To satisfy the rather broad requirement of East Asian cuisine, I pizza-morphed the dish I long for the most: Peking Duck. Such a feat required a bit of skirting traditional preparations for a more convenient Western take on the dish. Serious Eats had some mad tips in this department.

First the duck was salted and air-dried for 2 hours before coating with a honey, soy and baking powder mixture for another 12 hours.

The duck was roasted on a low oven heat (300-350 degrees F) until the skin turned golden brown. The meat was sliced to replicate the Peking Duck style.

Meanwhile, I cooked up a batch of the Serious Eats’ plum sauce.

With plum sauce and a little cheese to soften the edges of this pie, the roasted duck was applied liberally and the whole was tossed into the oven.

Cucumber sticks sand scallion ribbons were prepared for post-oven additions, as was a mixture of hoisin and plum sauce for drizzling over.

The pizza tasted much like my memories of the very few true Peking Duck experiences of my memories. While the extra stint in the oven over cooked the duck a tad, the cucumber was fresh and the plum sauce light and vibrant.

Having purchased my first bottle of Japanese wine just a week after Week 8’s Japanese challenge, I leapt at the chance to pair a wine so well suited for the theme.

It may have not been the best pairings, what with fruit and a bit of chili spice calling desperately for Riesling, I still find the wine fascinatingly delicious and extremely well balanced with tart fruits and minerality dancing about the palate as if it were expected of the style. I will be chasing Japanese wines again, but likely not alongside a pizza like this.