[Sca-cooks] Food and squeamishness
Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius.magister at verizon.net
Sat May 8 03:31:50 PDT 2004
Also sprach Patrick Levesque:
> I was wondering, has anyone ever served food at a feast such as a whole
>pig's or ox's head, or a whole piglet, or, basically, anything that can
>stare right back at you while you munch on it?
While what people will actually eat in my home group is pretty much
anything, especially from a cook they trust, I'd say where
presentation is concerned, some people are a bit squeamish (note --
some, not necessarily even a majority -- call it the typically vocal
minority). For example, on a few occasions when we've served smoked
fish that were scaled, gutted, decapitated (essentially what is known
as pan-dressed) and hot-smoked, with a sauce, but also butterflied
open and deboned before service, we received a couple of complaints.
I guess the point was just that the complainer (plaintiff?) was
someone who didn't care for fish, or was one of those people who
thinks fish should be a square or stick, fried, or a squat
cylindrical mass to be made into tuna salad. Of course, this didn't
stop other people from eating all of the fish, very nearly licking
the plates before asking for more, so I was able to determine that
this was a problem on the part of that vocal minority, not a problem
on the part of the fish itself or the majority of the diners. In
other words, people who need to get a life, and not a problem that I
really needed to do anything drastic about. Note also that the
mundane location of our group is New York City and environs, and
we're the home of the first or second largest wholesale seafood
market/hub in the continental US; maybe 1/4 of all the seafood eaten
in the US passes through New York before it gets to the rest of the
country, so it is more or less in our blood, and we tend to be far
less squeamish about fish than other people, all other things being
equal.
>Actually, I gather quite a few people have, but I'm mostly interested in the
>reaction it drew from the diners. I wouldn't want to put a lot of time and
>energy into preparing such an item if it were to dim the appetite of the
>crowd, yet the challenge is interesting.
>
>Petru
>
>(who thinks the live chicken joke from the Vivendier rather funny (even if
>it is a bit cruel), so I guess I'm not the best judge here...)
Another consideration is the fact that some products have become more
readily available, and as a result, cheaper, in their more highly
processed form. I suspect a baron of beef (a cut I've always wanted
to roast for an event) would be more expensive than two separate
loins, or however many Porterhouse and T-bone steaks that works out
to, even though it's sort of a super-primary cut. It requires the
people doing the initial butchering, at the slaughterhouse, I
suppose, to work differently. starting with bisecting the animal at
the waist, more or less, rather than splitting it into sides, making
it necessary to sell the forequarters under non-standard conditions,
etc.
What this means, for example, is that while I can get, and quite
easily, whole chickens with heads and feet intact without having to
go to the live poultry markets or a farm (although I also have those
options, too), such birds tend to be more expensive than the regular
plas-wrapped broilers and roasters.
Why did I do this anyway? Because for a Vlad-Tepes-themed event a
couple-three years ago, we presented our Viceroy, Your Host and de
facto Impaler Du Jour, with a nicely glazed roast chicken impaled on
a little wooden stake set in a little wooden platform. It was
untrussed, wings and long legs akimbo, with the point of the stake
going into the bird's nether regions, through its body, in and out of
its neck a time or three, and finally emerging from its open beak.
(It was also wearing a little paper crown and was named Dario, the
Gypsy Chicken, but that's a story for another day.)
We made up some silly story, which I trotted out in the worst of Bela
Lugosi (who of course was Hungarian, not Wallachian) accents, about
how we'd miscalculated, roasted the wrong number of chickens, leaving
none for the High Table, but knowing of His Excellency's thirst for
justice, we submitted for His Excellency's approval this sign that
even his cooks were capable of meting justice upon any who would
break the peace within His borders. We then brought out Dario, The
Gypsy Chicken, reading a list of his various crimes.
Oh, and everybody's chickens were served with Rumpolt's blood-red
sauce based on beets and horseradish.
It was only moderately gruesome, and got a fair laugh, but in part
because of the look of absolute horror we both anticipated and
received from some of the people at High Table. I did offer to carve
the bird directly from the stake onto people's plates, which offer
was politely declined. I think they wouldn't have eaten that same
chicken even if it were turned into a platter of innocuous slices.
Not until we offered to take the bird back to the kitchen and switch
it for an ordinary battery roaster (the one we'd reserved for the
kitchen crew) did these people want to eat any chicken. Of course,
these are the same people I have sometimes plagued by turning shrimp
heads into talking finger puppets.
Dario was pretty tasty, too... .
I think that, in the eyes of some spectators, we somehow managed to
capture an attitude of suffering (even though this bird, in life,
probably suffered less than the ones the others were eating
cheerfully) that made it a little difficult for some people to eat it
without feeling some guilt. Or, to put that in short terms, yeah, it
was looking back at them, and didn't look too happy about it, either.
I guess that's why they put the apple in the mouth of the suckling
pig...
But then Western food lore is fairly rife with stories of the
different solutions people have come up with to avoid The Food That
Reproaches, extending in some cases to foods that are in
abso-floggin'-lutely no way an issue for even the remotely squeamish,
such as Tournedos Rossini, a dish reputed (at the time it was
suggested by Rossini himself to whichever restaurant chef first
prepared it) to be so ugly that it was brought from the kitchen
covered with a napkin, with the waiter walking backwards, and serving
the plate from behind the back of the diner. What is this awful dish?
A small filet steak, served on a fried crouton, topped with a slice
of foie gras and a slice of truffle. The _HORRRR-orrrrrrrrrr_...
Adamantius
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