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Chances
are, you will not find yourself using these
recipes for your standard fare. Me, I spend most of my time sitting in a tree looking for things to eat a wee bit smaller than a whale! (s). Still, I found
Bruce Hallman's articles and
site, extremely informative and interesting. With his kind permission, I have reproduced the following, I hope you enjoy them as much as I did. - Snow
How
to Cook a Whale Found Dead
An old Kwakuitl recipe, as
narrated in the Kwakuitl language by Elie Hunt and translated into
English by her husband, George Hunt, circa 1908.
Courtesy of http://www.hallman.org/~bruce/
Most importantly, you cannot eat it all by yourself!
So the first step is to call for a party and invite all your friends, relatives, and local dignitaries.
A special occasion, like the finding of a
whale, calls for the use of ceremonial names. Though a hunter, a man, has found the whale, preparing food is women's work, and therefore the daughter of the hunter has the rights to prepare the whale. She is given the ceremonial name, Place-of-cutting-Blubber. Note that it is the daughter who has the rights, not the wife(s), due to the family rights in a matrilineal society.
Once everybody is ready, you bring tools, and the hunter who found the whale leads everybody in their canoes to the spot where he found it. The father of the hunter has the honor of speaking for the daughter of the hunter to "make a toast" for the occasion. It is customary to first declare how wonderful the whale is, being full of delicious blubber, etc.. Then you should give the choicest piece (the dorsal fin) to the ranking dignitary, who is typically the chief of the village.
Everybody else gets an equal size piece of the whale according to the order of their rank. The first piece starts at the whale neck, and they work from the top down and from the head to the tail. Generally the pieces are cut about a fathom (6 feet) in width. After the ceremonial pieces are given out, the women go to work to gather the remaining fat from the whale. The last step is cut off a piece of the tale of the whale.
When this is done, the pieces are loaded in the canoes, and everybody goes home to do the remainder of the preparation. The hunks of blubber are split into strips four fingers thick (two inches). These pieces are then cut into half inch strips.
A kettle of water is set to boil on the
beach, and the strips are boiled to render the oil. The oil is ladled off and stored in watertight storage boxes. Whale oil is best stored in the corner of your house.
Then, you take cedar
bark, and split it into long strips. Poke holes in the middle of the boiled pieces of whale blubber, and thread them onto the long strips of bark. When finish these strings of blubber are now called "tied-in-the-middle".
Dry these strips in the smoky rafters of your house for at least a month.
When you want to eat some "tied-in-the-middle" take it down from the rafters, and boil it in a kettle until tender. This takes a lot of boiling. Be sure to eat it hot, because when it is cold, it is really tough. If you boil more than you can eat, you can dry it again, and reheat it later. This dish is called "eating boiled blubber tied in the middle", a real treat!
Sometimes the woman boils the heads (of halibut)
and invites the
friends of her husband.
When the men are
invited, his wife
takes the halibut heads and puts them on a log on the floor. Then she
takes an ax and chops them in pieces. The pieces are not very small.
Then she puts them into a kettle. Then she takes the backbone and
breaks it to pieces. Then she also puts it into the kettle.
As soon as the
kettle is full, she
takes a bucket of water and empties it into it. The water hardly shows
among them when she puts it on the fire. She does not touch it; but
when it has been boiling a long time, she takes it off.
Then she takes here
large ladle and also dishes,
and she dips it out into the dishes with her large ladle. As soon as
all the dishes are full, she takes her spoons and gives one to each
guest, an she spreads a food-mat in front of them. As last she takes
up the dish and puts it down in front of her guests.
Immediately they
all eat with spoons;
and after they have eaten with spoons, the wife of the host takes
other small dishes and puts them down between the men and the
food-dish. This is called "receptacle for the bones." As
soon as the guests find a bone, they throw it into the small dish; and
they keep on doing this while they are eating. After they have
finished eating with spoons, they put their spoons into the dish from
which they have been eating.
Then they take the
small dish in which the bones are,
and put it down where the large dish had been, and they pickup the
bones with their hands and put them into their mouths and chew them.
Therefore this is called "chewed;" namely, boiled
halibut-head.
They chew it for a
long time and suck at it;
and after they finish sucking out the fat, they blow out the sucked
bones; and they do not stop until all the bones have been sucked out.
They the woman
takes the small dishes
and washes them out, and she pours some water into them down again
before the guests. Then they wash their hands. As soon as they have
done so, they drink; and after they have finished drinking, they go
out. Then they finish eating the halibut-heads.
Halibut-heads are
not food for the morning,
for they are too fat. They only eat them at noon and in the evening,
because they are very fat; that is the reason why they are afraid to
eat them, that it makes one sleepy.
This is George Hunt's
translation of the Kwakuitl version of a Kwakuitl Indian recipe, told
in the Kwakuitl language by his wife, Elie Hunt, circa 1914. [Note
that there are many ways of preparing salmon, Mrs. Hunt recorded over
thirty, most are to preserve it for storage. This recipe is one meant
to be used to eat salmon fresh.]
This
is especially interesting because it sheds light on the truth that
food preparation is more of a cultural matter than a physical process.
In other words, a persons role in their society is reflected in how
they serve food to their guests.
CATCHING THE SALMON
"This is when the man goes catching salmon at night.”
"That is what is called by the river people "taking salmon
with hooks at night up the river," when they are going to dry the
roasted dog-salmon for winter.
"Dog-salmon are speared by the river people at the mouth of the
river when they are going to eat them at once, while the dog-salmon
are still phosphorescent. Then they will not keep a long time without
getting moldy when they are roasted, for they are fat.
"Now I shall talk about the salmon speared at the mouth of the
river when it is still phosphorescent. When the man who spears the
salmon gets one, he goes home as soon as he has speared it.”
COOKING THE SLAMON
"His wife at once takes an old mat and
spreads it over her back; then she takes her belt and puts it
on over the old mat on her back; then she takes along a large basket
in which to carry the dot-salmon on her back. She goes to the canoe of
her husband and puts four dog-salmon into her carrying-basket. Then
she goes up the beach to the place where she is going to cut them. She
puts them on an old mat, which is spread on the ground outside the
house.
"As soon as she has thrown them on the
ground, she takes her fish-knife and sharpens it; and after she
has sharpened it, she cuts off the gills of the dog-salmon. When the
gills are off, she cuts around the neck, but she does not cut off the
head from the backbone. Then she cuts from the back of the neck down
to four finger-widths from the tail on the upper side. Now a thin
strip of flesh is left on the backbone. As soon as the cut reaches
down to the belly, she turns it around, and she begins to cut from the
tail upwards to the back of the neck.
"As soon as she takes off the backbone,
she takes her roasting-tongs and takes the slime and rubs it over the
roasting-tongs, so that they may not get burned when they stand by the
fire of the house. Then she winds cedar-bark around the tongs one span
from the bottom of the roasting-tongs; and when this is done, she
takes one of the cut salmon and puts it crosswise into the
roasting-tongs. Then she takes cedar-bark and ties it tight above the
cut salmon; and after she has tied it, she takes another salmon and
puts it the other way, above the one that she put in first. Then she
again takes cedar-bark and ties it above the salmon.
After she finishes tying it, she splits
cedar-wood, long and slender pieces. These are called "the
lock". Then she pushes one of these on each side, two
finger-widths from the edge of the salmon-meat, through between the
legs of the roasting-tongs, lengthwise of the salmon; and after she
has finished this, she pushes long ones across the salmon and the
"locks"; which she first put on. Now there is one on each
side of the roasting-tongs in this manner: Then the same is done on
the other side.
"After this is finished, the woman
puts (the tongs) up by the side of the fire. She first turns the meat
side towards the fire; an when it is done, she turns it around to the
skin side.
SERVING THE SALMON
"As soon as that is done, the man
requests permission from his wife to invite his friends to come and
eat the roasted salmon while it is warm. As soon as his wife tells him
to go ahead and call them, the man goes and invites them.
"Then his wife takes a mat, which is
to be the food-mat of the guests of her husband; then she spreads a
mat for the guests of her husband to sit on; and it does not take long
before her husband comes back followed by his guests, for they try to
come before the roasted salmon cools off.
"Immediately they sit down on the
mat that has been spread out; and when they are all in, the woman
takes the food-mat and spreads it in front of her husband's guests.
Then she goes back and takes the two roasted salmon in the tongs; and
she takes them out, one for each two men . Then she lays them skin
down, on the food-mat. When there are four men, there are two
food-mats, and there is one roasted salmon.
"There is not oil for dipping, for
the dog-salmon is very fat while it is still phosphorescent, when it
is jumping in the mouth of the rivers. Then the guests themselves
break it and eat the salmon speared at the mouth of the river.
"Early in the morning, dog-salmon
speared at the mouth of the river is not eaten, for it is fat it is
only eaten in the afternoon and evening. Whenever it is eaten in the
morning, it makes those who eat it feel sleepy the whole day long, for
it is very fat. Therefore they are afraid to eat it in the morning.
"As soon as the guests finish eating it,
the man takes what is left and eats with it with his wife, while his
guests drink water freshly drawn. After they finish drinking, the
guests go out. They only wash their hands in their houses; and after
the man has finished eating with his wife, he gathers the bones and
skin left by his, puts them on a mat, and throws them into the sea on
the beach. This is all about salmon speared at the mouth of the river.
This
is a transcript of the George Hunt translation of the sea-slug recipe,
as narrated in the Kwakuitl Language, by his wife Elie Hunt, circa
1913.
Part 1, is the catching, Part 2 is the cooking & Part 3 is the
serving.
CATCHING SEA-SLUGS
When a man wants to
take sea-slugs, he first goes for a
thin shaft which is used by the salmon fishers. He takes two thin
cedar sticks, each one a short span long and a little thinner than
the little finger, flat on one side and he takes cedar-bark and
splits it in narrow strips. The two cedar-sticks are to be hooks at
the end of the sea-slug spear. He puts these near the end of the
harpoon-shaft, and ties them on with split long strips of
cedar-bark. When it is finished, it is this way: [A simple
illustration is omitted, of spear with hook lashed on end].
Then he waits for
it to be calm at low tide.
When it is calm, he launches his
sea-slug-gathering canoe. He takes his sea-slug-gathering paddle,
and his knife for cutting off the heads of sea slugs, and also the
stick for catching sea-slugs. Then he paddles to a place where he
knows there are many sea-slugs. He looks down into the water; and
when he sees a place where there are many of them together, he takes
his stick for catching sea-slugs and pushes it down into the water.
He pushes the hook-end under the sea-slugs. Then it comes up lying
crosswise over his canoe.
He takes the
sea-slug, takes his
knife, and cuts off the neck. Then he squeezes out the insides, and he
throws it down hard into his canoe, saying as he is throwing it down,
"Now you will be as stiff as the wedge of your grandfather".
He does this to each of them, and says so as he throws the sea-slugs
into his canoe. When he has caught many of them, he goes home.
As soon as he
arrives on the beach of his house,
his wife takes a basket and goes to meet him and carry up what he has.
She puts her basket into the small canoe; and the woman takes one of
the sea-slugs, squeezes down the whole length of its body, holding it
by the hind part, the head downward; and when what is left of the
insides has come out, he throws it into the basket. He does this to
all of them.
COOKING SEA-SLUGS
When they are all in, she carries her
basket of sea-slugs up the beach and takes it into the house. Then she
takes a large low steaming box and pours some fresh water into it.
When it is half full, she takes the basket of sea-slugs and pours them
into the water in the box. She leaves them there for two nights with
the water over them. They are ready to be boiled.
The man takes the kettle for boiling sea-slugs
and pours water into it until it is half full. He puts it over the
fire; and when the kettle for boiling sea-slugs is on the fire with
the sea-slugs in it, he goes into the woods and breaks off
hemlock-branches. He carries these back and puts them down where the
sea-slugs are boiling in the kettle. After he has done so, he takes
the low steaming-box in which the sea-slugs are, and places it by the
side of the fire, and also the tongs. When the water begins to boil,
his wife takes one of the sea-slugs and squeezes the body so that the
liquid comes out from the inside.
Then she puts it in the boiling water.
Her husband stirs it with the tongs. The woman squeezes out the whole
number of sea-slugs; and when they are all in the kettle, the man
continues to stir them. When the water begins to boil, the man picks
up handfuls of dirt from the floor of the house and throws it into the
boiling water. Then it stops boiling over, for the water of the
sea-slugs almost always boils over, and only the dirt from the floor
of the house stops the boiling-over.
The man tries to take hold of one of them
with the tongs; and when he succeeds in taking one, it is done. The
skin gets rough when it is done. The (sea-slugs) are slippery when
they are raw, and he can not get hold of them with his tongs. When
they are done, he takes off the fire the kettle for cooking sea-slugs.
He takes a large dish and puts it by the side of the kettle. He pours
some water into it; and when it is more than half full of water, he
takes the tongs, lifts up the sea-slugs, and puts them into the dish
for washing the boiled slugs. As soon as they are all in, the man sits
down by its side and washes them, they being stiff.
SERVING
SEA-SLUGS
After he has washed one of them, he gives
it to one of his guests to eat first a sea-slug; and the one to whom
the first sea-slug is given eats it at once. The man washes the
sea-slugs quickly, and gives one to the second man; and he continues
doing this with his other guests; and when the first one finishes
eating a sea-slug. he is given another one.
After they have eaten enough, they take
some to their wives, for sea-slugs are only eaten in the winter, when
they are good. They are bad in the summer. That is about one way of
cooking sea-slugs.
