[Sca-cooks] Food and squeamishness

[Carper, Rachel]

I have to admit I am squeamish about my food looking back at me. I like
to pretend my food comes in little Styrofoam dishes covered in plastic.
Being the first generation off the farm I know this is not true. However
that's me. I do find I am squeamish about certain foods. Suckling pig
always reminds me of the pigs dissected in biology class and no matter
how hard I try I can't get the smell of formaldehyde out of my head.
Chickens I'm picky about, but I would like to think I could over come it
for a slice of Dario. Of course if I was at head table I'd have you
place him facing the feast hall so all could see his suffering. (And I
wouldn't have to.) 

So what I would suggest Petru is to poll some members of your
barony/shire. Ask other cooks and the Baron. Perhaps especially the
Baron as he will be at head table and I assume the recipient of the
head. I personally would love to see a goose dressed as a peacock. But
that's me. 


Elewyiss
PS I'd love to see the dancing shrimp heads puppet show. 

-----Original Message-----
From: sca-cooks-bounces at ansteorra.org
[mailto:sca-cooks-bounces at ansteorra.org] On Behalf Of Phil Troy / G.
Tacitus Adamantius
Sent: Saturday, May 08, 2004 6:32 AM
To: Cooks within the SCA
Subject: Re: [Sca-cooks] Food and squeamishness


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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