WHEN YOU GO to Beijing, you must climb the Great Wall, visit the Forbidden City, and taste Peking roast duck. Although most tourists know of Quanjude, which has outlets in Hong Kong, there are more than 100 specialist restaurants in the capital, where Peking duck can cost from about 20 yuan to a few hundred yuan per bird.
Beijing's roast duck restaurants are trying to find unique ways of luring diners with this traditional dish, in the knowledge that many international visitors will arrive for the 2008 Olympics.
'We have to keep inventing new methods to cook and to improve the dish to give diners healthier options,' says Fang Hongbo, manager of Beijing's oldest duck restaurant, Bianyifang.
The restaurant opened in 1416 and has five outlets in Beijing. It uses the menlu, or closed-door method, which is the original way of roasting the ducks, although the ovens and cooking fuel are more modern. The birds are roasted in pre-heated gas ovens for about 40 minutes.
To ensure the skin is crisp, boiling water is poured over it, and air is pumped into the carcasses to separate their skin from the layer of fat underneath. The skin is coated with syrup that includes molasses, to give it a rich, brown colour.
Facing stiff competition from smaller, newer specialist restaurants, about three years ago, Bianyifang started serving two new types of roast duck. The Huanxiansu roast duck is cooked with lotus seeds, dates or tea leaves, and served with flower petals, which the diner wraps in the flour pancakes, along with the usual Peking duck accompaniments of sweet sauce, sliced cucumber and spring onions.
For the Shuxiansu roast duck, vegetables are stuffed into the cavity of the bird before roasting to absorb excess oil, and the cooked bird is served with carrot sticks and mint leaves, instead of spring onions, and wrapped in green and orange vegetable pancakes.
