I decided to start choosing meals for the whole week and do groceries according to the menus because we're a little broke lately. It also helps not wasting any vegetables or meats your forget at the back of the freezer. Anyway, one of my menu was a duck and bamboo soup. As my boyfriend and I were searching for dried bamboo at the Asian market (ran by Vietnamese people), a man placing products offered to help us. He asked me what I was gonna do with the bamboo, I told him a soup. He spotted the duck in our cart and he knew instantly which soup I was gonna cook! He said "But how do you know about this soup!?" And I told him I've been cooking Vietnamese for 2-3 months now. He was so really proud! Yaaayyy! He brought me in another row and suggested I bought vacuum-sealed fresh bamboo in brine, that my soup would be much better. When we left, my boyfriend told me he thinks that man was the owner! I should get an easy, steady job there maybe, with air conditioning for the summer...
Turns out the duck soup recipe calls for both dried and brined bamboo (I overlooked the brined one). I only used the fresh brined one, but I included the instructions if you want to use only the dried one, or both. So here is my simplified version of Duck and Bamboo Soup from the book Vietnamese Street Food by Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl!
(serves 6)
Broth:
-2 chicken carcasses
-1 duck
-4cm piece of ginger, roughly sliced
-6 green onions
-2 white parts of lemongrass, bruised
-1tsp salt
-1tsp sugar
Seasoning
-1 1/2tbsp fish sauce
-3cm ginger, thinly julienned
Toppings:
-6 portions (600g) rice vermicelli
-120g vacuum-sealed bamboo, drained, boiled for 15 minutes, then rinsed in cold water, dried and thinly sliced
-(optional) 60g dried bamboo, soaked overnight then boiled for an hour, then refreshed and drained, cut into 1 1/2" pieces
-some basil
-some mint
-4 green onions, thinly sliced
-fried shallots
-Nuoc Mam Gung (ginger dipping sauce), recipe follows
In a large pot, add the chicken bones and duck and cover with water. Bring to a boil, skim the scums, then add the other ingredients on the broth list and lower the heat. Simmer for an hour, removing the fat and scums regularly. After an hour, remove the duck, let it cool before cutting with a cleaver or simply deboning it like I did, and let the broth simmer an extra hour.
Prepare all your toppings, the ginger dipping sauce, and cook the rice vermicelli. After a total of two hours, strain the broth, discard everything. Put back on the stove in a clean pot, add the seasonings and bring to a boil.
To assemble the dish, place a portion of noodles at the bottom of each bowls (it makes enough for 6, but you can also just keep the extra broth in the fridge or freezer for later and adjust the toppings amount, it's just me and my boyfriend here so that's what I did, made lunches, kept extra broth for sides of soup during the week), top with the duck, bamboo, herbs, and finish with green onions, shallots and a spoon of dipping sauce. Bring the dipping sauce at the table for your guests to adjust to their taste.
GINGER DIPPING SAUCE:
-120mL fish sauce
-1tsp sugar
-2cm ginger, peeled and cut into tiny, tiny thin strips
-3 garlic cloves, chopped
-1 long red chilli, finely chopped
Mix the fish sauce and sugar until well combined, then stir in everything else. You can use any leftovers on rice, or as an alternative to the classic nuoc-cham...
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