Anyone for ortolan? 7
I was given a copy of Simon Courtauld’s recent piece in The Spectator about the rarified gastronomy of ortolans. (Don’t bother trying to read it online; you can’t.)
A couple of facts cited in this entertaining piece about eating these tiny and highly prized birds puzzled me.
Apparently:
- it is common to put a napkin over your head whilst eating them
- the means of killing is often drowning in Armagnac
Larousse sheds light on the first:
Some gourmands cover their heads with their napkins while they are eating the birds so as to lose none of the aroma. The inventor of this ritual is a priest, a friend of the Brillat-Savarin family (citing James de Coquet)
It would be helpful if anyone can shed light on the Armagnac part.
Don’t bother asking your high-class butcher for ortolan. The birds are now protected and you will have to travel to France or Italy with your napkin if you want to eat one.
But before you go crazy with ortolan-envy, bear in mind Larousse’s warning that the bird:
is prized even more by those who know only the name than by those who have tasted it (citing Grimod de La Reyniere)
I take it that it this feathered friend is the namesake of the famed oxfordshire restaurant. And I thought it just meant eagle.
Is that the Nico Landenis restaurant?
I believe that the dying President Mitterand insisted on a last meal of Ortolan, consumed with full ritual, before turning his face to the wall. I wonder what else was on the menu?
There is surely a successful niche for this blog as home to advice on all manner of unusual ways to kill small creatures: drowning in Armagnac must surely be one of the happier.
I didn’t know what the bird looked like – so I looked on Google images – it’s a very tiny, pretty songbird, and comes in different colours – Now I’d like to hear its song – did it sound so awful that some one once upon a time, thought ” I wish that bird would stop that bloody racket, if it doesn’t shut up soon, I’ll drown it in my glass of Armagnac. Jeez, it’s taking a ridiculously long time to sink , have to hit it on the head with a spoon or something. Wait a sec, that’s a waste of a good drink, I s’ppose I’ll have to eat it. Should I wring out the feathers?” Munch, munch, “Oh noooo, they’re all looking at me, maybe if I cover my head with a napkin. . . “
How about this unattributed version:
That napkin WAS really a cover-up – this from Brendan Kiley’s website:
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. 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. Bring it to the table. Place a cloth—a napkin will do—over your head to hide your cruelty from the sight of God. 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, 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.
I can now answer my own question. Mitterand organised his last feast for New Year’s Eve, 1995, hosting thirty guests at Latches in Landes, SW France. The ortolan, said to embody the soul of France, was accompanied on the menu with other Gallic delicacies: oysters, foie gras, capons. Unstinting in this as so much else, Mitterand ate not one, but two of the illegal ortolans. He died eight days later. It is wonderful to imagine him contemplating the trinity and imminent mortality as he lacerated his mouth with the cracked bones, as described above.
Here’s an audio report of Mitterand’s deathbed ortolan experience, given by someone who did actually travel to France to try the delicacy.