Posts: 420
Threads: 51
Joined: Dec 1969
Being, as they say, of the Chinese persuasion, and growing up in a suburb of New York, I well remember the family driving down to NY's Chinatown once or twice a year to the venerable Peking Duck House, upstairs on Mott Street, to feast on... you guessed it. We didn't go more often because Peking duck was not cheap; I think that in the late 1950s, each order cost around $20.
First came a linen-draped steamer containing thick yet wonderfully pliable pancakes, to be slathered with plum sauce and garnished with stalks of scallion. Then the waiter would arrive bearing an intact roast duck and, like a surgeon, pare off the crispy skin into strips, carve the white meat and shave the dark. As the table set about building the first pancake, the waiter would turn away with the carcass. My mother would unfailingly hiss, in Chinese: We will take home the bones -- and the next day, the house would unfailingly be thick with the heady aroma of duck stock in the making.
In the early 1970s, my fiancee and I went out to Fire Island for a summer weekend at a house that a pal of hers had rented. Said pal is not only an accomplished chef, but also an ambitious one. I'll never forget a buffet dinner, served on mismatched summer-rental-house plates but taken al fresco overlooking the darkening Atlantic. The main course was roast duck with sour cherries.
Being a Stanford dad, my two most recent memorable Roast Ducks are the 2012 and 2013 football games when the Tree made Oregon squawk, "AFLAC!!!!".
