spring Rolls

1. Confit Duck Legs:
Ingredients:

2 duck legs
Salt and pepper
2 jars of duck fat or goose fat
A few sprigs of fresh rosemary and thyme
A few whole cloves garlic
2 star anise

Preparation:

Allow the duck legs to dry out at room temperature and season well with salt and pepper.
Place in a small oven proof dish along with the rosemary, thyme, garlic and star anise.
Melt the duck or goose fat and pour over the duck legs making sure they are covered completely. (Top up with light olive oil or sunflower oil if necessary.)
Cover with foil and confit slowly in the oven at low temperature until the duck meat is falling away from the bone – at least 1 ½ hours at 130 degrees C, or you can cook at 110/120 degrees C for several hours.

2. Duck Spring Rolls:
Ingredients:

2 confit duck legs (as above)
1 carrot cut into thin julienne strips
1 red onion thinly sliced
100g bean sprouts
1 tbs oyster sauce
1 clove garlic (crushed)
20g pickled ginger*
25g chopped coriander
25g chopped chervil
6 sheets of spring roll pastry 10’’ square
1 egg white
Sunflower oil for deep-frying
Chilli jam* to serve
Corander and/or chervil to garnish

*See below
Preparation:

Shred the confit duck leg and mix with all the other prepared ingredients. Taste and adjust the seasoning to taste.
Take 1 ½ sheets of pastry for each spring roll.
Placing a full sheet down and a half on top, from one corner, fill the doubled-side, near the centre with some duck mix.
Starting at the doubled corner, roll to half way then fold in the sides and continue rolling to the end.
Brush some egg white on the far corner to stick the pastry together.
Fill a wok about a third full with sunflower oil and heat until a cube of bread turns golden in a few seconds. Deep fry the springrolls until golden.
Slice each spring roll in two on the diagonal and serve with the chilli jam garnished with coriander and/ or chervil.

3. Pickled Ginger:
You can buy pickled ginger but I love Tom’s homemade version which keeps for weeks in the fridge.
Ingredients:

200g fresh ginger
250g white wine vinegar
125g still mineral water
125g sugar
2 star anise
4 cloves
2 bay leaves
Good sprig of thyme

Preparation:

Weigh all the ingredients, except the ginger into a saucepan.
Bring to the boil all and leave to chill.
Peel and slice the ginger and steep in the chilled pickle.
Store in a sealed container in the fridge.

4. Tom Chef’s Chilli Jam

Since Tom gave me this recipe, I have served it as a dip with everything from crisps to barbecued chicken wings and my guests rave about it. Bottled chilli jam will never again cross our threshold. It keeps indefinitely in a Kilner jar in the fridge. It is very simple to make, just take a little care to cook it slowly so that it doesn’t burn.
Ingredients:

6-8 red chilli peppers chopped roughly
300g castor sugar
300g white rice wine vinegar (ordinary white wine vinegar will do)

Method:

Place all the ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to the boil and cook gently to reduce to a syrupy, jam-like consistency being careful not to burn.
Blend with a stick blender.
Store in a sealed container in the fridge.

5. Homemade Chilli Oil

And while I’m on a roll, here’s another store cupboard condiment that transcends western and Chinese flavours and is great for barbecues. I picked up this recipe at cookery class in Hutong Cuisine in Beijing. It is simple to prepare and, once savoured, you will never want a shop bought version again. In recent weeks I’ve brushed this over prawns and crab claws and sizzled them on the BBQ, painted it on to fish fillets to be baked in the oven and drizzled it over Italian pizza, even though it was originally just intended to accompany this Sichuan Spicy Chicken Salad.
Ingredients:

200g rapeseed oil (or sunflower oil, groundnut oil or vegetable oil)
2 pieces star anise
2 thumbnail size pieces of cinnamon (preferably the wider Chinese type)
1 tsp of Sichuan peppercorns
1 large cardamom pod, crushed to release seeds (preferably the large black Chinese cardamom pods)
4 bay leaves
4 tsp Pixian broad bean paste (Lee Kum Kee Toban Djan chilli bean sauce, which is readily available in Ireland can be used instead)
2 slices of ginger
1 spring onion, white part only, cut in two
4 tbs crushed chillies
2 tsp sesame seeds

Method:

Heat the oil in a wok over low heat and add all the ingredients except the chillies and sesame seeds. Stir slowly over gentle heat for at least 8 to 10 minutes until the spices have begun to turn brown in colour, released their fragrance and infused the oil.
Sieve the oil and discard the spices. By this time it should have turned into a gorgeous warm red colour. Return it to the wok with the crushed chillies and sesame seeds. Stir over a very low heat until the chilli has turned light brown in colour.
When cool, pour the oil into a glass container and keep over night before use. Store unused oil indefinitely in an airtight jar.

Yes when Chinese meets Irish meets Italian, who knows what fun things can happen.
Grazie Solange, Agus, Oli e Fredi per la giornata indimenticabile 🙂

Tom Chef's Chilli Jam

This is just a quick little post because some of you have been asking for the recipe for the chilli jam which chef Tom Walsh of Samphire@TheWaterside, Donabate included in his recipe for Spring Rolls of Confit Duck which is on the Taste of China section of the Dublin Chinese New Year Festival website. You can read his full recipe here.
Here it is – simplicity itself, absolutely delicious and goes with so many things, not just Chinese food. Try it with cheese, meat pies, or as my sister-in-law Dervilla did, with pasties.

Chilli Jam

Ingredients:

6-8 red chilli peppers chopped roughly
300g castor sugar
300g white wine vinegar

Chilli jam mix — Bringing the jam mix to the boil… gently now…

Method:

Bring to the boil and cook gently to reduce to a syrupy, jam consistency being careful not to burn.
Blend with a stick blender.
This will keep for a long time if stored in a sealed container in the fridge.

Finished jam — Ah, this looks about right…

Preparing spring rolls — Time to make up the spring rolls…

Variations:

My sister-in-law Dervilla made a version of the jam yesterday. She didn’t blitz it because she liked the appearance of chilli seeds throughout the jam. Her jam is also more orange in colour because she had no wine vinegar in the store cupboard so she used a white malt one instead. Thanks for sharing Dervilla and thanks for the inspiration Tom. 🙂