Gluten Free Vegan Crispy ‘Duck’ with Pancakes

Sometimes there’s a food ‘experience’ that I ‘miss’. It’s not so much a food in itself but usually the event.

I think that’s why I make vegetarian lasagne, for example. Certain dishes and their rituals are interesting.

It could be the preparation or the eating process or the event. It’s also about history and memory.

When it comes down to it, food is a ritual, it’s part of celebration. There’s tradition and rules. There’s behaviours and expectations. When you make a lifestyle choice about food it can create exclusion zones where you don’t participate in the same ways which can be hard for everybody.

No thanks, I don’t eat cake I’m Gluten Free

for example.

What’s the matter with her?

you hear people thinking.

Food is also about other people’s expectations too. Sometimes people think they’re being judged by our choices not to eat what they do.

Sometimes it’s tough!

Always being different. Potentially causing offence. Not being normal, stepping away from the way that others eat.

When we visited Leaf Restaurant one of the cool things was being able to participate like everyone else.

No ‘no thank yous needed.

No apologies.

No explanations.

Just food!

So the first time I had ‘real’ crispy duck, I was in a place in East London called Ilford. Not very glamorous maybe. I was having dinner in a Chinese restaurant. This was special because in my childhood we’d only ever had takeaway. I was about 23. It was about 1992.

I didn’t know that Chinese food was better in a restaurant than take away.

That it was different.

We had crispy ‘duck’ at Leaf restaurant. So it’s been a while. More than twenty years.

We wanted to try and make it ourselves.

Here’s what we did.

Pancakes

I looked up a recipe for non gluten free pancakes food network

(I could’ve looked for GF but I didn’t because often those recipes require four types of exotic flour and I’m lazy!)

Then I used it as a base for the pancake process but substituted a gluten free flour I already had.

This is the crumbs of the dough where I’d combined hot water and ‘flour’.

The dough was very easy to pull together. I didn’t knead it much as GF flour isn’t particularly elastic.

Then coated each pancake with sesame oil on both sides and cooked in a frying pan. (The wok was un available!)

I panicked that they were too ‘French’ and crispy at one point but when piled up they softened each other.

Vegetables

Now I handed over to the main chef. I make all the pancakes in our house after a disaster the first time he cooked for me!

He shredded some cucumber and spring onions.

Then he used a weird product available here. The Vegetarisch Slager is Dutch for Vegetarian Butcher. The product: is Vegetarian Chicken pieces.

We don’t do much in the way of meat substitutes but in this case it gives an authentic contribution.

He pan fried it in oil and then chopped it up.

Hoisin Sauce

Now this is another GF challenge. I referenced One Hungry Mama

But there are commercially available versions too. It’s the aside that gets me about this meal.

Anyway, the whole thing came together really well.