The Great Escape : Remembering the duck that got away, a meat-eater gives thanks for dinner.

Two years ago on Dec. 24, I stood in line with two friends outside Superior Poultry in Chinatown for two hours to buy two freshly butchered ducks for Christmas Eve dinner and--for good measure--one live duck to set free.

We had agreed on this: two ducks to cook, one to set loose at the river. It seemed an appropriate thing to do. We had a friend who was dangerously ill and, according to Buddhist theology, whatever merit might be gained in liberating a duck from death could be dedicated to our sick friend. And knowing that we’d be freeing a duck made it somewhat easier to stand there on Broadway.

At Superior, live poultry, housed in cages on the lot, went in the side door. Shortly, the same poultry emerged through the front door butchered, dressed and bagged, making us a lot more conscious of the butchering process than usual.

The tiers of caged birds, the occasional floating feather, the bags sagging from wrists as customers squeezed back through the line with their purchases brought home to us all the contradictory emotions of eating meat.

Such pondering did not, however, dissuade us from a duck dinner--or from a riverside duck release. We waited and waited until we’d moved inside beside wire cages full of chirping game birds--tiny quail, pigeons, partridge--all facing the dinner plate. We bought our ducks: The two butchered ones wrapped and handed to us in white bags; the live one shoved into a greasy box (which once had held duck breasts).

I carried the box to the car, the cargo unevenly weighted and given to sudden shifts. We put the box in the trunk and drove to a street in Atwater that ended at the river.

“What is the name of this duck?” one friend asked.

“Frederick,” said the other.

*

I have spent a lot of time walking along the Los Angeles River as it runs past Griffith Park and the village of Atwater. Here the river has a natural bottom, and now that the Army Corps of Engineers has let the water run year-round, nature has moved back in with admirable virulence.

Rocks have lodged midstream and islands have formed. Bamboo thickets, cattails, cottonwoods and oaks have taken root, and hundreds of water fowl have made the fetid waterway their home. I’ve seen egrets and herons, the occasional gull and cormorant and even a grouchy kingfisher perched on rocks in the shallow stream, but mostly I’ve seen ducks--mallards, cinnamon teals, hooded mergansers, mud hens, once a buffle-headed drake and, yes, even a colony of snow white ducks down by the train yards.

It was our plan, then, to set this duck free in the water with the hope that he would find ducks of his ilk to hang out with.

I should say that I’d gotten the idea for this little ritual from Buddhist friends in San Francisco, who had recently bought two mallards at a similar poultry store in Chinatown there and then released them in Golden Gate Park. After a few moments of stunned uncertainty, my friends told me, the mallards had awakened to their new, unimaginable freedom and swum merrily off in a lake.

Well . . . we carried our boxed friend down the canted concrete riverbanks. I opened the flaps. Frederick was yellowed, dirty, lanky and no doubt scared to death. We tipped the box until he scrambled onto the bank. We waited for him to stand. He wobbled to his feet. He slapped one pancake-sized foot on the other. His legs, which had an uncanny resemblance to cooked bucatini, could not hold his weight; he was, proportionately, a big-breasted guy. He had not been engineered for walking. In fact, it became immediately apparent that this duck had never walked before in his life.

But then he stuck his pale bill in the water and something happened. His whole body stiffened and craned toward it and, with absolutely no aplomb, he scrambled in, immersing himself with an unmistakably ecstatic wriggle. Home! Tears popped from our eyes. He knew where he was, we thought. He’ll know what to do.

Next, he tried to climb on a rock. He had some problems with those noodly legs, though, and with the fact that he kept stepping on his own feet and toppling back into the drink. But he was persistent, and with our urging and clapping, he finally got himself up on a rock.

The problem then was that he was wet. Very wet. Most ducks have a thick layer of down that makes water do the proverbial roll off the duck’s back. Frederick lacked this natural waterproofing. His feathers were wet and all clumped up, and all you could see was cold pink flesh. Goose flesh, as it were. He was wet, and he was cold. And he couldn’t walk. And his wings were worse than pathetic.

So we did what we had to do. We grabbed him off that rock, stuck him back in his disgusting box and took him back to my house, where we dried him off with a hair dryer--a process he seemed to enjoy.

Time was a-wasting by then. We had a five- or six- or seven-course dinner to cook, and all we’d done so far was buy ducks.

I managed to shove Frederick into the parrot’s spare cage and put him in the garage. I gave him water and some duck chow that I kept for the ducks at the river, put a light on him for warmth, then went off with my friends to cook.

We cooked duck, of course.

When we unwrapped Fred’s siblings, there was a disconcerting moment: Their heads and webby feet were still attached; they looked just like Frederick when he was cold and all clumped up, only with fewer feathers. Then, my friend handed me a cleaver. In a few minutes, they were just roasting ducks, browning away in a good hot oven, and I was rendering a little duck fat, in which I fried up some minced onion and the duck livers with a splash of good white wine, which we ate, semi-mashed on little toasts. Unbelievably delicious.

A few hours later the roasted ducks were memorable: the skin crackly and brown, the meat rich and dark, soft as the best suede, unimaginably tender. (You, too, would be unimaginably tender if you’d never walked.) Was I aware as we were eating and enjoying roasted duck that Frederick was, at that moment, in my garage, waiting for me to do something with him?

Yes. And it made me mildly queasy on several counts. It’s hard to eat duck so, well, consciously. I’d be lying if I didn’t say it made me very uncomfortable. And I was also having commitment anxiety over my new, er, pet.

The next day, of course, was Christmas, which Frederick spent alone in the garage. I took a neighbor back to see him. “Frederick,” said my neighbor, “your karma has definitely changed.”

The next day I called my friend Steve, a cabinet builder and carpenter. “I need to build a duck pen,” I said. He came right over with his saws and electric drill. We looked at the backyard and drew a picture, then went to the lumberyard and the hardware store, came home and set to work.

We’d sunk four posts into the ground when my friend Marilyn showed up from Aptos. The three of us measured and hammered and stretched chicken wire, and drove crammed and laughing three to the cab in my little Toyota truck to the hardware store for staples and other items we hadn’t known we needed. We had a lot of fun building that little pen. Nothing like a construction project on the day after a holiday. After all, what else is there to do?

I spread out straw. Steve fashioned a way of locking the little door. Marilyn arranged some big rocks in the pen for Frederick to practice perching on and covered a box with plastic in case he wanted some cover. We filled a tub with water and a metal dog bowl with duck chow and let Frederick into his new home. He was not impressed. He’d had too much excitement in the last few days, and his enthusiasm was at a low ebb.

Frederick’s pen was right outside my office window, and the next day I was back at work and heard an odd, thrashing commotion, like someone was knocking a plastic bucket around. I looked out. Frederick was bathing in his water tub, wings flapping, water going everywhere.

He ate. He drank water. He bathed. He made a terrible muddy mess around his water. As the days passed, he got better on his feet, stronger, surer. He grew whiter, too, and plumper. A little curl appeared on the top of his tail, indicating that he was, indeed, a boy duck. He quacked at me when I went out to feed him. He ate home-grown lettuce and garden clippings and duck chow. He grew down. Water began to roll, as it should, off his back.

And then one day he discovered, in the eternally muddy area around his water tub, some worms. When Frederick began to eat worms, his life changed. His eyes cleared. His bill and feet turned a healthier, deeper shade of yellow. He began to take a definite interest in life. He watched me type. I watched him climb on his rocks and violently splash all the water out of his tub. I grew fond of watching his long, articulate, retractable neck, which looked nonexistent as he sat sleeping in a patch of sun yet could stretch out impossibly long when he hissed at a cat or probed for a worm.

One afternoon I looked out and Frederick was sitting there, eyes half-lidded, neck extended and loosely wavering like a cobra. He looked just peculiar enough that I left my desk and went into the backyard to see if anything was wrong. The pittosporum tree under which he sat was filled with song birds. Frederick, in some kind of trance, was singing with them, a low, continuous, whispery quack.

I loved Frederick and got a kick out of him, and I was addicted to petting his beautiful white back, which was the softest thing I’ve ever touched. Sometimes I let him out in the yard, just so he could run around. He was surprisingly easy to get back into his pen. He was never any trouble, really, until he began to peck.

It doesn’t hurt a lot to be pecked by a duck, but it doesn’t feel very good either, sort of like being pinched by a second-grader. Also, it left a mark. I’d feed Frederick and walk away with three or four little duck hickeys on my arm. If I tried to have a petting fest on his back, I’d have nine or 10 little marks.

By May it seemed that Frederick, clearly, was ready to move on.

I called Descanso Gardens and asked if they wanted a big, beautiful, healthy white duck. No, I was told, they did not. No telling what diseases he had, the woman told me.

I thought about taking him down to the river again, but it was clear that he’d never fly--flying had been bred out of him, I think, and I did not want him to fall prey to dogs or coyotes bounding down from Griffith Park.

I considered Echo Park, until a friend told me the white ducks there were routinely harvested for dinner.

Finally, I found a beautiful little private lake in Pasadena. I fed Frederick a bowl of beer, hoping to sedate him for the journey (and so he wouldn’t peck me half to death in the process). I got him into a box with no difficulty, and with one of the friends who had tried with me to release him five months earlier on Christmas Eve, we drove to his new home.

The little lake was full of geese and ducks. Ducklings paddled furiously after their mothers. A few drakes were worrying some unoccupied females in the bushes. Geese honked furiously. We tossed Fred over the fence and watched as he adjusted to his new surroundings. In the first 10 minutes, he established himself in the pecking order--under the geese, above the ducklings--went for his first swim and found a girlfriend. All right, Frederick.

I went back a few times to visit him. You would think that after all those months of watching him, I could distinguish him from other ducks. But we quickly lost whatever connection we’d had. I’d go to the lake, and half a dozen white ducks would rush up to eat the chow I scattered, and the first times I swore I recognized Frederick, but after a while, I couldn’t say so for sure.

I think of him, naturally, whenever I see a white duck or when I see duck on a menu or hanging with lacquered-brown skin from hooks in Chinese barbecues. I still eat duck, but possibly more gratefully, fondly and not without thinking happily of the one who got away.

A SIMPLE ROAST DUCK

Garnish the duck with parsley, candied orange slices or tiny green peas and serve with saffron rice, pureed parsnips, glazed carrots or braised celery.

1 (4- to 5-pound) duck

1 lemon, sliced

Salt

Freshly ground pepper

1/2 teaspoon thyme

1 small onion

Wash duck and rub with lemon. Rub salt, pepper and some thyme into skin. Put remaining thyme, lemon slices and onion into body cavity. Tie legs together and twist wings under back. Place duck on rack in shallow roasting pan and roast at 350 degrees 2 1/2 hours.

Remove duck from oven and prick skin all over with fork. Increase heat to 500 degrees and return duck to oven. Roast, turning once or twice, until browned and oozing fat, 15 minutes. Remove to hot platter and serve. (Note: You may do final crisping of skin under broiler unit but watch very carefully to prevent burning.)

2 servings. Each serving:

1,101 calories; 466 mg sodium; 207 mg cholesterol; 107 grams fat; 0 carbohydrates; 31 grams protein; 0.07 gram fiber.

STEAMED AND ROASTED DUCK

This recipe is from “Chez Panisse Cooking” by Paul Bertolli with Alice Waters (Random House, 1988). If you do not have a large Chinese basket steamer, Bertolli suggests using the large, oval, enameled roasting pan normally reserved for the Thanksgiving turkey. Serving the duck on the bone preserves the succulence of the meat, particularly if you are willing to eat with your hands. Accompaniments might include braised mustard or collard greens, bok choy, blanched curly endive dressed fresh with a vinaigrette, and steamed vegetables such as carrots, turnips, rutabagas or parsnips tossed in butter. Reserve the neck, feet and wings of the duck for your next poultry broth. Fat from inside the cavity can be rendered for use on warm salads or for frying potatoes.

STEAMING

1 (5-pound) whole duck

1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Leaves of 1 stalk celery

1 small carrot, cut into chunks

1/2 small onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic

1 small bunch thyme

ROASTING

1/2 cup dry white wine

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

1 heaping tablespoon honey

1 1/2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme

STEAMING

Cut neck, head and feet off duck. Sever wing at first joint and discard tip. Remove flap of fat just inside cavity of duck. Prick skin all over with fork, particularly under wing joints, along breast and wherever you notice deposits of fat. Rub bird evenly inside and out with salt and pepper. Put celery, carrot, onion, garlic and thyme inside body cavity.

Place bird breast side up in Chinese basket steamer. (Note: If using roasting pan, arrange square rack on 3 or 4 ramekins or other supports to hold rack 1 1/2 inches above bottom. Set bird breast side up on rack.) Pour about 1 inch water in bottom of pan. Cover pan with cooking parchment, then with heavy-duty foil. If foil is not wide enough to cover the pan in 1 piece, fold 2 or more pieces together as tightly as possible before covering pan. Squeeze foil to edges of pan; it should seal tight enough so that foil will puff up with rising steam. Steam duck over medium heat until skin is tender, 1 hour.

ROASTING

Combine wine, balsamic vinegar, honey and thyme in a small saucepan. Heat gently until honey dissolves. Keep warm.

Place duck on rack set on baking sheet and roast at 425 degrees 30 minutes. Reduce heat to 375 degrees and roast, brushing repeatedly with warm basting mixture, until dark mahogany brown, about 15 minutes. Slightly more than half of basting mixture will be left.

Remove from oven and let rest 5 minutes. Then cut and arrange pieces on warm platter. Bring remaining basting mixture to boil, pour over duck and serve.

2 servings. Each serving:

1,497 calories; 5,582 mg sodium; 259 mg cholesterol; 134 grams fat; 21 grams carbohydrates; 41 grams protein; 1.73 grams fiber.

DUCK LIVERS ON TOAST

1/2 onion or 2 shallots, finely minced

1 to 2 tablespoons duck fat or butter

1/2 slice pancetta, diced small, optional

2 duck livers

White wine

Salt, pepper

2 slices bread, toasted and cut in half diagonally

Before you roast a duck, you will probably remove the fat right inside the body cavity. To render the fat, heat it in a small pan over medium-low heat, giving it a few pokes with a fork. Once the fat begins to flow, you can add the onion or shallots.

Saute onion in duck fat, with pancetta if desired, over medium heat until onion is golden and fragrant. Add duck livers and saute until slightly crisp. (Note: Livers may still be slightly pink inside.) Add a splash of wine and stir until wine evaporates.

Remove contents of pan to cutting board and chop coarsely. Salt and pepper to taste. Serve chopped liver and onions on toast.

4 toast points. Each piece:

140 calories; 265 mg sodium; 129 mg cholesterol; 7 grams fat; 11 grams carbohydrates; 6 grams protein; 0.09 gram fiber.

ORANGE-ROASTED DUCK WITH FRESH PLUM SAUCE

This recipe was developed by Julie Tantum in The Times Test Kitchen.

SAUCE

1/2 pound plums, pitted and quartered

1/2 cup orange juice

1/2 cup white wine

2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 tablespoon honey

1 teaspoon grated ginger root

1 teaspoon finely chopped orange peel

1/2 teaspoon finely chopped lemon peel

DUCK

1 duck, about 5 pounds

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 teaspoon grated ginger root

1 teaspoon finely chopped orange peel

1 teaspoon finely chopped lemon peel

2 teaspoons honey

Salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1/4 small onion, halved

1/4 orange, halved

1/2 cup orange juice

SAUCE

Bring plums, orange juice, wine, balsamic vinegar, honey, ginger, orange and lemon peels and salt and pepper to taste to simmer in small saucepan over medium heat. Reduce heat to low and cook until sauce thickens and plums are tender, about 15 minutes. Remove half of plums and puree in blender. Return to sauce and stir until smooth. Keep warm. Makes about 1 cup.

DUCK

Rinse duck under cold water and pat dry inside and out. Prick skin all over with fork to allow fat to run out during roasting.

Combine garlic, ginger, orange and lemon peels, honey and salt and pepper to taste in small bowl. Rub paste inside cavity of duck, then put onion and orange slices inside cavity.

Place duck, breast side up, on rack in shallow roasting pan and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste.

Roast at 450 degrees 30 minutes. Brush duck with orange juice and continue roasting, basting every 10 minutes with orange juice, until duck is cooked through, tender and golden brown, about 30 minutes. (Note: If duck begins to brown too quickly, tent pan with foil.)

Remove duck from oven and carefully pour off fat drippings. Add brown drippings to sauce and stir well. Brush duck with sauce and return to oven. Roast 10 minutes, basting with sauce after 5 minutes until duck is rich brown color.

Remove duck and let rest 5 minutes. Serve with warm sauce.

2 to 3 servings. Each of 3 servings with 1 tablespoon sauce:

986 calories; 244 mg sodium; 172 mg cholesterol; 89 grams fat; 16 grams carbohydrates; 27 grams protein; 0.24 gram fiber.

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Kitchen Tip

In “Chez Panisse Cooking,” Paul Bertolli offers this wisdom about cooking duck:

“Perhaps the greatest challenge in cooking Peking or Long Island duck is coping with the abundance of fat under the skin, which does not break down easily when simply roasted, grilled or braised. Two cooking processes are necessary: the first to soften and render most of the fat; the second to brown and crisp the skin.

“Although it is possible to accomplish the first step by deep-frying the duck (a common practice in Chinese restaurants), it is a messy business at home and does not produce the best results in preparing the duck for finishing in the oven. Steaming the duck is an effective method for breaking down the tough fat and causes it to render readily. Because it cooks in a hot, steamy medium, the flesh of the duck retains moisture and is sumptuously tender.

“I have had best results using White Peking duck (available fresh in Chinese markets). The steaming process takes an hour and may be done far ahead of time, if necessary. Roasting the duck to brown and crisp the skin requires about 45 minutes.”