Repost: Ragondin, Rustic Cooking, and a Bit of Chaos in the Kitchen
Revisiting France’s most infamous rodent, its unexpected place in the kitchen, and the best cooking show you’ve never seen.
I’m out of commission this week thanks to eye surgery (exactly as much fun as it sounds), but I wanted to reshare this one because I love it. It’s got everything—giant invasive rodents, brutal ’90s French cooking shows, and the time I helped build a guillotine to decapitate a friend in the Bronx. La Cuisine des Mousquetaires remains one of the most fascinating (and occasionally ruthless) cooking shows I’ve ever come across, and if you missed this post the first time, now’s your chance.
Not a romantic Valentine’s Day story
let’s talk rodents.
As a rule, not a lot of people in Europe eat rodents with the exception of the European edible dormouse, which is its common name: “edible,” which is unfortunate, at least for the dormouse. Apparently, they’re delicious and a popular recipe in Ancient Rome involved stuffing dormice with other dormice.
Damn, Rome.
These are still regularly eaten in Slovenia, Croatia, and to a lesser degree, Italy. They’re simply not as popular as they once were.
The ragondin is a South American import that has taken over the countryside and even made its way onto some dinner tables. It was first brought over for the fur trade, but that didn’t work out and the man who was raising them just released them into the wild. Now, they are all over the country, definitely in this part of the country.
They are a bit cute. Weird, but cute. It’s their orange teeth. Naturally, Maïté —a charming, but no-nonsense TV chef—cooked it on national television.
Sadly, Maïté passed away in December. I would have loved to have met her. In the video below, she pets the rangodin for a bit before cutting its head off and making a meal out of it. But they are both cuddly and tasty, it seems.
Tough stuff, Maïté.
Wildlife of Fpoorance - with recipes!
Last summer, I made my own ragondin pâté for an event in the Bronx—a wild game dinner hosted by a good friend, Justin Fornal, worth looking into for his own incredible adventures and encyclopedic knowledge of the arcane. He’s got his own catalog of the curious and the bizarre that’s worth looking into.
I should see if he’ll do a guest piece.
I helped him to build a guillotine to cut off his head at the party. (It was just for show, this is not some confession of guilt.) It was quite the spectacle and the food was amazing.
All Justin’s design, along with Hackett’s work - I just helped put it together.
a nutria by any other name
America also has an invasive orange-toothed rodent problem, likely started for the same reasons. In the US, ragondin is known as nutria, coypu, swamp rat, river rat, marsh beaver, giant water rat, and, in Louisiana, Cajun swamp rabbit. It seems some minds got together to try and brand the nutria as a popular food, considering that they are everywhere down there, and they arrived at “swamp rabbit.”
The nutria pâté turned out really well (if you like gamey, rabbit-adjacent flavors), and the event was a fantastic mix of personalities, culinary curiosity, and general chaos. Our host described the dress code as “royalty from another planet” and the guests did not disappoint. I expected to be outdressed.
In any case, serving marsh beaver to a Bronx crowd isn’t something I’ll forget anytime soon and I was glad to be back as a cook for the 3rd time. I have a great basic recipe, if you ever wind up with a lot of rangodin on your hands, which you just might.
Check out the original post for the history of France’s marsh beaver problem, the best cooking show you’ve probably never seen (unless you grew up in France in the ’90s), and why I’m seriously considering asking my local butcher to source some for me.
If you’ve already read it, I’ve made some edits and updates—so it might be worth another look!
Finding Home Elsewhere
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I’ll send you the recipe!
K
