Down the Gullet
June 28, 2012 10:02 AM   Subscribe

"The future of gull cuisine in Totnes is optimistic. We hope to see further exploration in developing exciting and innovative dishes."
posted by Iridic (34 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
Make a marinade of the wine, vinegar, herbs, seasoning and onions and pour over the gull meat. Leave to marinade for 3-4 days, turning occasionally.

Always the sign of high-quality raw materials. Even better if you had a lot of hot sauce.
posted by mondo dentro at 10:14 AM on June 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Why not drop it from 30 feet onto some rocks and see if it splits open?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 10:16 AM on June 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


DINING ON SEAGULL, A Short Poem

Eating gulls?
What nasty things!
I would not dine
On rats with wings.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 10:25 AM on June 28, 2012 [6 favorites]


I'm reminded of this joke recipe I read once, that said it was a recipe for pigeon stew or whatever - and it walked you through all these steps of taking the pigeon, putting it in a pot and adding this vegetable and that vegetable and this one and that one, and then taking the pigeon OUT of the pot and then going on to cook the vegetables.

Or there's something I once read someone claim they saw in an Innuit cookbook once -- "Recipe for Loon Soup: ....Do not make loon soup."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:25 AM on June 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


Visitors were delighted with the raucous cry of the bird that romantically reminded them of the sea,

These visitors are clearly insane. Gull cries do not inspire "delight"
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:40 AM on June 28, 2012


I found this amazing. But then, I'm gullible.
posted by kinnakeet at 10:42 AM on June 28, 2012 [4 favorites]


"Recipe for Loon Soup: ....Do not make loon soup." On the Eating of Loons (PDF).

While gulls most likely taste like pigeon (chicken) .. Loons probably taste something like Gugas. [previously]
posted by snaparapans at 10:47 AM on June 28, 2012


ALBATROSS! GET YER ALBATROSS HEEEEEEEEEERE! GET IT ON A STICK!
posted by clvrmnky at 10:49 AM on June 28, 2012 [3 favorites]


Ehh, I've eaten carp, which is the seagull of the sea, so if you fry it and season it enough, it's probably ok.
posted by jonmc at 10:54 AM on June 28, 2012


ALBATROSS! GET YER ALBATROSS HEEEEEEEEEERE! GET IT ON A STICK!

Albatross is traditionally served on a rope, and then placed around your neck, so you can eat on the go.
posted by dortmunder at 11:27 AM on June 28, 2012 [5 favorites]


I was about to type that I would cook one but I wouldn't eat one when there was a tapping from my back kitchen. A volunteer baby seagull tapping on the glass backdoor and keen to get into the kitchen! (Until my cat appeared anyway.) I fear he is a dead bird walking, no flight as yet and my back garden is a cat fighting arena.
posted by biffa at 11:30 AM on June 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Make a marinade of the wine

WINE? WINE? WINE?WINE? WINE? WINE?
posted by xedrik at 11:33 AM on June 28, 2012 [9 favorites]


I once ate squab (young pigeon) against my better judgement and found it delicious, but I can't help but reading this as some Tom Sawyer-esq attempt by the town to rid itself of its problem by convincing people that gull is some forbidden delicacy.
posted by lekvar at 12:00 PM on June 28, 2012


The joke about eating murre/turr* is to put it in the oven with a rock and when the rock is tender, the turr is done.

This reminds me of a serious journal article about the tastes of different seabird eggs, including gull eggs. If someone has better Google skills than me, I'd love to see it again. As I remember it, it was from not later than the 1970s, they prepared all the eggs the same way (scrambled with a little salt and pepper), and I think they got all the eggs from an island off the coast of Newfoundland (not terribly far - probably Gull, Green, Great or Gannet). Of the results, I only remember that gull eggs came in last.

Murres and murre eggs taste like fish so I can only imagine that gulls and gull eggs taste like fish plus garbage with a hint of French fries.

*Turr is the common name of the bird in Newfoundland and the hunt is called the turr hunt. Murre is what non-Newfoundlanders and biologists call them, except in Europe where they're called guillemonts which is completely wrong since they are not very closely related to true guillemonts at all.
posted by hydrobatidae at 12:20 PM on June 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


One of these days I'm going to convince tourists that slugs are a secret Maine delicacy (traditional Acadian "escargot de la foret") and sell them for $25 a plate.

That's right after I open my stand at the entrance to Acadia National Park selling malaria nets and grizzly bear spray.
posted by dunkadunc at 12:21 PM on June 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


A man walks into a restaurant and orders the seagull soup. He takes one sip of the soup, gets a horrified look on his face, and dies.

You have 30 minutes. Go!
posted by sourwookie at 12:23 PM on June 28, 2012


While gulls most likely taste like pigeon (chicken) .. Loons probably taste something like Gugas.

I doubt this very much. Gulls, like Loons, eat a whole ton of fish. Gulls, like pigeons, eat a lot of trash. My bet is that the fish diet rather than the trash diet wins as far as how it flavors this "delightful treat".

In a past career, I was involved with "putting up" bird study skins for museum study (basically taxidermy), and by far the foulest thing I ever did was a gull. Pigeons: no big deal. Never saw a loon done, thankfully.
posted by mcstayinskool at 12:25 PM on June 28, 2012


You have to admit humanity has a history of eating once-numerous species into near extinction so why not gulls?
posted by tommasz at 12:28 PM on June 28, 2012


Sourwookie: let me try.

Years ago, he'd been part of a crew shipwrecked on an island, and at one point there was nothing to eat but a seagull, which wouldn't be enough to feed everyone. They decided that they'd have to eat one of their number; either they drew lots or one of the men volunteered. But no one wanted to know whether they were eating seagull or human, so the two were cooked into two separate stews at the other end of the island so people could remain ignorant about which they were eating. Then they got rescued.

Then years later, this guy ordered seagull soup, and when he tasted it, it tasted different than what he'd had on the island, and that's how he realized "wait - I ate human!" and he was so horrified he died of a heart attack.

How'd I do?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:31 PM on June 28, 2012 [4 favorites]


My bet is that the fish diet rather than the trash diet wins

Yes, got that wrong, you are correct
Having eaten seagull once when marooned off the coast of Korea, I can
assure you that although it served to fill the void, It was definately
not a delicacy. It tasted like raw fish, as would be expected.
Unless they are cultivated (which the above linked are certainly not):
I gather that seagulls (esp. those of the black-headed type) used to
be a delicacy in Britain in years gone by (I remember reading a
newspaper article many years ago in which it was mentioned that they
used to keep the gulls caged and feed them nothing but oatmeal for
several weeks in order to fatten them up and remove all traces of salt
from their flesh).

Some of the breeds are as big as chickens, they're plentiful and they
always seem to be well-fed - I'd be amazed if there were not places in
the world that still exploit the birds as a food source.

But I imagine, compared to guga or loon, gulls are not so bad tasting.
posted by snaparapans at 12:45 PM on June 28, 2012


A man walks into a restaurant and orders the seagull soup. He takes one sip of the soup, gets a horrified look on his face, and dies.

Oh, I was going to go with he was allergic to shellfish and enough of the allergens had remained in the (shellfish eating) seagull to kill him, but I like EmpressCallipygos' story more.
posted by Pyry at 1:01 PM on June 28, 2012


....I'm actually basing mine on a "Mini-mysteries" thing I read in a kids' book years ago; the version I heard is actually the flip-around of what I read (in what I heard, the question was "a man is walking down the street when he sees a seagull hanging in a butcher's window, he runs in and takes a bite and then runs down the street screaming "Thank God!" because he found out he'd eaten seagull years before). But Pyry, yours is more concise for the question as phrased.

We'll see what the verdict is!
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:07 PM on June 28, 2012


When I was a kid - my parents foraged (I guess that's a nice way of saying "looted") some seagull eggs - which they said tasted a little gamey and fishy.

My mom baked a cake with them and said it was the most glorious golden yellow.
posted by helmutdog at 1:55 PM on June 28, 2012


No.. no.

The horror.

No..

That meat has to taste like a thousand dead fish rotting in the sun.
posted by Malice at 3:28 PM on June 28, 2012


Q: If a bird that flies over the sea is called a seagull, what do you call a bird that flies over the bay?

A: YOU CAN'T TRICK ME I WON'T EAT THAT
posted by argonauta at 3:42 PM on June 28, 2012 [2 favorites]


Maybe with a schmear of flavored cream cheese?
posted by Cranberry at 4:10 PM on June 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


EmpressCallipygos had it.
posted by sourwookie at 5:10 PM on June 28, 2012


A man walks into a restaurant and orders the seagull soup. He takes one sip of the soup, gets a horrified look on his face, and dies.

Bartender looks over at the horse who was sitting next to him and says, "Why the long face?"
posted by eddydamascene at 10:12 PM on June 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Here is a photo of a dead seagull whose corpse has rotted away so you can see what was inside it. I don't think I would eat gull cuisine.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 11:46 PM on June 28, 2012


I am unwilling to believe they taste of fish or seafood, I have only ever seen them eat chips, donar kebabs, pasties and, once, an entire triangle of my doorstep toasted bacon sandwich. (The HP held it together and the damn gull bolted it down in one piece, you could see the triangle points sticking out as it moved down).

I am not willing to test this however.
posted by biffa at 11:51 PM on June 28, 2012 [1 favorite]


Harvey Kilobit: Here is a photo of a dead seagull whose corpse has rotted away so you can see what was inside it. I don't think I would eat gull cuisine.

That photo didn't so much gross me out about seagulls (not that I am a fan of them, mind you) as make me depressed about the amount of non-biodegradable crap we humans are putting into the environment...that ends up eaten by seagulls.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 12:15 AM on June 29, 2012


I ate a few sea birds in restaurants in Iceland and have eaten wood pigeon a number of times. However, I would be very suspect about eating wild sea gulls caught in suburban areas. They must consume so much plastic and other toxic material that I suspect there would be high levels of heavy metals and other biotoxins in their flesh.

If they were Gulls from some uninhabited island where they did actually just feed on fish and bugs then I don't think there would be a concern.
posted by mary8nne at 5:52 AM on June 29, 2012


I prefer the vegan version - soygull.
posted by univac at 11:07 AM on June 29, 2012 [1 favorite]


you sure that is not the yiddish voysun.
posted by snaparapans at 1:34 PM on June 29, 2012


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