The Right Spice for Twice-Cooked Duck In this week's City Kitchen column, I'm making twice-cooked duck, a sort of Western cook's variation on a theme. It's actually an amalgam of a few ideas. Based on the classic Chinese twice-cooked pork and packed with sweet and hot Sichuan flavor, I added cumin seeds. Not typically thought of as a Chinese seasoning, cumin is in fact used throughout northern China, and lately a number of New York restaurants have been featuring it in a dish called Muslim lamb chop, or in various other spicy lamb dishes. I'm a cumin fan, and I think it works well with the duck too, but leave it out if you wish. For the duck I also made my own 5-spice powder. If you have an electric spice mill it is easily made and tastes brighter than store-bought. Just grind together equal parts crushed cinnamon, crushed star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, cloves and fennel seeds. At the market right now there are gorgeous green pea shoots, so they went into the wok, too. They are lovely and tender, as well as beautiful, with their frilly tendrils and tiny leaves. Some growers are selling fava bean shoots as well. You can substitute baby spinach or mizuna.