Already distraught at the notion of the badgers being culled en masse because of their perceived role in spreading bovine tuberculosis, the nation is now gagging at the suggestion, from celebrity chef Clarissa Dickson Wright that the innocent, stripy-faced animals should be cooked. And eaten. (Small surprise: the former "Fat Lady" has a new book to promote.)
Since 1992 it has been illegal to kill badgers in Britain – so the only way to get hold of one to eat has been by picking one off the road. But if the government's full culling programme goes ahead thousands of badgers could be shot this winter. Meat is getting more expensive after the global grain prices spike of this summer. Wild meats like venison, rabbit, pigeon and, yes, badger and hedgehog, are looking rather tastier.
Arthur Boyt thinks Dickson Wright is talking good gastronomic sense. He has been eating badger most of his life: he stewed up a piece of back meat with the animal's genitals for supper last Thursday. "Dog, especially labrador, is my favourite, but badger makes a pretty good meal." Boyt, a 73-year-old former civil servant and scientist, does not kill animals. All his free meat comes from the roads around his home on Bodmin Moor.
"I'm against the cull," he said, "but it would be ridiculous not to use the dead badgers. I've eaten badger for 55 years and I certainly haven't got TB. As with all meat you just make sure you cook it long and hot enough to kill any bugs."
A badger will make a meal for two, says Boyt, though his wife Sue is a vegetarian. So he often shares the animal with his son and daughter-in-law, who comes from Papua and is used to eating "maggots and grubs." Boyt's favourite part of the animal is the head: "There's five tastes and textures in there, including the tongue, the eyeballs, the muscle ... The salivary glands taste quite different. And of course, the brain. You get that by putting a teaspoon in the hole in the back and rooting around."
To a modern cook, eating badger might sound like a terrible idea, but people who grew up in rural Britain during the second world war remember eating it and there are historic recipes for it from across Europe.
Badger doesn't appear in any of the great 18th century British cookbooks, and though Dickson Wright says the animal has always been a staple, it seems to have been a food only for the poor. But in France blaireau au sang (badger with blood) is a well-remembered recipe. In Italy and the Balkans rural people have a culture of badger-eating. In Russia badgers have been a food and a folk-medicine, their fat a cure for coughs. The Prussians even bred a dog – the dachshund (badger hound) – to hound the poor beasts out of their setts.
There are tales of West Country pubs serving badger ham as a bar snack (although these might be classed with the stories of fermenting the scrumpy with a dead rat). Boyt's usual recipe is simpler. He skins and joints the badger, saves the offal and then makes a traditional casserole, adding whatever vegetables are in the house. No wine, though he may drink a glass with the meal. "I'm a down-to-earth chap – I like simplicity. It's nice meat – why titillate it?"
European recipes for badger often ask you to lay it in running water for several days to get rid of a rank flavour. But Boyt says that's only necessary for fox. And badger, though it doesn't need to be hung, can be eaten when it's "quite green" - that's assuming the diners aren't similarly tinged.
I'm not squeamish about meat - I find the cheaper bits of an animal offally nice and I can't pass up an exotic animal on a menu if I've not tried it before. But labrador roadkill? Digging out badger brain with a teaspoon? W.T.F.
We're talking about actual badger badgers, right? "Badger" isn't some sort of fucked up British vernacular for something else as usual, right?
Brits have a weird relationship with the animal world.
Quote from: The Brain on September 25, 2012, 12:23:44 PM
Brits have a weird relationship with the animal world.
You're one to talk.
(https://languish.org/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Ftizona.files.wordpress.com%2F2008%2F04%2Fbadger.jpg%3Fw%3D409%26amp%3Bh%3D327&hash=2e86e8edc46023f4b009fe8b6286953e6c861eb3)
Some badgers, yesterday. Would feed the 5,000.
Now show me a picture of a beaver. Or the badger gets it.
That's a shitload of badgers.
Quote from: Gups on September 25, 2012, 12:30:37 PM
Now show me a picture of a beaver.
I don't think NSFW pictures are allowed in OTR.
Quote from: Gups on September 25, 2012, 12:08:10 PM
"I'm against the cull," he said, "but it would be ridiculous not to use the dead badgers.
Don't see any problem with this logic.
No opinion on the cull itself, as I don't have enough information about the problem.
And it's the Brits who have fucked up vernacular :rolleyes:
Quote from: dps on September 25, 2012, 12:35:26 PM
Quote from: Gups on September 25, 2012, 12:08:10 PM
"I'm against the cull," he said, "but it would be ridiculous not to use the dead badgers.
Don't see any problem with this logic.
No opinion on the cull itself, as I don't have enough information about the problem.
The badgers are spreading TB to cows, lots of cows are having to be put down. Farmers get compensation as usual. Government considers badgers are part of the 47% and need to be culled. But they are cute. So there's some controversy.
Why not, I eat photogenic sea mammals from time to time.
Eat one and report back Gups. Skip the labrador. ;)
Quote from: Legbiter on September 25, 2012, 12:47:28 PM
Why not, I eat photogenic sea mammals from time to time.
Eat one and report back Gups. Skip the labrador. ;)
If I find it on a menu, I'll have it.
My last foray with exotics was the purchase of 2 x camel burgers and 2 x kanegroo burgers, all of which were bbwed. As one would expect, the Aussie meat was superior to the Arab, although the camel had a certain sweetness that some might find pleasant. They both needed a strong wine to stand up to them, I went for a gigondas, whcih did the trick.
Quote from: Gups on September 25, 2012, 12:39:55 PM
Quote from: dps on September 25, 2012, 12:35:26 PM
Quote from: Gups on September 25, 2012, 12:08:10 PM
"I'm against the cull," he said, "but it would be ridiculous not to use the dead badgers.
Don't see any problem with this logic.
No opinion on the cull itself, as I don't have enough information about the problem.
The badgers are spreading TB to cows, lots of cows are having to be put down. Farmers get compensation as usual. Government considers badgers are part of the 47% and need to be culled. But they are cute. So there's some controversy.
Yeah, I kind of got that from your opening post. But in the OP, you said that badgers have a "perceived" role in spreading the disease, suggesting that it's not an accepted fact. I have no idea if they do spread TB to cows or not.
QuoteAnd it's the Brits who have fucked up vernacular
Was that directed at me? I don't see anything wrong with the wording in my earlier post.
EDIT: "bbwed"?
Quote from: dps on September 25, 2012, 12:59:12 PM
Yeah, I kind of got that from your opening post. But in the OP, you said that badgers have a "perceived" role in spreading the disease, suggesting that it's not an accepted fact. I have no idea if they do spread TB to cows or not.
Me either. In sarf London our beef is with foxes, not badgers.
Quote
Was that directed at me?
No @money
http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/ (http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/)
I'm probably missing some context, but this amused me greatly:
QuoteNever mind all those badgers – we've got to save the Cleggster
The Deputy PM may be copping the flak, but think where the Tories would be without him, says Boris Johnson
By Boris Johnson6:14AM BST 24 Sep 2012384 Comments
Quick, before it is too late. It's time to save Nick Clegg. I have just read the Sunday papers, and the anti-Clegg feeling rises off them like a sulphurous cloud. According to one reliable analyst, the ratings of the Lib Dem leader are currently standing at minus 62 per cent – lower than Osama bin Laden. Expert after expert steps forward to give the Deputy PM a kick in the pants, and the overwhelming view is that he should be defenestrated before the next election. He is not just toxic for the Libs, say these pundits – he is contaminating the entire Coalition. Some talk of Vince Cable replacing him, some of Ed Davey.
So in the dwindling months we have available, it is time for us Clegg fans to echo those kindly folk who are trying to save the sweet furry badgers from the wrath of farmers. Never mind the badgers – save the Cleggster from extermination!
Here are 20 reasons why everybody, not just Tories, should be grateful to the Cleggster, a man who has effectively laid down his political life so that the government of the country can be carried on, and who has endured the most protracted political humiliation since the emperor Valerian was captured by the Persian emperor Shapur, and turned first into a living footstool, and then flayed and used as a rather striking wall hanging.
Some readers may find a few of the reasons inconsequential, stemming from my personal admiration for Nick Clegg. Most of them are deadly serious, and we start with the biggest of all, namely:
1. If it hadn't been for the good sense of the Deputy PM, we would still have Gordon Brown in Downing Street, biting his nails, chucking staplers around, and refusing to accept that it was his policies of reckless spending on an unreformed public sector that got this country into a colossal economic mess. A lot of people have forgotten that Gordon stayed in Downing Street for days after the election, like some Japanese soldier lurking in the jungles of the Philippines, and refused to accept that he had lost. It was the Cleggster who helped to winkle him out.
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2. And it is thanks to the Lib Dems that George Osborne is able to get on with the essential tasks of reform of the economy and deficit reduction. Clegg and co have been lightning conductors for the occasional jagged flashes of public anger that would otherwise have gone straight down the Downing Street chimney. It is a classic British story of self-sacrifice, in the mould of Captain Oates.
3. Without Clegg to take the abuse of Left-wing educationalists, it is doubtful that Michael Gove would be bashing on so fast, and so effectively, with his programme for free schools.
4. Without Clegg and the Lib Dems – who are in the front line of fire from their former friends in the welfare lobby groups – it seems most unlikely that Iain Duncan Smith would be able to get on with his programme of benefits reform. The Tories have gone one better than the Persian emperor, in the sense that the Lib Dem leader is not so much a wall hanging as a human shield.
5. And yet Clegg can say with truth that he has put the party of Lloyd George in power for the first time in almost a century.
6. And he has used that power to deliver some sensible things – like taking the poor out of tax, a long-standing objective of the Lib Dems that ought to have been Tory policy for ages.
7. And he is, when you meet him, a very nice chap indeed.
8. His wife, Miriam González Durántez, is every bit as lovely and clever and funny as she appears.
9. He reads novels, and has all sorts of literary friends.
10. He is very good at tennis, though for some reason he always seems to lose to the Prime Minister, in what his critics might see as a metaphor for the imbalance in their relationship.
11. He speaks several languages – a mark of civilisation, in my view – including Dutch, whose accent is so notoriously hard to get right that the former Dutch prime minister Josef Luns once declared that the effort of correct pronunciation made him feel "as if he was vomiting" (his political career came to an end shortly thereafter).
12. But his Europhilia has been kept in check. As long as he is DPM, he cannot be sent to be commissioner in Brussels – a stitch-up that would cause many of us to think of joining Ukip.
13. And while he has been in office, he has effectively demolished some of the worst and most opportunistic policies on which the Lib Dems used to campaign. Take tuition fees, which they always used to promise to scrap. It is thanks to his bravery and his much mocked U-turn that British universities are now on a sound financial footing.
14. It is thanks to the utterly hopeless Lib Dem campaign for Lords reform that we have been saved from an elected second chamber, with all the attendant jobbery and feuding.
15. And thanks to the useless campaign for AV that we have kept first-past-the-post in our elections, and been spared all sorts of other jobbery and feuding.
16. Every time he half-heartedly proposes some new wealth tax, he reminds us that he doesn't have a hope of delivering it, and he underscores the point that the Tories remain better on tax than the rest.
17. And yet he talks sense on many things. He is against a third runway at Heathrow, but sees the case for borrowing cheap to spend on infrastructure.
18. In fact, I have always thought that if you leave out Europe, he is probably a natural Tory.
19. He is certainly tough, and can take a joke.
20. And above all, amigos, it is thanks to Nick Clegg that we are not currently in coalition with Chris Huhne! Yes, before Huhne's wife allegedly showed the world how good he was at getting his points across, it was Huhne who was seen as the man to watch. Think of that, and thank heavens for Nick Clegg.
I say again, save the Cleggster from extermination!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9561957/Never-mind-all-those-badgers-weve-got-to-save-the-Cleggster.html
Badgers?
BADGERS?
WE DON'T NEED NO STEEEENKING BADGERS!!!
Quote from: Darth Wagtaros on September 25, 2012, 01:11:17 PM
http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/ (http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com/)
Dammit, it redirected me. Probably got some nasty virus or something now. <_<
Boris is getting rather too big for his own boots.
Quote from: Peter Wiggin on September 25, 2012, 12:34:35 PM
Quote from: Gups on September 25, 2012, 12:30:37 PM
Now show me a picture of a beaver.
I don't think NSFW pictures are allowed in OTR.
"It seems I've signed the death warrant of a whole army of beavers."
"Badgers, Minister. Beavers would have a navy."
Quote from: mongers on September 25, 2012, 07:06:31 PM
Boris is getting rather too big for his own boots.
Luckily he was born in New York, so may decide to run as President instead of settling for being PM :hmm:
Quote from: Richard Hakluyt on September 26, 2012, 01:45:16 AM
Quote from: mongers on September 25, 2012, 07:06:31 PM
Boris is getting rather too big for his own boots.
Luckily he was born in New York, so may decide to run as President instead of settling for being PM :hmm:
Why can't he do both and reunite the British Empire?
Glad there were no stupid honey badger jokes up in hurr.
Squirrel became popular a couple of years back. Squirrels eat nuts, seeds and vegetation, and I'd quite like to try one, they sound tasty. Badgers, however, east worms, insects and grubs. Generally carnivorous animals taste like crap. Especially ones on an all-slug diet.
Quote from: Brazen on September 26, 2012, 03:55:39 AM
Squirrel became popular a couple of years back. Squirrels eat nuts, seeds and vegetation, and I'd quite like to try one, they sound tasty. Badgers, however, east worms, insects and grubs. Generally carnivorous animals taste like crap. Especially ones on an all-slug diet.
I've never had it, but alligator is supposed to be pretty good. Maybe that comes from being a reptile instead of a mammal.
Quote from: Brazen on September 26, 2012, 03:55:39 AM
Squirrel became popular a couple of years back. Squirrels eat nuts, seeds and vegetation, and I'd quite like to try one, they sound tasty. Badgers, however, east worms, insects and grubs. Generally carnivorous animals taste like crap. Especially ones on an all-slug diet.
Cousin Eddy said squirrels are high in cholesterol.
Quote from: Baron von Schtinkenbutt on September 26, 2012, 07:15:31 AM
Quote from: Brazen on September 26, 2012, 03:55:39 AM
Squirrel became popular a couple of years back. Squirrels eat nuts, seeds and vegetation, and I'd quite like to try one, they sound tasty. Badgers, however, east worms, insects and grubs. Generally carnivorous animals taste like crap. Especially ones on an all-slug diet.
I've never had it, but alligator is supposed to be pretty good. Maybe that comes from being a reptile instead of a mammal.
Alligator is OK, bit bland.
The only proper way to eat roadkill is by grilling it on your engine block.