Ingredients:

• Whole young duckling, 5-5.5lb
• 0.75lb of pitted dried prunes
• 2 onions
• Ground black pepper to taste
• Salt to taste

How to prepare, step-by-step:

1. Prepare ingredients: if giblets (liver, heart, neck, etc) were packaged with the duck, you can cook them together:

   

2. Cut duckling into portion pieces (I usually cut off wings and legs, slice off breast and remaining meat and discard bones, I also keep the fat pieces for frying):

   

3. Warm up cooking pot (you can use separate skillet for frying which is more convenient or the same one where they duck will be cooking, that way it will be less to clean); put fat pieces in first and let the melt to produce enough fat to fry duck in it, add meat and fry each piece from all sides until colored:

   

4. Repeat until for all meat and giblets, move colored pieces to a plate; keep fat produced by frying in the pot:

   

5. Pour boiling water over prunes, let them steep for 3-5 mins, then drain water:

   

6. Meanwhile, peel onions, slice them into quarter circles and add to the pot, fry onions until lightly colored and soft, stir from time to time:

   

7. Move duck pieces back to the pot, season with salt and ground black pepper to taste; cover pot with a lid, reduce heat to low and cook meat for about 1h (meat should be soft but not cooked completely just yet):

   

8. Then add prunes and cook them together under a lid over low heat until meat is soft enough (20-30 mins):

   

9. Serve duck stew with boiled rice on a side, poured over with stew juices and prunes: