My husband, Ernie, comes to his love of duck by way of his father, Adolph Kafka, who was born in Vienna of Czech parents and used to take the family out to a sokol, a sort of part patriotic group, part athletic organization. When I knew it, there were pictures of the Czech heroes Masaryk and Beneš on the walls, an implicit resistance originally to the Germans and then to the Soviets. These photographs hung in an otherwise stark dining room that served wonderful food, the crispest duck, large dumplings that were sliced and served with duck-broth gravy to moisten them, red cabbage, potato pancakes, and spaetzle. We always ended the meal with palacinky, thin crêpes spread with apricot preserves, melted chocolate, or hazelnut purée, rolled, and dusted with powdered sugar.
