Ep 9 Trou Normand: Tenderloin and Lotus

Totem.

A tower of powerless

femurs, fibulas and spines.

 

Red blood on

White snow

Soiled like a bone china plate.

I’m flipping through the Production Draft of 109.  There are so many dead bodies in this episode. I need a couple of Will’s aspirins.

The images are macabre: a monstrous totem pole sculpted from the broken decaying bodies of ten victims. Erected as the culmination of a killing spree like a gruesome end-of–festival Burning Man.

Jack is getting colder and Will is getting crazier. I just want Beverly Katz to march into this script right now and solve the whole thing so I can relax and think about dinner.

So I plug “Hannibal’s Dining Room” into the script’s search function and go immediately to the food scene.

The meat of the matter is mid-way through the script. Hannibal is serving a red-blood meat dish to Will,  Abigail and that rascally Miss Lounds. But surprise! She is a vegetarian. (Miss Lounds, not Lara Jean Chorostecki who plays her.)

sketch for dinner scene with Freddie, Will and Hannibal 

  

That Freddie Lounds isn’t afraid of anything and though she may have dodged a bullet by ordering salad from Hannibal, I want her leafy greens to be even more menacing than the oozing meat on the Will and Hannibal’s plates.

For the salad, I’ll use white asparagus that will suggest finger bones when I cut the stalks into thumb and finger lengths. Lotus root slices will look like Munch "Scream" faces when juxtaposed with bird skulls. What could be more meatless than a clean-picked skull?

Skull salad for all - on bone china plates, of course

Sketch that up.

Get approvals.

Get bird skulls.

Hmmmm. A bit trickier than I thought – there are so many headless chickens in the shops, shouldn't there be an equal number of disembodied heads somewhere? I ask around and find a woman in a back street of Chinatown who will sell me a big bag of chicken heads. My work here is done, I think. But no, it’s only just beginning. While attempting to boil off the flesh, I realize it is not going to just fall off the bone. This is why every good food stylist needs an able assistant. Ettie, with her usual aplomb and great attitude, patiently cleans the eyeballs, skin and brains off the little craniums, while I reconstruct and bleached them into museum-quality specimens.

Roasted Tenderloin with Pomegranate blood spatter

Hannibal and Will have beef tenderloin. The morning of the shoot, I’ve roasted 8 filets. Of course, I worry that the roasts will be too well-done too look bloody. Or too rare for the actors to eat. On set, as I slice into each roast, I am relieved to find they are all medium-rare. Lucked out again. A little squirt of pomegranate reduction and the beef slices ooze with the “blood” that the director asked for.

Side dish of Anchovies writhing in the Capers

Sadly, madly, the on-set daily (a person who is hired on a film for the day, not for the duration of the series) had chucked the bird skulls into the garbage while cleaning the plates between resets. By the time I discover this, the little bones have been buried in the plate scrapings and we were left with only four – rotating them just adding to the challenge of keeping the reset plates flowing for the multiple takes.

Bones, bones, bones: phalanges salad with yellow and candycane beets on bone china. Now, where is that bird skull...

A confession.

I don’t have any recipes for you this week. That’s because I am working on this:

                                                                                                  Photo courtesy Brooke Palmer NBC

A shameless self-promo: 

The venerable Cookbook Store in Toronto's Yorkville is doing a pop-up dinner in their Studio Kitchen inspired by the food I've been creating for Hannibal. It’s going to be a great evening of food and fun.

Brilliant Matt Kantor is the chef for the evening. He’s done pop-ups for elBulli (a 24-course dazzler), Australian pop-ups and the amazing Rush tribute dinner – to name a few.

The menu will feature 7 or 8 tasting plates such as Brain Ravioli with Beurre Brun, Deep-fried Lamb Intestine on Panisse, Flambeed Spleen with Apples, Lamb Tongues en Papillote, Humano (veal) Tonato, Blood Sausage Cassoulet, Chocolate Blood Tarte.

If you’re in Toronto June 18, why not join us!

Wait – I do have a recipe!

For all of you who have been asking for the High Life Eggs recipe.

Thanks to wonderful Robyn Stern, Jose Andre's culinary researcher who sent these photos of the pages of Jose Andre's antique copy of Practicion, the 19th century culinary guide written by Angel Muro. Here is the recipe as it is in Spanish from the original text.  I’m experimenting with it next week using duck eggs and will post my findings. In English.

Huevos high-life recipe pg 1

Huevos recipe continued pg 2

from Jose Andres library

Next week: Jamon Iberico and Spanish tapas.