After huge interest for the first Dutch prohibited dinner, now a last prohibited dinner is organised somewhere in The Netherlands. A secret dinner set-up by food-lovers and experimental ‘chefs de cuisine’.
The forbidden dinner is a protest against clean and safe cooking and eating. All the ingredients that are used during the secret dinner and the preparation of all courses are illegal if European food, cooking and hygiene laws and rules would be respected.
The forbidden dinner is organised by the Dutch department of the Italian Slow Food movement, an international movement with 60,000 members Slow Food is an international response to the effect strict hygiene rules and fast food have on society and life.
For a reportage for the program ’10 vor 10′ a reporter from the Swiss public TV broadcaster Schweizer Fernsehen travels to the Netherlands to join the forbidden dinner on a secret location in the Netherlands and to interview the initiators, the cooks and the guests.
Before the dinner all participants need to sign an agreement stating: ‘I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I am participating in The Forbidden Dinner entirely voluntarily and in full awareness. I am aware that there is some risk involved in the consumption of the dishes offered and hereby declare that I will not hold the organisers and preparers of The Forbidden Dinner liable for any consequences, now or in the future, thereof.’
These were dishes with ingredients that were banned, almost banned or practically unobtainable in the Netherlands that were served during the dinner: onion fried in rice flour, grilled calf intestine, crostini with pâté of calf’s liver and spleen, turf-smoked sausage, fried bull’s balls, Dutch shrimps to be peeled yourself, homemade black pudding with sweetbreads and calf’s tongue with fried tall-stemmed apples risotto with poached and marinated veal brains, tenderloin tournedos with melted marrow, stewed tripe, tripe and abomasum, blood-bound hare’s pepper, parfait of colostrum, sweet pudding bound with flour and calf’s blood.
Very much forbidden was one of the four cheeses served: the sheep’s droppings cheese. For once, European regulations had nothing to do with this: the ban on making this cheese was already enacted in the Netherlands in 1930. Yet a Dutch sheep’s cheese maker was found who, as a great exception, dared to make the old family recipe again exclusively for the Slow Food party.
For sheep’s droppings cheese one needs to trot behind the sheep armed with muslin cloths to catch the droppings, as they must not fall on the ground or otherwise become soiled. The cloths are tied shut and hung in the sheep’s milk for a while. Then rennet is added and the milk is heated.
Also Casu marzu (Sardinian for rotten cheese) was consumed during the forbidden dinner. This is a Sardinian unpasteurised sheep’s cheese. It is a cheese that is left to mature for a long time, until larvae of the cheese fly nest in it. This is done by placing the cheese outside with part of the rind removed, through a hole made in the cheese, a fly is inserted into the cheese. The larvae that take up residence in it break down much of the fats through the acids in their digestive tract and make the cheese very soft, sometimes syrupy, while moisture (called lagrima) often seeps out. The maggots are colourless and measure about eight millimeters. However, they can jump very high (up to 15 centimeters), so it is recommended that the person eating the cheese cover their eyes, as the cheese is sold and served with the maggots still in it. The real food lover eats the cheese with the larvae still in it.
For this background reportage Featurez proposed the idea for the story, did the research, set-up and planning of the filming, filmed a part of the dinner preparations and accompanied the filming.