Making peace with pigeons: part one

I've always been fairly carnivorous (I'm from Chicago, where sausage is essentially a food group), except for those rare times that I've flirted with vegetarianism if for no other reason than because meat sometimes seems kind of gross.

You know it's true. Even the most sanitized, generically pale chicken breasts in the U.S.A. can arrive with icky tiny blood clots or chewy bits still attached. And nobody likes to ponder the realities of the abattoir while they're chewing on a nice steak. But since I've been in France, I've developed a new theory: the more removed you are from the original animals, the more disgusting meat seems. It may seem counterintuitive (or to others perhaps completely obvious?), but I think that the more we process our meat into non-threatening, unrecognizable chunks, the more we cultivate a flesh-based Fear of the Other.

In the last two months of cooking school, I've ventured into previously uncharted meat territory (well, for me at least). In class, we have prepared and eaten snails, guinea hen, crayfish, lobster, crabs, rabbit, wild hare, deer, duck, wild duck, duckling, Bresse chicken, veal, chicken liver, wild boar, bone marrow, and other types of chicken, beef and fish too numerous to mention.

We have squeezed out the oil and cut out the glands at the base of a duck's back (this is how ducks preen themselves and keep their feathers water-resistant). We have pulled out leg tendons, and then singed the feet of these ducks and other birds over flames to remove the skin more easily. We have yanked out the guts of still-squirming crayfish, chopped up living crabs and ripped the claws off of blinking lobsters before tearing their bodies in half. And there is always a veal hoof lurking around somewhere, ready to add its gelatin to a stock.

I admit to whimpering like a baby when my crayfish did a big, wriggling back flip in a sad attempt to escape certain disembowelment under my clumsy grasp. And yes, I still get upset watching a creature die in front of me. But I think that if you're going to make the decision in life to eat animals, these are necessary lessons. I want to acknowledge that something died to feed me. I want to force myself to confront these vestiges of life and respect them. It just seems more honest than insisting that the meat arrive in your kitchen in prepackaged animaloid cubes, without any presence of blood, bone or feather.

Which brings me to the pigeons. Last week we made pigeon backs glazed with gingered honey. We had to prep the pigeons before cooking, and it was one of the bloodier jobs we've had.



The pigeons' bodies were just small enough to constantly remind me of my beloved pet parrot.


It was a hurdle. Other people have pretty strong reactions to the idea of eating pigeons, but for different reasons. I think because so many of them clog our cities and spend their days snacking on cigarette butts and bubblegum, we can't even conceive of a pigeon that isn't a type of vermin. But I've seen a few oddball pigeons in French parks in addition to the typical greasy kind; this breed is bigger and prouder, with a pronounced breast and a white ring around its neck. I like to think that the kind we ate in class are of this type.





Proud pigeon or greasy rat, it still became our lunch. And this time, I managed not to whimper.