Kamo nanban

Duck fat rendered into the broth and the leek charred in it, with the soba boiled apart.

Duck, Fish. Not vegetarian — contains duck, fish, kamaboko, which is a fish cake.

Ingredients

the broth

• 1 litre dashi
• 80 ml soy sauce
• 60 ml mirin
• 1 tablespoon sugar

the rest

• 2 duck breasts, skin on
• 2 leeks, in 4 cm lengths
• 400 g dried soba
• 4 slices kamaboko
• 1 teaspoon shichimi
• 1 tablespoon yuzu zest

Method

1. THE DUCK FAT GOES INTO THE BROTH, and that is what this page is about. The soba page makes the noodles and the broth; everything here is the duck -- how it is rendered, how little it is cooked, and what the fat does to the soup on the way past.
2. SCORE THE SKIN AND START IT IN A COLD DRY PAN, skin down, over a low heat. Eight to ten minutes gives a tablespoon or two of clear fat and a crisp skin. A hot pan seizes the skin and the fat stays in it.
3. CHAR THE LEEK IN THAT FAT, hard, until it is black at the cut ends. The scorched sugars are half the flavour of the bowl and nothing else in it supplies them.
4. Pour the rendered fat into the broth. It sits on top as a sheet and keeps the soup hot far longer than a clear broth stays hot, which is why this is a winter dish.
5. SLICE THE DUCK THIN AND OFF THE HEAT. Take the breast out at rare, rest it 5 minutes, slice it 5 mm thick, then lay the slices in the hot broth for 30 SECONDS only. Simmered, duck breast goes livery and grey.
6. Broth: dashi, soy, mirin and sugar simmered 10 minutes with the charred leek in it.
7. BOIL THE SOBA IN A SEPARATE PAN, as on its own page, and rinse it. Soba cooked in the broth clouds it grey with buckwheat starch -- the opposite instruction from the hoto page in this same batch, and for the opposite reason.
8. Rinse in cold water, then dip briefly back in hot water to reheat before it goes in the bowl.
9. Noodles in, broth over, then the duck, leek and kamaboko arranged on top rather than stirred in.
10. Shichimi and yuzu zest at the table.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Japan · All recipes