Now Sport,let's don't be philistine about this.......for have not the French with true epicurean and culinary eclat elevated the rodent to it's rightful place on the discerning palate?picture the rank yet foetid aftertaste as it is washed down with a glass of vin de beaune..

The French Eat Rats

By Tom King

Tuesday, March 4, 2003

Notes on the cooking and eating of varmints (vermin).

"That boy done et up every possum for miles around." - Granny Clampett

Most living things are edible. What we choose to eat is a different matter.

Thousands of people starve to death in India each year while cattle roam the streets unmolested. The pig, the animal most cultivated on this planet for human food, is off-limits to Muslims and most Jews. In Africa, abundant and protein-rich insects make up 25% of the bush diet.

While it was a brave person who first ate the oyster, it was a starving lunatic who first ate the possum. I'm convinced that when that oyster was opened, the initial response was not, "That looks delicious!" It was the Dawn of Man, and we were figuring out our edible inventory . Possum meat is also delicious; why has the oyster gained so much over the possum in gustatory status? Because, on a dark night, we aren't startled to discover oysters eating from our garbage cans - oysters eat our toxic wastes underwater, out of sight.

The human consumption of varmints spikes during times of want and times of war. Winter is a time of want. Considering both our current national economic situation and the real possibility of war...

The Great Depression. Homeless.

Nowadays, varmints are primarily consumed by impoverished rural people - subsistence food - or by hunters of righteous ethic. Most "cultured" people view such food, and the people who eat it, as distasteful. Yet Jimmy Carter writes fondly of eating possum as a child, and Mark Twain, prior to his return from a visit to Paris, sent home a list of foods to be prepared upon his arrival - possum, coon and prairie hen were featured items. Lewis and Clark, nearing the end of their heroic exploration, wrote that they and their men would truly miss the taste of dog meat, a winter staple of the native American diet.

Nostalgia is the most potent seasoning of good food.

Settlers on the prairie lived on what nature provided: prairie hens for meat and eggs, barking squirrels (prairie dogs), possum, raccoon, squirrel, beaver and muskrat all went into the pot, as well as larger game - buffalo, antelope and elk. Much of what they knew about the basic preparation of these foods was learned from the native peoples - how to remove the malodorous fat from a raccoon, or how to carefully extract the musk glands from muskrats (even the slightest contanimation of musk renders the flesh unusable). To make these foods more palatable , they added familiar herbs and spices and experimented with cooking methods.

One of the glories of French cooking, Coq au Vin, began as a desperate, albeit sensitive, attempt to make a tough old rooster taste nothing like what it was.

What follows are excerpts from books, the internet and other sources which pertain to the topic.

MICE and RATS
"As far back as the records go, the people of the land now known as France have thought of food in terms of it's taste more often than in terms of it's nutritive quality. Like the people, the sense of taste may have been somewhat crude in early times, but still it was pampered.
The Celts were great users of caraway seeds. The Gauls seemed determined to shock the tastebuds by mingling such ingredients as
resin, mint, pepper an honey in a single pungent sauce - which was natural considering some of the dishes then on the menu: heron and dormouse."- Waverly Root, The Food of France.


"By game we mean those animals which live in the woods and fields in a state of natural freedom, and which are still good to eat. We say "good to eat", because some of these creatures are not properly covered by the title of game, like the foxes, badgers, crows, magpies, screech owls and others: they are called vermin, (betes puantes)."
- Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste.

"Brown rats and roof rats were eaten openly on a large scale in Paris
when the city was under siege during the Franco-Prussian War. ..Observers likened their taste to both partridges and pork.
Grilled Rats a la Bordelaise: Alcoholic rats inhabiting wine cellars are skinned and eviscerated, brushed with a thick sauce of olive oil and crushed shallots, and grilled over a fire of broked wine barrels."
- Larousse Gastronomique.

Souris a la Creme (Mice in Cream)
"Skin, gut and wash some fat mice without removing their heads. Cover them in a pot with ethyl alcohol and marinate 2 hours. Cut a piece of salt pork or sowbelly into small dice and cook it slowly to extract the fat.
Drain the mice, dredge them thoroughly in a mixture of flour, pepper and salt, and fry slowly in the rendered fat for about 5 minutes. Add a cup of alcohol and 6-8 cloves, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Prepare a cream sauce, transfer the mice to it, and warm them in it for about 10 minutes before serving" - Farley Mowatt.
http://bertc.com/cooking_rats.htm

Excerpts from an article in The Wall Street Journal, May 31, 1991:
"...kitchen utensil salesman Zhang Guoxon to open what is believed to be China's first restaurant dedicated to serving rat...named Jialu (Superior to Deer) Restaurant".
"...Rat with Chestnut and Duck. Lemon Deep Fried Rat. Satayed Rat Slices with Vermicelli. Vietnamese Style Rat Hot Pot. A Pair of Rats Wrapped in Lotus Leaves. Salted Rat with Southern Baby Peppers. Salted Cunning Rats. Fresh Lotus Seed Rat Stew. Seven Color Rat Threads. Dark Green Unicorn Rat".
"...Tonight's special is Braised Rat....The first nibble reveals a rubbery texture.But the skin coats one's teeth with a stubborn slime. The result is a bit like old chewing gum covered with Crisco. But other dishes taste better...a musty combination of chicken and pork..."If dried by a north wind, it tastes just like duck," Che Yongcheng, an engineer and regular customer, says wistfully of his favorite childhood snack".
"..."if you eat too much rat, you get a nosebleed."...eating rat, like dog, seems to raise the body temperature for some reason. That's why rat is considered a winter food".
"...It says the rats are rich in 17 amino acids, Vitamin E and Calcium.
Eating them promises to prevent hair loss, revive the male libido, cure premature senility, relieve tension and reduce phlegm".
"...his restaurant only serves free range rats, wild rodents that feed on fruits and vegetables in the mountains a couple hundred kilometers to the north..."I am helping the goverment by eliminating some pests and helping enrich some farmers", he says".
http://www.urbanlegends.com/food/chinese_restaurant_rats_etc.html


"In West Africa, however, rats are a major item of diet. The giant rat (Cricetomys), the cane rat (Thronomys), the common house mouse and other species of rats and mice are all eaten. According to a United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization report, they now comprise over 50 percent of the locally produced meat eaten in some parts of Ghana.Between December 1968 and June 1970, 258, 206 pounds of cane rat meat alone were sold in one market in Accra!"
- Bert Christensen.


Excerpts from African-American Cooking Traditions:
"...When Africans came to America during the slave trade, despite what some scholars used to believe, they did not abandon or forget what they already knew about music, agriculture, food, and other aspects of their lives in Africa. It was more difficult for them, under pressure of slavery, to live as they did, but they found ways to cook and eat what they knew. And a great deal of what they retained still shows up in cooking today".
"...In order to adjust to a completely different culture and make the best of very few resources, the foodways of Africans during slavery in America had to evolve. The results that we see today in African-American Cooking include: finding innovative ways to make every part
of an animal appealing(,) like the feet, brains, snout and intestines (chitterlings); eating foods that are high in calories in order to acquire enough energy to work all day in the fields; eating wildlife of the region like possum, catfish, seafood, rabbit and frog; using spices in creative ways to make anything taste good; using vegetables and fruit from gardens instead of grocery stores (it is cheaper); aand sharing recipes through oral tradition instead of writing them down".
"...communal cooking; combining fruit and meat in main dishes; deep-frying meat and vegetables; matriarchal dominance in the kitchen; and adding music and entertainment to eating during large family or community gatherings".
- Unknown, from the internet; URL unknown.

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