We currently have a mouse. Or several mice, it’s not really clear; nobody’s ever seen more than one at a time, but if it’s a single mouse then it’s very very good at finding its way back from a distant garden, and also at making a scritching noise on two sides of the room at the same time.
Apparently mice only need three grams of food a day, so it seems quite churlish to deny them that, but on the other hand it’s quite churlish for them to skitter across the floor and jump around the side of the oven. Non-human animals aren’t supposed to be in the kitchen unless they’re very very cute, or else food.
This does point at an obvious solution to the mouse problem. It’s surprisingly difficult to find mouse recipes online — they’re all tangled up with a lot of badly-spelt mousse — but not impossible. It turns out that mice are a staple food in some parts of Zambia, for example, where broody couples are said to be longing for a son so that he can kill mice for them.
Zambian mice are generally boiled and dried before they’re eaten, and there’s even a song to mock cooks who don’t realise this, and try to prepare them differently:
Some do not know how to cook mice.
Some do not know how to cook mice.
Onion, tomatoes in the mice.
Onion, cooking oil in the mice.
Elsewhere Alice Thomas Ellis, in Fish, Flesh and Good Red Herring, reports on a woman who cooks mice to her own, distinctly non-Zambian, standards:
In 1920 when I was four years old an old woman who lived near my family in Radlett and whom I used to visit on every occasion I could find, would give me sugar mice to eat. These were made by skinning mice, which she had caught in an ordinary mousetrap, emptying them and then tying them by the tail to a wooden spoon where they were suspended into a strong sugar syrup in a cast iron saucepan over a slow heat. After some hours (or days) the mice became crystallised and, when they were cold, she would give me one to eat. They were delicious and even the bones were crisp and edible.
Outside of Zambia and Radlett, fried mice have been used as a cure for whooping cough and bedwetting. Neither of these are currently major household problems but we’ll be getting a new housemate in a few weeks, so who knows?
The only problem that remains is catching the mice. A study sponsored by the Stilton Cheese Makers’ Association confirmed last year that mice aren’t all that fond of cheese, and would prefer to eat fruit, grains and nuts; so keeping some cheese in for old times’ sake, this blueberry salad seems like a pretty decent bet for luring a delicious mouse to a trap.
Blue Salad
(based on the Blue Heaven Salad from Lou Jane Temple’s Death By Rhubarb)
Salad
1 head butter lettuce
1 cup walnuts
1 cup crumbled stilton
1 cup blueberries
1 tablespoon olive oil
Dressing (requires food processor)
1/4 cup raspberries
2 tablespoons raspberry vinegar
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1/4 cup olive oil
Blend the raspberries, raspberry vinegar, honey and soy sauce in a food processor, then mix in the olive oil gradually, blending as you go. This can be done several hours in advance.
Fry the walnuts for a few minutes in the olive oil, until they start to smell delicious and walnutty, then set them aside to cool.
Crumble the stilton, and mix gently with the blueberries and fried walnuts.
Rinse the lettuce and pat or spin it dry, then put the leaves onto four plates. Separate the mixed stilton, blueberries and walnuts between the plates. Stir around the raspberry dressing to recombine, if it’s separated at all, and then dribble it over the top, to taste. (I only use about a tablespoon per serving, but I don’t really like salad dressing.)
Serves 4.
This looks heavenly.
Maybe your intrepid (and cheeky) mouse has seen Ratatouille ?
(Trailer at http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=2022963307)
Comment by spacedlaw — 30 July, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
Thanks.
If the mouse actually wants to get involved in cooking, and make us some delicious soup, it’s more than welcome to try, but it’s going to have to learn not to hide behind the washing-up bowl and startle me, first.
Comment by Holly — 30 July, 2007 @ 4:38 pm
I loved reading about all the different kinds of Zambian mice. It made me want to re-read all of Gerald Durrell; I’m sure there must be an amusing mouse-eating anecdote in one of his books.
Comment by Huskyteer — 30 July, 2007 @ 5:13 pm
the museum of jurassic technology has sweet little displays of mice on toast (http://www.alertbutnotalarmed.com/photos/mice_on_toast/) and mice pie (http://www.roadtripamerica.com/places/mjt.html) as part of its exhibit about folk remedies. aaugh.
Comment by britta — 31 July, 2007 @ 1:57 am
Huskyteer: Oh, hm, I haven’t read much Durrell and keep not getting around to it. I think I tried some Lawrence Durrell and was a bit bored, so gave up on the whole family? Probably a bit unfairly, on reflection.
Britta: Gosh. I particularly enjoy the mice-in-toast for its suggestion that people ate them whole with the skin on.
Comment by Holly — 31 July, 2007 @ 7:56 am
Nothing like a mouse in the kitchen to scare you half to death. Luckily when we had one, our neighbour’s cat unexpectedly popped in for a visit and exited minutes later with squealign rodent in its jaws. Ordinarily I would have given chase and made him drop the damn thing, but after sleepless nights waiting for the scuttling in the kitchen to turn into mouse footfalls on the stairs, I decided to let it be.
Comment by Jeanne — 16 August, 2007 @ 12:04 pm
I am designing and compiling a Blueberry Recipe Book to help promote the use of Blueberries in New Zealand and possibly Australia and overseas. I would love to use your photograph of blueberries, blue vein cheese and walnuts in the book as a chapter heading for ‘Afters’. Would that be possible?
I will include you in the acknowledgements and have your site on the page of the photo. This will bring more readers to your site. The response to the book has been so enthusiastic and encouraging.
The book is to be published before Christmas ready for the blueberry season in New Zealand. It is 170+ pages and a great colorful A5 book to inspire the use of blueberries which is a relatively new market here. I have been working with Blueberry New Zealand Inc. And Narandra Patel, a plant researcher.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards,
Glenis Thomas
Comment by Glenis Thomas — 21 August, 2009 @ 12:52 am