Ikizukuri
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- CALLES0
Ortolan
Origin:
France
What's so Bad About it?
An ortolan bird is about six inches long and weighs just four ounces. It's olive green and yellow, with a touch of ruby here and there. Most people who look at them immediately want to keep ortolans as pets and give them funny un-bird like names, such as Jerry or Ginger.
Hello, Ginger!
Others want to torture and drown them for gluttonous needs of gourmets everywhere.
Wait, What?
The recipe for ortolan is this: Capture the bird in the wild, blind it using a pair of pincers, stick it in a tight cage so it can't move, keep it on a diet of millet, grapes and figs until it reaches two to four times its normal size, and then drown it in a snifter of Armagnac. We are still undecided if the last part makes this whole dish gruesome or totally fucking sweet.
It Gets Worse:
The secret to enjoying Ortolan is in the way you eat it. After roasting the bird for six to eight minutes, you cover your face with a napkin, place the whole bird inside your mouth, with only it's head and beak sticking out... and bite down.The head falls into the napkin, while you slowly bite through Jerry's tiny bones, tiny muscles and even tinier innards. The finale comes when you bite through its lungs and stomach, releasing pockets of brandy into your mouth.
The covering your face with a napkin part is said to have been started by a priest, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, who did it to hide his gluttony from God. Though we'd think it probably also kept him from getting kicked out of multiple restaurants.- illegal to eat and mitterands final meal, the cunt.********
- illegal to eat and mitterands final meal, the cunt.
- eating_tv0
This shit breaks my heart.
- ********0
France’s League for the Protection of Birds claims ortolan numbers have plunged 30 per cent in the past 10 years, with as many as 1,500 poachers catching an estimated 30,000 live birds a year in the south-western Aquitaine region.
The maximum fine is €6,000 (£4,075), but two of the three poachers caught last year escaped with verbal warnings.
Last week Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, the environment minister, declared that enough was enough.
In future, she said, laws passed in 1999 to protect the endangered species would be fully enforced.
Jean-Marc Michel, the head of the ministry’s nature and countryside department, said: "We have brought in reinforcements to increase surveillance on poachers and their traps, and to search suspects’ homes if necessary to catch them in flagrante delicto."
The move brought predictable dismay. “I find it sad that we can no longer serve ortolan in France, or woodcock for that matter, while it is still possible to eat the latter in restaurants in Britain, Spain and Belgium,” said one leading chef, Michel Rostang.
Restaurateurs caught serving ortolans also face the €6,000 fine and risk jail if they reoffend.
"It is part of our culture which is disappearing," one complained. "The ortolan isn’t in danger. That’s just a strategy by the ecologists to prevent hunting."
Officially, ortolan is off the menu at all French restaurants.
- ********0
Now there really are halth benefits from eating food that has just been killed, the energy and lifeforce is still there and I can understand that, but having to move around on your plate or gasp for air whilest covered in herbs is just a fucking joke. Kill the thing in the kitchen and serve it freshly killed, I'm down with that, but this is just another cruel and pointless gimmick