SC - a method of preserving peacock skin - long

[David & Sue Carter]

Stefan said:

> Esla of Ifeld gave us a wonderful description of how she had prepared a
> peacock as a soteltie.

Thankyou for the compliment.

> I was unclear on a few things though.

I'll try to address them, point by point:

> > Items required: lots of salt, (several kilograms of it)
> What kind of salt did you use? Regular table salt or a coarser version
> such as kosher salt?

We used cooking salt, which is fine grained but doesn't have flowing agent
or iodine in it, and comes in big cheap bags, not the table (ie with iodine)
sort. The coarse stuff, like for putting in your salt mill is too sharp,
doesn't get into all the nooks and crannies, and doesn't abosorb enough
moisture because of its smaller surface area to volume ratio.

> > 1. We strangled it and then bled it.  With hindsight, we will cut the
head
> > off the next one (like killing geese) as I ended up having to cut the
head
> > off anyway to deal with the skull. Two things: peacocks are very strong,
and
> > they have spurs.
>
> I had forgotten about these spurs. These are something to definitely avoid
> getting hit by, I presume?

Absolutely! They could leave a nasty wound, especially if the peacock was
older, wilder and knew how to use them. Ours was placid from being in with
the chooks, but my father in law still took the precaution of throwing a
large hessian bag over the peacock, then firmly holding the feet before we
found its neck.

> > 3. With the bird carcass now out of its skin, pull it, rinse it and bag
it
> > under vacuum (the old pour water in and let it pour out method is ok).
> > Freeze or refrigerate or cook immediately, but someone has to get back
to
> > dealing with the skin immediately.
>
> Can you detail this a bit more, please? "pull it"? I assume not out of
it's
> skin as you said it was already out of its skin. "bag it"?

OK I got into the shorthand here, sorry:
'pull it' is the removal of the intenstines, etc.  First cut into the skin
and muscle all the way around the vent with a sharp knife.  This gets you
into the bird's body cavity but on the outside of the intestines.  Reach
into the cavity with your fingers and pull out the intestines, and other
organs.  Have lots of cold running water available and do it in a big sink
OR do it somewhere outside like the compost heap! With practice it all comes
out in one go, but usually I land up with two or three masses of organs.
Bag it under vacuum: as the bird has lost its skin, the flesh will dehydrate
rather quickly, so get it into a bag or container. Because we weren't going
to cook it for a few weeks, we put it into a large plastic freezer bag,
poured about 2cups of water in, then poured it out while holding the bag
upside down, then tied it off.  The water displaces the air, then when you
pour the water out there is no air in the bag. This helps stop the meat from
getting freezer burn whilst in storage.
>
> Altogether, it sounds like a pretty complex process. Even after Phlip's
> lamb butchering class last year at Pennsic, I don't think I could do
> this very well.
>
I would like to do a butchering class, because we did a kid once (for a
unicorn soteltie) and found out that dealing with the carcass wasn't as easy
as we thought it would be!

Please don't be put off of having a go: just do what we did and have a
practice on something smaller first, before the peacock we had done a couple
of pheasants and a chicken
The only bit we really needed help with was the killing (to ensure we did it
humanely), the rest we made up as we went along just trying to get to the
described end product by methods we knew were available to a mid period
cook.

I trust this has been helpful

Esla of Ifeld
(Sue Carter)
Innilgard, Lochac
(Adelaide, South Australia)