One of the many pleasures of Lockdown is the
tsunami of TV programmes, even channels, devoted to acquiring, preparing,
cooking and eating food. Not plain food but mouth-watering, fancy, quasi-exotic
food stretching the culinary talents of many viewers. Personally, I am a fan of
Rick Stein’s fish and seafood enthusiasms but I do not disparage The
Great British Bake-off and the myriad shows explaining the delights of
Indian, Thai, Spanish and, I imagine, Belarussian delicacies.
A Rick Stein bonne-bouche
Influential as they are, these programmes got
me thinking. I thought of Covid-stricken Donald Trump, aged 74 and at 110 kg
and 6ft 3in, classified as clinically obese. I too am 110kg but am aged 78 and
a mere 5ft 10in, so my classification is a, rather alarming, state secret. Our
esteemed Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had his own almost lethal brush with
Covid-19 in April. Once short and fat, he has now lost 2 stone and his diet
regime is simple – eat less and exercise more! Mind you, Petronella Wyatt, an
ex-lover of Boris, describes Boris in this week’s Spectator, as one
whose “idea of fine dining was Pizza Express!”. She also relates a crisis in
their relationship when she cooked him an elaborate seafood risotto. Arriving
late as usual, he looked on the dish “as one might gaze upon a dish of
beetles,” saying “I can’t eat that. Do you have any crisps?” Petronella writes
“This enraged me more than any of his sexual delinquencies. As Colette said,
Food has ruined more relationships than infidelity!”
But Boris is now right – we must eat less. One of the 7 Deadly Sins, invented by early Church Fathers, is Gluttony, a vice we hardly recognise these days.
The Emperor Vitellius
Vitellius only survived as Roman Emperor for 8
months in 69AD. His claim to fame was his gluttony and, armed with emetics, he
had 3 gastronomic beanos every day!
Unsurprisingly, according to ever-unreliable Suetonius, he had a flabby
reputation but his feasts were spectacular. In one he served 2,000 choice
fishes and 7,000 birds before reserving for himself a huge platter containing
the livers of pike, the brains of pheasant and peacocks, the tongues of
flamingoes and the milt (semen) of lampreys. This brutal fellow was soon
dispatched by the Roman mob, aiding Vespasian’s legions.
Fast forward to the Victorian naturalist Frank
Buckland (1826-1880) whose gluttony took a peculiar form. Buckland was the
son of amateur paleontologists, his father becoming a clerical Dean. His
parents regularly feasted on delicacies like mice in batter, squirrel pie,
horse’s tongue and ostrich.
Frank Buckland pioneer of zoöphagy
There was a notion in the 19th
century that new options could be found for providing new food for humanity. From
a boy, Frank decided to eat his way through the animal kingdom, He ate cats and
then he befriended zoos, whose dead beasts he consumed. Starting with a panther
(yuk), he moved onto black bear (ugh). It became a lifetime obsession and he
founded The Acclimatisation Society. In 1862 he invited 100 guests to sit down
to a relatively conservative sea-slug, kangaroo, guan and curassow dinner. He
later progressed to boiled elephant trunk, rhinoceros pie, porpoise heads and
stewed mole. Buckland was a real pioneer in his very odd field.
We associate gluttony with excessive eating but
it also embraces the familiar phenomenon of those who are excessively
particular about their food. There is a very striking passage in C S Lewis’ The
Screwtape Letters, where Lewis imagines a correspondence between a Senior
Devil and the Junior Devil he is mentoring:
“But
what do quantities matter, provided we can use a human belly and palate to
produce querulousness, impatience, uncharitableness and self-concern? Glubose,(a Senior Devil) has this old woman well in
hand. She is a positive terror to hostesses and servants. She is always turning
from what has been offered her to say with a demure little sigh and a smile ‘Oh
please, please ... all I want is a cup of tea, weak but not too weak,
and the teeniest weeniest bit of really crisp toast’. You see?
Because what she wants is smaller and less costly than what has been set before
her, she never recognises as gluttony her
determination to get what she wants, however troublesome it may be to others.”
Finally
and inevitably, I call upon the French to get our gastric juices flowing again.
The enigmatic Francois Mitterand, President of France (1981-1995) had concealed
his prostate cancer while in office. Later, knowing he was dying, he called
together 30 friends and family for a final dinner and they consumed Marennes
oysters, foie gras, capon and as the coup de grace a plate of
ortolans (bunting song birds). It was illegal to kill or trap ortolans even
then but the French surround eating ortolans, bones and all, with a ritual of
covering the head with a large napkin to retain the distinctive taste of these
tiny birds, drowned in Armagnac and roasted in a ramekin.
Truly
taste-buds take us on strange journeys – time for the Alka-Seltzer!
The innocent Ortolan
SMD
5.10.20
Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment