Vietnamese Wood Duck Sandwiches


First, shoot a wood duck. Yank out a few of the flank feathers for streamer flies for your own stash or a fly tying buddy's. Breast the duck and brine the boneless, skinless breastmeat in water, about 2 cups filtered water and 1/2 TB of salt.



Meanwhile, check your spice cabinet, because this rub is awesome but lengthy in ingredients. You're gonna go to the store in a bit for some fresh sandwich stuff anyway.

Once you've got all the ingredients together and hopefully brined the duck a few hours, prepare the rub:


Southwest Espresso Rub

4 Tablespoons espresso*
2 Tablespoons chili powder
2 Tablespoons paprika
1 Tablespoon ground coriander
1 Tablespoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano

*You want the coffee to be very fine. I had to grind mine myself because the Starbucks near me has machines that turn fresh beans into a shot, they can't get at the grounds before water hits them. I took a few of their fresh beans and put them in my grinder and just beat them all to hell. When done I ran them through a sieve so I was left with just powder.


Take the breasts and cut them to make them thinner and expose more surface area to the rub. Imagine butterflying the breasts, but then cut all the way through, so you have 4 breast pieces that look like extra-thin duck breasts. Put some of the rub in a bowl (you're going to have leftover to keep in a shaker or ziplock bag for next time) and really rub the spices in. It's enough when you can't see any duck through the spices.

Let the duck marinade in the spices for an hour.

Prepare the spread: start with 1 tablespoon of Thai Red Chili Paste and 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise. Taste and adjust, you might like it spicier or less spicy.

Prepare your vegetables: thinly slice a cucumber the long way, you want paper thin slices. A mandolin would be ideal here but I don't have one, luckily my box cheese grater has a slicer on one side that worked well. Get you some paper thin slices of red onion going, too. Wash some cilantro, tear the leaves off, and pat the leaves dry.

At this point, heat your skillet to HOT. Medium-high is good on my range, but it runs hot anyway.

Make the sandwich while the skillet heats: lay some of the chili mayonnaise down on a hoagie or poor boy style bun, put the cucumbers down, red onions, cilantro, and lettuce.

Now that your skillet is hot put about a tablespoon of oil in there. I happened to have toasted sesame oil and also some hot chili sesame oil. About a 50-50 mix is a good flavor. Set an egg timer and stand by the stove and work fast. Cook the wood duck for ONE MINUTE on each side. Not 2 minutes, unless you like to eat leather.

Let the duck rest on a cutting board for at least 3 minutes while you hide all the empty beer bottle evidence from your spouse. Slice the duck thinly, add it to the sandwich, and eat.



Shopping list:

Spices:

4 Tablespoons espresso*
2 Tablespoons chili powder
2 Tablespoons paprika
1 Tablespoon ground coriander
1 Tablespoon garlic powder
1 Tablespoon salt
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon crushed red pepper
1 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
1 teaspoon dried oregano

Hoagie, poor boy or other good lookin sandwich bread.
Lettuce
Cucumber
Red Onion
Cilantro
Mayonnaise
Thai Red Chili Paste (ethnic section, small jar about 2-3 inches tall and one inch diameter)
Sesame Oil, Hot Chili Sesame Oil, or substitute with whatever you've got

Will have to try this one.

that makes me hungry

Looks good minus the onions.

Long hair that looks fantastic.

I sent that out via email to a few buddies and I got this from one of them:



Made me laugh! It is an awful lot of work, or at least a lot of digging through your spice cabinet. But I have enough rub left over to do this one or two more times.

A fishing buddy showed up to a group gathering with a pile of these made out of flank steak for our lunch between catchin redfish. They were tasty so I had to make some of my own. I think it's the style (cucumber, onion, cilantro) that makes them "Vietnamese", the rub is southwest style and the mayonnaise is Thai. About 4 months after the guy brought those sandwiches I was watching Anthony Bourdain with my wife and he was in either Veitnam or Laos and they made sandwiches that reminded me I had to try them again!

I cooked some of the wood duck without any spices because I'd heard they were so good, and I really liked it, but the rub does kind of cover flavor up. I bet this would be a great recipe for some of the stronger tasting duck if you wanted to hide some of the "game taste."

Dang that looks good!! I'm gonna have to do some smoke duck this weekend, might have to fire up the big smoker!!!!

Tonight I made these for dinner, with BWT, a spoonie and a coot. Neither I or my wife could tell what was what... I kept the species all separate just to see, the coot tasted as good as the BWT and spoonie.

Note to self: Dave has no taste buds

Coot, it's what's for dinner!

Sounds like a great recipe...makes me wish season was open.

turns out coot is pretty good for lunch, too!

Hope, when I saw Vietnamese in the title I thought this was going to be a recipe for eating duck heads......

i was thinkin of something completely different

but this is good too