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Taboo Twofer
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Roy Orbison
Colored Clown Candy
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Secret Ortolan Society
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I'm Flattered, Wikipedia
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But Seriously, I Don't Know What I'm Talking About
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*to cut to the good shit,
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go below the
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1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, not the horrifying quote.
Ortolan88
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I thought they were fried, not roasted. The French are truly the Chinese of Europe.
- The book "HEAT" by Bill Buford mentions Mario Batali's first job serving roasted ortolan
Mitterrand's last meal
Is there a source for this?
Somehow I find it hard to believe that a dying man could eat ortolans.
Michael Paterniti in the May 1998 issue of Esquire; there are numerous citations of it online but I don't think the article itself is.
- It was also discussed at length in an issue of NPRs this American Life taped in early December 2007.
- Also Weekend Edition, Googling
- "François Mitterrand last meal" gives a wealth of links.
Conservation
fr:Ortolan says that it is protected in Europe, but this article says it is of least concern
- There's no conflict there, most birds in Europe are protected to a greater or lesser extent, even quarry species have specified hunting periods.
- The Birdlife International criteria are quite strict - to even be vulnerable, a species must have a small population, limited range, or be declining at an alarming rate.
- Ortolan is still a numerous an widespread bird, and is common around the Med.
"The 1992 estimation for the French population is 15,000 pairs," shortly followed by:
"Hunting (in particular in Landes) is responsible for taking about 50,000 birds per year."
As Landes is an area in France,
I don't see how these numbers can be accurate.
It would be useful if the hunting figure were dated, but one finds it highly unlikely that the population could have risen from 15,000 pairs to something large enough to support that much take, even in 18 years.
- Perhaps it would add clarity by changing it to "Hunting in Europe (in particular in Landes)..."?
Urban hunting
I've (re) added a reference to the Urban Hunting article in The Stranger where the quote about eating Ortolan appears to be taken from.
It struck me as odd to have this quote lifted from the article without any sort of citation visible.
Without proper attribution, who can say where the text came from?
- I've removed the reference because the author quoted claims he has no expertise in this matter whatsoever.
- I've overexerted the quote because it is utter fabrication
I should look up that Top Gear episode that is mentioned in the latter the stranger article
(it might have been the Clarkson "touring Europe" program he did instead of top gear).
I definitely remember it as well, perhaps we can use that to source.
- The documentary/program was called "Meet the Neighbours"
- (episode France).
- I think it will be difficult to get a hold of, but perhaps i run into it somewhere..
- Found it.
- Ignore the Star Wars intro thing, it's the ripper having fun, the rest of the episode is just fine.
This article is discussed in the Seattle weekly "The Stranger" here: 121165
I'm Flattered, Wikipedia
But Seriously, I Don't Know What I'm Talking About
The other day, I was trying to find stuff about the ortolan, a finger-sized bird eaten with cruel ceremony by ancient Romans and modern French. I'd written about it before, but it's stuck in my head. I wanted to check up on the little bird. The "gastronomy" section of the Wikipedia entry included a description of eating one. Awesome, I thought. I wonder what it's like to eat one of those.
The description began: "You catch the ortolan with a net spread up in the forest canopy. Take it alive. Take it home. Poke out its eyes and put it in a small cage."
This sounds familiar. Have I read this before?
"Force-feed it oats and millet and figs until it has swollen to four times its normal size. Drown it in brandy. Roast it whole, in an oven at high heat, for six to eight minutes."
Oh my God, I wrote this!
"Bring it to the table. Place a cloth—a napkin will do—over your head to hide your cruelty from the sight of God."
What am I doing in an online encyclopedia? I'm not an authority!
"Put the whole bird into your mouth, with only the beak protruding from your lips. Bite. Put the beak on your plate and begin chewing, gently. You will taste three things: First, the sweetness of the flesh and fat. This is God. Then, the bitterness of the guts will begin to overwhelm you. This is the suffering of Jesus. Finally, as your teeth break the small, delicate bones and they begin to lacerate your gums..."
"Lacerate"? That's a little much. Simpler word—"cut"—would've done.
"...you will taste the salt of your own blood, mingling with the richness of the fat and the bitterness of the organs. This is the Holy Spirit, the mystery of the Trinity—three united as one. It is cruel. And beautiful. According to Claude Souvenir, chewing the ortolan takes approximately 15 minutes."
Let me back up.
Nine years ago, I was in Paris with my then-girlfriend in a restaurant called Jose's. Jose owned the place, waited tables, and was blind. There was no menu and, between courses, Jose told jokes and stories in French that we couldn't understand.
For dessert, Jose told us customers to pull our tables together and eat our gâteau (or whatever it was, I can't remember) as newfound friends. He told another joke we couldn't understand and the man next to us, a Belgian named Claude Souvenir, translated. When the meal was over, Souvenir invited my girlfriend and me for a nightcap at a sidewalk cafe on the Champs-Élysées.
He seemed suspiciously generic: his middle-tall, middle-weight, middle-aged body; his fake-sounding name; his vagueness about his work. We thought he was a spy.
He bought us a round of beer and talked about Tintin comics (they're Belgian) and the ortolan. He began, as I remember it: "You catch the ortolan with a net spread up in the forest canopy..." He was good company, but we never saw each other again.
His description of the ortolan stayed with me, and last year, when I needed it for a story I was writing for this newspaper, about killing and eating animals, I used it ["The Urban Hunt," Sept 28, 2006]. I wasn't sure I'd remembered his description correctly and did a little research, some of it on Wikipedia. (I'd hate to be wrong.) Nothing was as detailed as Claude's description, but everything checked out.
After the story was published, I didn't think much about the ortolan until the other day when I looked on Wikipedia and started reading my own words.
For the record: I am in no way an expert on the ortolan. That description does not belong in an encyclopedia. It's my paraphrase of a monologue delivered by a weird guy on a tipsy night a decade ago—many details of which (our dessert, for example) I don't remember.
I just Googled "ortolan" and "Wikipedia" and found a blog where somebody quoted my paragraph under the header "WTF?" Commentors freaked out: "Horrible!" "Tasteless!" The stinging one: "There is no way that this can be real."
Shit, shit, shit. I'm wrong.
Two comments later, someone named MadFox rushed to my rescue: "I saw Jeremy Clarkson eat one of these on his Meet the Neighbours programme a few years ago, it seemed to be pretty much exactly as described including cloth on head eating. Pretty disgusting if you ask me."
Thanks, MadFox! I may be disgusting, but at least I'm right—some stranger on the internet says so.
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Free Bird, Roy Orbison, Wikipedia, Video, Tabloid, French, Food, Weird, Dailymotion mrjyn, ☠,
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brendan@thestranger.com
thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=297191
