Duck marinated in Sichuan spices, air-dried, steamed until almost fully cooked, then smoked over a mixture of tea leaves, rice, and brown sugar — producing a duck with a burnished mahogany skin, a complex smoked aromatic that is simultaneously woody, sweet, and tea-fragrant, and a fully cooked interior that requires only a brief final deep-frying to develop the skin's crispness. Zhang cha ya is the Sichuan preparation that has generated the most international attention after mapo tofu — its multi-stage technique and specific smoked character are unlike any other smoked preparation.
**The marinade:** - Sichuan pepper: toasted, ground. - Salt. - Star anise: ground. - Five-spice powder. - Shaoxing wine. Rub the marinade inside and outside the whole duck. Refrigerate uncovered for 24 hours — the air-drying (combined with the salt) draws moisture from the skin surface, preparing it for the final crisp-frying. **The steaming:** Steam the duck over vigorous water for 1.5 hours — this fully cooks the meat and renders a significant portion of the subcutaneous fat. The duck is limp, fully yielding, and very pale at this stage. **The smoking:** Set up the wok smoker: - Line the wok with foil. - Place in the wok: brown sugar (3 tablespoons), long-grain rice (3 tablespoons), Longjing or oolong tea leaves (3 tablespoons). - Place a wire rack above the smoking mixture. - Place the steamed duck on the rack. - Cover the wok tightly with its lid (and seal the gap with damp cloths if the fit is imperfect). - Heat the wok over high heat until smoke begins to seep from around the lid. Maintain for 10 minutes. - Turn off the heat. Leave covered for 5 more minutes. The duck emerges mahogany-coloured, with a tea-and-rice-smoke aroma. **The deep-frying:** Heat oil to 190°C. Lower the smoked duck into the oil. Fry for 8–10 minutes, basting the portions not submerged with hot oil. The skin crisps and deepens from mahogany to a deep, glossy brown-black at the highest points. **Carving:** Chinese-style — through the bone with a cleaver, into pieces. Served with mandarin pancakes, spring onion, and sweet bean sauce (or hoisin). Decisive moment: The smoking stage — specifically, the generation of sufficient smoke from the sugar-rice-tea mixture to impart genuine colour and flavour to the duck skin. The first visible smoke from around the lid is the signal that the correct temperature has been reached. Maintaining high heat from this point for 10 minutes produces adequate penetration of the smoke compounds into the skin and surface fat. Sensory tests: **Sight — after smoking:** The duck emerges a deep, even mahogany — the colour of the smoked tea compounds and the caramelised sugar combined on the skin surface. **Smell:** The moment the wok lid is removed after smoking: a cloud of complex, sweet-smoky, tea-fragrant smoke. The combination of caramelised sugar, toasted rice, and tea's own volatile aromatic compounds is uniquely complex. **Taste:** The smoked duck skin: crisp (from the final frying), sweet-smoky (from the caramelised sugar in the smoke mixture), slightly tea-fragrant (from the tea leaves), and with the Sichuan spice marinade's background depth. The combination of the three-stage cooking (steaming, smoking, frying) produces a flavour that is the sum of all three processes simultaneously perceptible.
Fuchsia Dunlop, *Land of Plenty* (2001); *Every Grain of Rice* (2012); *Land of Fish and Rice* (2016); *The Food of Sichuan* (2019)