What is Winter Melon?
Winter melon, although it may sound like a kind of vegetable belongs to winter, the best season to enjoy it actually is summer. In different market, you can find it be called ash gourd, wax gourd, white gourd, and winter gourd. It can be stored for up to three to four months easily, it can also be a good ingredient in main dishes, soups, sweets, and beverages with super reasonable cost, so why not to give it a try?
How to buy and store?
Winter melon can easily be found in Asian supermarkets while in season. Most of the time it’s sold in cut-pieces since this is such a large fruit. Whether whole or sliced, the fruit should be firm and unbruised with evenly white color, not watery.
Whole winter melon will keep in a cool place for months and likely up to one year. Once sliced, the melon will last for a couple of days if placed in a seal plastic bag or wrapped by plastic film in the crisper section of the refrigerator. Winter melon can be preserved by pickling as well.
Before cooking winter melon, remove the skin, the seeds and the soft flesh that holds the seeds. Then cube or slice it. When eat along, winter melon has mild and refreshing taste. While pairing with other ingredients, it will absorb the flavors of the ingredients it is cooked with.
Braised Duck with Winter Melon, Ginger and Tomatoes
Usually the seasonings for braised dishes are very strong, but for this one what you need is just ginger and salt. I also added some Sichuan Peppercorn, and it’s totally okay to skip this. Cooking wine can be replaced with sake, white wine or sherry wine. Better use seasonal fresh tomatoes which will bring very refreshing flavor to this dish.
Ingredients
Duck - 1/4 of the whole
Winter Melon - 200g
Fresh Cherry Tomatoes - 1 cup, cut into half
Fresh Ginger - 1/2 cup
Sichuan Peppercorn - 1 tsp
Salt - 1/2 tsp
Cooking Wine - 1 tbsp
Hot water - enough to cover all the ingredients
Steps
Cut the duck to bite-pieces, rinse it throughly with running water to clean up all the dust and blood. Drain and use kitchen paper to absorb the moisture. Make sure the duck is clean and dry before next steps.
In a pot, put duck pieces in with its skin down. At medium-low heat, slowly cook duck till skin releases all the fat and become golden, crispy. Filter extra duck fat into a clean jar, store it in refrigerator so it can be used later for other dishes.
Stir fry ginger, Sichuan peppercorn with duck for a while. When ginger starts to release flavor, turn the heat to high, add tomatoes, cooking wine. Cook till tomatoes are soft. Pour in hot water, bring it to boil, add salt, then taste the soup. The soup shall not be salty since it will be concentrated and there will be less than half liquid left at the end.
Cover the pot with lid, on medium-low heat, cook for 30 minutes or the duck meat is soft enough. Add winter melon in. When winter melon become transparent and soft, taste again and see if you’d like to add more salt.
Serve hot.
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