Ortolan Bird Food

They fly in pairs rarely three together and never in flocks. But if fed with plenty of millet-seed and other grain they become sheer lumps of fat and delicious morsels.

Good cuisine cannot be.

Ortolan bird food. But it gets better. This it is said is to ensure the rich aromas do not escape while the gourmand chews the bird bones and all a process that lasts for several minutes. A French Dish that is Trying to Make a Comeback.

Rest of the detail can be read here. What does it taste like. You eat Ortolan whole bones and all and French tradition says that diners must cover their head with a napkin.

Also known as an Ortolan Bunting this is essentially a tiny bird native to Europe and some of western Asia but is also considered a rare delicacy in France where the French have consumed it with such gusto that the ortolan is now in decline in most parts. Once the birds have quadrupled in size they are drowned in Armagnac plucked and roasted in a ramekin for eight minutes. Ortolans feed at night so the captured birds were typically fattened on millet by keeping them caged in perpetual darkness.

According to The New York Times about 30000 ortolan are still captured and sold illegally in the South of France with a single bird going for 150 180 or about the price of an ounce of. A dead ortolan Some French chefs argue that the British eat woodcock which is almost as small without any qualms. This cools the bird although some say its real purpose is to allow the delicious ambrosial taste to flow down your gullet into your stomach.

A single ortolan bird is no bigger than a babys fist and weighs less than 28 grams but can be sold for as much as 100 185 to those willing to break the law. Netting ortolans is illegal in some countries and not in. French gourmands know that the traditional way of consuming an ortolan is to cover ones head with a sizeable napkin shielding one from the eyes of God while eating the melodious avian.

Or worse depending on your point of. Capture the bird in the wild blind it using a pair of pincers stick it in a tight cage so it cant move keep it on a diet of millet grapes and figs until it reaches two to four times its normal size and then drown it in a snifter of Armagnac. Ortolans are solitary birds.

To prepare the French delicacy ortolan bunting one must capture the tiny songbird as it attempts to migrate south for the winter force feed it much. But woodcock is wild and shot usually during a pheasant shoot not trapped. The Ortolan is a small songbird that you eat whole bones and all while a large dinner napkin is placed over your head like a shroud.

Ortolan is a dish savoured with an almost ritualistic relish. The recipe for ortolan is this. Custom dictates that the diner eats the bird while wearing a napkin over their head.

The birds were then killed cooked and eaten. Unfortunately if the practice is left to certain French chefs they will applaud its return. According to connoisseurs the first taste is delicious both salty and savoury with hazelnut overtones and the delicate incomparable flavour of ortolan fat.

Pragmatically the ritual may also have arisen. They are taken in traps from March or April to September when they are often poor and thin. Once the ortolans fat has tripled in volume the bird is drowned with Armagnac plucked roasted and served hot in its entirety.

Former French President Francois Mitterrand allegedly consumed not one but two ortolans as part of his notoriously gluttonous last meal.

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