This is a basic recipe for a tasty Chinese stir-fry I made for a quick lunch yesterday. We had a can of mock duck form our Asian market, and I wanted to use it up finally, so I tweaked Bryanna Clark Grogan’s mock duck recipes a little bit. Canned mock duck is not our favorite food, and we both much prefer tofu in Chinese cooking, but in this recipe it does absorb a lot of flavor. To go with the duck, we had jasmine rice Heikki cooked in the rice cooker.

For the “duck”:

• 1 can mock duck (wheat gluten)

• 1 tablespoon cornstarch

Other ingredients:

• 1 red bell pepper

• 2 medium sized carrots

• 1 onion

• 3 cloves garlic, minced

• 3 tablespoons fresh ginger, minced

• 1/2 teaspoon chili flakes

The Sauce:

• 2 dl vegetarian broth

• 1 tablespoon black bean garlic sauce (from the Asian market)

• 2 tablespoons sherry

• 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce

• 1 teaspoon sugar

Thickening:

• 1 teaspoon cornstarch dissolved in 1 tablespoon water

First, I boiled some water to make the vegetable stock, and mixed it with the other sauce ingredients. Then we cut the red bell peppers, carrots, and onions in long strips, and minced the garlic and the ginger.

I thoroughly rinsed the mock duck under hot and cold water to get rid of the brine, and then squeezed it with my hands to remove most of the liquids absorbed. Then I prepared the mock duck for frying by first cutting it in small pieces and then coating it with the corn starch. Now I heated the wok pan with 2 tablespoons of oil very hot, and browned the duck in it. Then I poured in the onions, and fried them until a little softened, maybe 2 minutes. Now, I added the vegetables, ginger, garlic, and chili powder, and quickly fried them for a few minutes, whisking them around the pan constantly.

When the veggies were still crispy, I added the sauce, which got bubbly right away, and I could now drip the cornstarch-water solution evenly in the pan. It thickens the sauce in just a few seconds, so I made sure to stir everything quickly to coat each piece of food with the sauce, and it was ready to serve!