The duck is revered in Bali. For the duck, that's unfortunate. Unlike India's sacred cow, which often roams the chaotic streets unchecked, the Balinese duck is venerated only after it's dead and on the dining table.
The Indonesian island enjoys a seemingly non-stop cycle of ceremonial days. The mix of Hindu, Muslim and Christian religions means a diverse cavalcade of processions of gods and goddesses, births and deaths, rice harvests and the triumph of good over evil. Unsurprisingly, food is the backbone of many of these observances, and the duck is a particularly prized ingredient. As the scrawny quackers waddle through rolling rice fields, they extract the most nutritious nuggets from the mud.
'This is seen as an ability to separate that which is pure from that which is poison - mertha versus wisya,' says restaurateur and long-term Bali resident Janet de Neefe, in her comprehensive cookbook Bali: The Food of My Island Home.
This old-school organic rearing places the duck at the top of the menu for ceremonial meals intended for priests. One of the most elaborate of these is bebek betutu, a time-consuming smoked duck dish.
'We used to [make] bebek betutu to be brought to the temple or during a ceremony as an offering,' says I Made Ardana, a chef at the InterContinental Bali Resort in Jimbaran Bay, who still shares the dish on special days with his family but also prepares it for guests at the seafront hotel.
These days, bebek betutu can be ordered at many restaurants around the island, but the nature of its preparation means that it can't be ordered on a whim.
'Two of the keys to the dish are the slow cooking of the duck over a fire of coconut fibre and rice husks for a minimum of eight hours, and the deep flavour and almighty aroma of coconut oil,' de Neefe says in her cookbook.