Duck and Prawn in Tamarind Curry Sauce with Saffron Rice.

Zil is coming over tomorrow night to join us for the last of the duck dishes. She knows about us. On the phone, when we invited her, she spoke to Calypso, and said when Calypso told her all about the duck extravaganza of this weekend - so Mannie has been very busy then! And yes, Mannie has, but this dish has some very strong influences from Hinchinbrook - from some of the vegan inspired cooking styles of Angelata and Francis.

And from dishes Francis made Francesca when she first came here to this body - the spicy fish soups that Francesca longed for - indeed I (shell) can see an image of Francis making fish head soup for Francesca, justifying the use of fish from the fact that in Australia the fish heads are often thrown away anyway, and that we knew how this particular fish died, and that it had died well. I see also the day that Francis watched a man (how fascinated the men in our system are by manliness, how drawn they are to men who can, for example, catch and kill and cook a fish) make this soup for us. He was making it for Leafy Jo, for Just Jo, for Thea. Though really, he was making it for his platonic friend "Jo", and of course, did not see us as ourselves. Perhaps he was making it for Pia. I'm just being delivered this memory now, a sense memory of aroma. Perhaps that's why so many of us are drawn to food, to recreating dishes from our past - to capture the memory again, to live through it again. And perhaps one of us was doing just what I have done now, back then, breathing in Pia's recollections of street vendors. Re-remembering.

In any case, this dish was a heady brew of nostalgia.

I believ it was also inspired by the aromas of a Heart Town resturaunt Satay Mas (the indonesian/malaysian resturaurant mentioned briefly last post) and perhaps also for our home, Heart Town where Tamarind trees are very common and produce an abundance of the sharply sour sticky paste that surrounds the tamarind seeds in their pods.

So here's how we did it.

We clarified the duck stock as described earlier and brought the stock to gentle simmer.

In the big pot we sauteed a sliced onion in a little olive oil at low heat. I would have much preferred to use grapeseed oil if Bigsplat Supermarket hadn't decided to discontinue the line in favour of yet more canola brands.

The other vegetables we prepared were spring onion sliced into two inch stalks, a couple of big fat roughly chopped garlic cloves and some leftover silverbeat stalks sliced across the grain so that they don't get irritating with their long fibres. We chopped up the leftover potato (baked in duck fat) and in a seperate bowl (the to-be-added last bowl) we put a cup of frozen peas and about the same of fresh cherry tomato.

We took the translucent onion pieces out of the pan and set them aside with the onion, garlic, silverbeat and potato, and turned the heat up. When the pan was very hot we added the duck meat (thighs, lower wings and the flesh) to the pan to fry, and two big tablespoons of tamarind paste, two teapsoons of chilli paste and a teaspoon of a ground spice mix - fennel, cumin, corriander, aniseed, cloves, chilli, black pepper, cardomom, and mustard.

Then we added the onion, garlic, silverbeat and potato. As soon as it was hot again we added the simmering stock, and let it all simmer for about ten minutes. We turned up the heat until it was boiling rapidly for a bit and then added the prawns, peas and cherry tomato and after a minute removed the whole dish to cool.

It's in the fridge now steeping overnight. The peas are still bright green as are the spring onion stalks and the sauce is a beautiful colour - terracotta. The saffron is soaking (for the saffron rice tomorrow) in a whiskey glass full of water, staining the liquid gradually, like a sunset in Bangkok.