Placenta a la Carte

From big-iain

Date: Sun, 3 Nov 1996

Found this in a major UK paper, admittedly reprinting it from another publication. Any other recipes ?

"THE FIRST time, I fried it in olive oil with a bit of seasoning and disguised it with afew vegetables. The second time, it looked a lot more like a piece of liver and so I just flash fried it for a couple of minutes and heaped on the mustard." Greg a stock-broker, is describing a take-away meal with a difference - his wife's placenta. No longer just hippie health fad, placenta cookery has a new following. Polenta people are getting into placenta, nature's very own raspberry coulis.

Forget ladies who lunch; there are an increasing number of ladies who put people off their lunch. "I'd describe the taste as gamey," Greg's wife, Jane, says nonchalantly. "I think the biggest mistake Greg made first time round was putting it into the freezer whole. He got through three hacksaw blades trying to cut off a bit each day. The last thing he felt like when he got back home was cutting it into portions."

This mistake was not repeated when Greg's second daughter was born recently. Once again, freezer bag at the ready, he took the placenta home -- "it was half the size of a rugby ball'' -- but this time he immediately cut it up into individual oven-ready portions which he froze and then served up to his wife over eight days with pasta or salad on the side.

The growth in popularity of this pseudo-cannibalistic practice is due to the increasingly widespread belief that it can ward off post-natal depression. Given that baby blues are not contagious, most men have a ready-made excuse not to treat it as a dinner-for-two experience, although Sting apparently tucked in when Trudie Styler gave birth.

Placenta cookery is not for the fainthearted. "It looks like something you would refuse if the butcher handed it to you," says Claire, another enthusiast. Merely hearing about it can be enough for some people. "Our unwanted guest of several weeks instantly announced,'I really must be going,' " adds Claire. "The line 'let's see what's in the freezer. Oh dear, we're down to placenta or fish fingers' will get rid of the most insensitive or the totally drunk. "

Anthony Worrell Thompson's Crostini of Placenta with Vin Santo: Cook with olive oil, onion, Vin Santo, capers and anchovies. Blend in a food processor and spread on toasted crostini. The perfect canape for a christening party.

Yummy !

ObT: If Clinton wins again, next time round will you have a choice of voting for 4 more years of Gore ? Or will the Repub's put forward a candidate of Lionel Squicking... "Vote for Sqicking". Tricky choice ! ...and all I get in the UK is the choice of John Major, Tony Blair or "Screaming Lord Sutch" (Official Monster Raving Loony Party)

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Big-Iain

"Awkward Beasts, Winkles. My Brother Hubert Uses them as Ear-plugs !" Sir Henry Rawlinson