A top Italian food writer has been suspended indefinitely from
the country’s version of the television programme Ready Steady Cook
for recommending stewed cat to viewers as a “succulent dish”.
RAI, the public broadcasting network, said that it had dropped
Beppe Bigazzi, 77, for offering the recipe on La Prova del Cuoco,
which is broadcast at midday on the main channel. Its switchboard
was inundated with complaints from viewers and animal rights
groups. Bigazzi said that casserole of cat was a famous dish in his
home region of Valdarno, Tuscany.
“I’ve eaten it myself and it’s a lot better than many other
animals,” he told viewers. “Better than chicken, rabbit or pigeon.”
He said that for optimum flavour the meat should be “soaked in
spring water for three days” before being stewed.
Elisa Isoardi, the programme’s presenter — who has a cat called
Othello — tried to steer Bigazzi off the subject. Reports said that
during the commercial break she and the show’s producers tried to
persuade him to apologise to viewers but he refused.
Carla Rocchi, the head of ENPA, the Italian society for the
protection of animals, said that killing cats was illegal.
Francesca Martini, the Deputy Health Minister, said it was
“absolutely unheard of for a public service broadcaster to tell
people how delicious cats are to eat”. She called for the producers
to be investigated for criminal offences involving incitement to
mistreat animals.
Bigazzi, a consumer affairs journalist and author of Cooking
with Common Sense, has been one of the stars of La Prova del Cuoco
for the past ten years. He is noted for his exuberant style and
previously caused uproar by boiling lobsters live on the show.
Yesterday he said that he had only been joking about the recipe,
and he had been misunderstood.
He added: “Mind you, I wasn’t joking all that much. In the 1930s
and 1940s, when I was a boy, people certainly did eat cat
in the countryside around Arezzo.” Food historians said that
Italians in cities such as Vicenza devised cat recipes in times of
economic hardship. Inhabitants of Vicenza are still nicknamed
magnagati (cat eaters), and in some butchers’ shops rabbits are
sold with their heads to assure buyers that they are not cats.
From pet to pot
• In his 1529 treatise on cookery, Ruperto de Nola recommended
spit-roasting cat basted with garlic and olive oil. He wrote: “Take
the garlic with oil mixed with good broth so that it is coarse, and
pour it over the cat and you can eat it for it is a good dish”
• The Spanish expression pasar gato por liebre derives from the
practice of hunters trying to sell skinned cats as hares. When
butchered, the animals are supposed to look almost identical
• In 2007 Australians at a cooking contest in Alice Springs
sought to curb the feral cat population by using them in a dish.
One judge found the cat casserole so tough that she had to spit it
out
• Last month legal experts in China responded to pressure from
the country’s middle class and proposed a ban on eating cat and dog
meat. Both are traditional Chinese dishes but if the law is passed
people caught eating cats could face 15 days in prison
Sources: agencies, florilegium.org, statemaster.com
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/article7029058.ece
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