shewhomust | First catch your cormorant

Courtesy of The Sunday Sun (don't ask!), the story of a cook book.

Cumbrian Willie Menzies Weekes Fowler put together his Countryman's Cooking for the benefit of men who were obliged to cook for themselves: not "confirmed bachelors" so much as men who were temporarily between wives, and might wish to provide solid traditional food for their friends. His recommendation for salad is to phone a woman friend and ask her to make the salad, bribing her with gin if necessary. The book was published in 1965, and has been brought back into print by Ludlow-based Excellent Press.

I particularly liked the recipe for "Classic Cormorant", published in the paper with the warning (READ TO THE END!), which gives away one element of the joke, but it's well told and worth reading. For example:

Hang up by the feet with a piece of wire, soak in petrol and set on fire. This treatment both removes most of the feathers and kills the lice.

When the smoke has cleared away, take the cormorant down and cut off the beak. Send this to the local Conservancy Board who, if you are in the right area, will give you 3/6d or sometimes 5/- for it.

I note that The Sunday Sun is sufficiently squeamish to warn us to read to the end of the recipe, but does not flinch from informing its readers that Willie learned to cook as a prisoner of war in Germany, when "out of desperation, he cooked the camp commandant's cat with a black market onion."