A duck dinner

One of my favourite books as a child was "The story about Ping" by Marjorie Flack. Ping was a duck who lived with his numerous relations (a little like Rabbit in the Pooh Bear stories) in a boat with wise eyes on the Yangtze River. Ping gets lost - through trying to avoid the spank on the back that the last duck back on the boat would always receive. He ends up being caught by a small boy swimming in the river. When child and bird are on board the boat belonging to the child's family, the father comes out with the immortal line, "Aha, a duck dinner has come to us". Mother replies: "I shall cook him with rice at sunset tonight". The boy protests...but in vain. Down comes a basket over Ping's head. Much later, the boy secretly sets him free, and Ping manages to find his own boat - but not quite in time to avoid the spank on the back! One of the things that never occurred to me as a child is that Ping would have ended up as a duck dinner in any event...

I ate a duck dinner the other evening. My friend Philip, who introduced me to Ethiopian food, cooked something altogether more successful: a stuffed duck from Aldi, with rice cooked in its juices. Delicious.