Scottish haggis. Mexican chili-dusted grasshoppers. On the world's list of weird foods, ortolan -- a bite-size songbird roasted and gulped down whole -- can claim a place of distinction.
It's an endangered place, though, since the ortolan is a protected species. And the French government is out to get poachers hunting the coveted fowl.
Thought to represent the soul of France, ortolan was reportedly on the menu at late French president Francois Mitterrand's legendary "last supper" on New Year's Eve, 1995, eight days before he died.
PHOTO: AP
Though stricken with cancer, Mitterrand saved room for the piece de resistance, roasted ortolan, downing the 55g bird, bones and all, according to a detailed account in Esquire magazine and Georges-Marc Benamou, a journalist who was a Mitterrand confidant. Some of the late president's associates, however, insist that the bird-eating never took place.
According to tradition, the French shroud their head in a napkin to eat ortolan: Tucking into the bite-sized bird -- which is killed by being drowned in armagnac, plucked and roasted with its yellow skin and skeleton intact -- can be a messy business.
It's also an illicit one.
A 1998 law banned hunting the ortolan in France, a copper-breasted bird that migrates from Africa to Europe, because of its endangered status. Ortolan hunters -- who trap the birds alive and keep them in cages for several weeks to fatten them up -- face fines of up to 9,000 euros (US$12,500) and six months in prison, if caught and convicted.
But environmentalists complain the law is rarely enforced.
Earlier this month, the junior minister in charge of the environment, Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, pledged to step up inspections of the ortolan's habitat in the Landes region in southwestern France.
The increased inspections have already born fruit, she said.
"The more you inspect, the more violations you find," Kosciusko-Morizet said in a telephone interview. Four hunters were caught and two seizures were made over the past two weeks, she said.
At one hunter's house, inspectors found about 30 live birds being fattened in cages and another dozen frozen ones in the freezer, Kosciusko-Morizet said.
Environmentalists blame the poaching on continued demand for roasted ortolan -- which aficionados say is satisfyingly crunchy, with a subtle hazelnut taste.
No longer on restaurant menus in France because of the ban, ortolan is eaten at home or served secretly to special restaurant clients. A single bird can fetch between 100 euros and 150 euros on the black market, said Allain Beaugrain Dubourg, head of the League for the Protection of Birds.
The League says there are an estimated 600,000 to 750,000 ortolan pairs in Europe. The estimated 30,000 that are caught are mostly birds migrating between eastern Europe and Africa, it says.
Fans of the dish have decried the increased inspections, saying they threaten a uniquely French culinary tradition, Beaugrain said.
Kosciusko-Morizet insists the stepped-up enforcement of the hunting ban is not aimed at ending the tradition, but rather at making it viable again.
"When we are talking about hunting a protected species, there comes a moment when you have to stop hunting it -- if only to guarantee the species' continuity," she said, adding that the government lifted other hunting bans once the numbers stabilized.
In the meantime, Kosciusko-Morizet is hoping people will turn their attention to other, legal delicacies instead.
Escargot, anyone?
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