Bryan Martin's recipe for duck congee with salted duck eggs

When opportunity knocks, I always answer the door with enthusiasm and courage, even though I'm never quite sure what is on the other side. That's why I'm bummed to not be in the running for Mars One. You wait, first thing they'll need is grog, they've made a mistake not including me in the top 100.

However, it's not my aspirational Martian plans, closer to home as always, it's food that has me thinking. A jar arrived the other day, looking like it originally held pickled cucumbers but now, floating in this worryingly viscous liquid, that looks for the world like it's from a science museum, are a dozen eggs.

OK, and these would be ... ? Salted duck eggs. Of course they are, just what I'm looking for. I place them in my lab fridge to ponder where they'll fit in with the weekly menu planner. I'm pretty sure none of my work colleagues will get stuck into them at beer o'clock any time soon.

Coming up with a recipe is easy, anyone living around a team of south-east Asians would know that this is part of a breakfast dish called congee. It's sort of this cooked down rice porridge or gruel, if you are a fan of pre-industrial Britain.

As I can't really cope with food before noon, this'll have to do as a lunch, duck congee with salted eggs. When I first transited through Singapore as a fresh faced early 20-year-old, I was given a task to find a street market near Ann Siang hill and go to vendor No. 23 and order the one thing they made there, duck porridge.

Back then it was a pretty raw experience, just a vendor with a big pot, no HACCP plan if you know what I mean. All these street markets have been cleaned up now, which is probably a good thing, but there was something cool, and clearly memorable, about the unadorned nature of these places way back in the distant 80s. The duck porridge with salted eggs was amazing, a textural wonderland.

So it been a while since I thought of this dish, but now I have, sitting in that fridge, the perfect garnish for duck congee, might as well cook up a pot and see if it holds true to my memories. You can buy these from Asian grocers, so don't worry too much about sourcing fresh duck eggs and brining them yourselves.

However, if you do have laying ducks nearby, it seems an easy process to salt them. You'll need a 25 per cent salt solution, that's 1 cup of salt dissolved in a 1 litre bottle of water. You leave the eggs submerged in this for three to four weeks. They need to be totally covered and agitated every day or so. You can test them by cracking one open, the yolk will be set and have a glassy look to it. To use you cook them for 10 minutes to set the white and then remove the shell and grate the egg over the rice or salad or whatever you are using them in.

Salted eggs give the dish a richness and, obviously, a salty seasoning. A word of warning. As a general rule, ducks don't just keep laying like a chook does. There will be drakes involved, and drakes doing what drakes will do, the eggs may be fertilised. Stay with me, it's gross but worth mentioning. This is highly prized among this team who made my jar of eggs. To have a developing embryo inside the salted egg is considered good luck and adds a certain richness, and surprise, to the egg.

If there are feathers involved you might need to find a fresher source of eggs, know what I mean? But don't let this put you off, the egg source here is a lady down near Gundaroo and I have faith in the process and a dozen eggs to test their state of development.

Rice porridge is easy to make, you can use any rice but I've found a 50:50 blend of short grain and long grain works a treat. The glutinous short-grain rice, available from the same grocer as the eggs, is soaked in water overnight. You can easily use chicken eggs and stock but everything about a duck is higher toned and richer in flavour.

Duck porridge with salted duck eggs and crispy skin

1 cooked Peking-style duck
3 slices ginger
3 spring onions
1 star anise
3 tbsp light soy sauce
2 tbsp mirin
¼ cup sake
1 cup glutinous rice, soaked in water overnight
1 cup jasmine rice, rinsed
¼ tsp sesame oil
spring onions to garnish
1 salted duck egg per person

Remove all the meat from the cooked duck. Shred the leg and thigh meat and skin. Remove and shred the crispy skin from the breast, slice the meat and add to the leg mixture.

Chop the bones up and cook them in their own fat until crispy. Deglaze the pan with water and add the ginger, onions, anise, soy sauce, mirin and sake to the bones in the pan. Cook to reduce and add a litre of water. Bring to a simmer and cook for 1 hour.

Strain and reserve the stock, discard the bones and stuff. Chill in the fridge and remove the set fat, saving it in a small bowl.

Drain the rice and fry in a tablespoon of the duck fat until it starts to look a little translucent. Cool a bit and stir in the duck stock along with another litre of water.

Bring to a simmer and cook until it gets a gelatinous look . It will take an hour or so, stir carefully adding extra water if it gets too thick. In the last few minutes add the duck meat, sesame oil and stir through.

Let this sit a while to sort itself out. Being a pot of water to the boil and cook the salted eggs for 10 minutes.

Shell the egg and chop up the set white, stir through warm rice and garnish the rice with the yolk, chopped spring onions and the shredded duck skin.