A taste of home

You would think that it would be pretty easy to get hold of duck meat here in Geneva but on the contrary, it wasn’t.  According to friends, it would cost a lot more than normal poultry and they told us that we should head to France to get it.  The reason why I had wanted to get hold of duck meat was to make my favourite pot of Duck soup with salted vegetables.  That’s the soup that Mom would make and it always evokes memories of home for me.

So lo behold my happiness when I found out that duck was in season and best part on offer in Coop (a local supermarket chain in Switzerland).  Yes, I’ve been reduced to ‘auntie-dom’ living here and the little joys such as meat going on offer actually makes me happy.  Tsk tsk!

I had a packet of salted vegetable that had been sitting in my refrigerator for the past 5 months so I was pretty glad to be able to finally cook up a big pot of my favourite soup.  Mom emailed the recipe over but because I lacked some of the ingredients, I had to improvise and again make do what we have here.  Well, it didn’t turn out that bad.  Taste-wise was pretty close to what we could get back at home.  It warmed me up tremendously and memories of home flashed as we had the soup for dinner.  And you know what?  Leftovers taste even better the next day! 😉

Duck soup with Salted Vegetable

Ingredients:

• Duck meat – 1/4 to 1/2 a duck  (Best to remove skin so that the soup will not be that oily)
• Pork Ribs (200-300g)
• Salted vegetables (1 packet, approximately 300g) ( To soak for about few hours so that it won’t be so salty, thereafter cut into thin strips)
• Ginger – 10 slices
• 1 Tomato – Halved
• Garlic – 2 bulbs
• *Asam Skin – About 2 to 3 pieces
• *Sour plum – About 2 to 3 pieces
• [*Note: Ingredients that I didn’t have on hand.]

Method:

1. Cut the duck into small pieces and set aside.
2. Parboil pork ribs and then boil separately ribs as soup stock in a separate pot.
3. In a deep pot, pour some oil and stir-fry the ginger.  Add in duck slices and fry till fragrant.
4. Pour in pork ribs soup stock, then add in salted vegetables, assam skins, sour plums, garlic and tomatoes.  Bring soup to boil.
5. Thereafter, lower heat and let the soup continue to simmer for about 2 hours.  Add more water if needed.