In a pretty serving bowl that’s large enough to hold all the sauce’s ingredients, stir together the ponzu sauce, roughly chopped grapefruit, and all its juice.

Sprinkle the sliced red and green Thai chilies over the top and set aside. Done. You can stir in the chilies, but I think the sauce looks and tastes better if the chills sort of ‘float’ on top of the sauce.

To make the marinade, stir together the tamarind baste and boiling water in a small mixing bowl. The paste will probably take a few minutes’ thorough stirring for it to dissolve completely in the water.

Once that happens, stir in the rice wine and ground palm sugar. That’s it, your marinade’s ready. Time now to prep the duck breasts so they’rer ready for marinating and cooking.

To prep the duck breasts, use a sharp knife to score the skin on the duck breasts. What you’re aiming for here is to make a series of parallel, widthways cuts right through the skin, and about 1/3-inch apart.

Take a little care to only cut through the skin and not into the meat. This scoring matters because it allows the fat from the skin to melt more readily into the pan when you start cooking the breasts.

Now set the scored duck breasts on a large plate, pour the marinade over them, and use your fingers to give the breasts a thorough coating of marinade. The breasts can now sit for a couple of minutes while you warm a pan ready for slowly frying them.

For this, I used a big, heavy, deep-sided, 12-inch skillet. That sort of pan is ideal because you can cook all 4 breasts simultaneously. And it will also be just right for stir-frying the vegetables.

So, set your big, dry skillet on a low heat and let it warm for a minute or so. While that’s happening, use your fingers to remove any excess marinade from the duck breasts so that no marinade drips from them. The breasts should be glistening with marinade rather than ‘swimming’ in it.

Now rub ½ level teaspoon of salt as evenly as you can into the scored skin of each breast. Good. The breasts are now ready for frying.

Lay the marinated and salted breasts skin-side down in your dry, warmed skillet, and just let them start to slowly sizzle – untouched - on that low heat for about 8 minutes. During that time, you’ll find that the skin’s fat melts into the skillet as the breasts slowly get hotter and hotter. And there will be quite a lot of that fat, maybe at least 4 or more tablespoons - which is great because that’s exactly what you want to happen.

As the fat melts, the skin will start to crisp a little, but you’ll now need more heat to finish that crisping and to cook the breasts on their other side.

So, after those 8 or so fat-melting minutes, turn the heat to medium and let the breasts fry – still untouched and still skin-side down - for another 3 minutes.

While that’s happening, give the tops of the breasts a couple of good bastings with the hot fat, then turn them all over.

Once you’ve turned the breasts, let them fry untouched for another 2 minutes on that medium heat and, once again, give them couple of good bastings all over with the hot fat. Done. Turn off the heat and use a slotted spoon to remove the breasts from the skillet and set them aside, skin-side up, on a big, warm plate to ‘rest’ while you quickly cook the vegetables.

Drain off all but 2 tablespoons of fat from the skillet – that’s where the vegetables are heading to be fried right now.

Hot and fast are the watchwords here, hot and fast. So, your skillet stays on a high heat all the time, and the stir-frying happens fast. Start to finish, this should take no more than 6 minutes.

To start, set your big, duck-fatted skillet back on a high heat and let it sit there for 90 seconds.

Now add the scallions (or spring onions), garlic, and ginger. Stir fry the mix continuously for 90 seconds, then add the green beans, mangetout (or snap peas), baby corn, bell peppers, and shitake mushrooms. (Not the bean sprouts – they only go in right at the end along with the salt.)

Stir thoroughly and quickly so that everything gets a coating of the hot fat, and keep stir-frying for another 3, sizzling-hot minutes.

Bear in mind that during those 3 minutes you want the vegetables to just start picking up a little color as they cook to an al dente finish. You’ll find that the slight coloring will happen if you give the vegetables a thorough, turning stir every 30 seconds – rather than stirring all the time.

After those 3 minutes, add the beansprouts and salt. Give the skillet one final, thorough stir, and turn off the heat. Done and ready to serve.

I like to turn the vegetables onto a big, warmed platter straight from their still sizzling skillet – ready for the sliced duck breasts to be arranged on top.

So, as soon as the vegetables are laid out on the platter, transfer the duck breasts from their warm plate onto a carving board – skin-side up - and quickly cut them into 1/3-inch thick slices.

Arrange the slices in the center of your platter and set the sauce alongside. Folks can then help themselves to an equitable share of duck, a serving of vegetables, and a little of that fiery, sweet, and tangy sauce.