ROUSES_JanFeb2019_Magazine

Gulf Coast time you are lost in a dream that is so still, so perfect, and so all absorbing that you wish, lazily and sadly, it might never end. But you swallow the soup and open your eyes, discover that the face of nature is unchanged, and then, your intellect having reasserted its sway, you conclude that the turtle, like the swan, yields its only perfect symphony in its death” Adding to the undeniable strangeness of turtle soup’s legacy is the fact that there’s a faux version of the stuff that, in the eyes of some, is even more popular and delightful than the original. Mock turtle soup was first stewed up during the mid-1700s in England, when the national craze over green sea turtle meat from the Caribbean had reached a reptilian fever pitch. Out of all the turtle- based delights served up during this era, turtle soup quickly became the most coveted and highly prized delicacy, carry- ing the same sort of class-status weight a tray full of Beluga caviar or a bottle of 1998 Krug Champagne Vintage Brut does when served today. It was a dish reflective of rarified air in the truest sense of the term; a soup so fine that its primary ingre- dient, green sea turtle, had to be shipped — still alive — thousands of miles across the ocean before the dish’s preparation could even begin in earnest. Needless to say, the price point was out of range for most people, and chefs began experimenting with how to create a version of the dish that retained the unique flavor profile and textural consis- tency of the soup without ponying up for an exorbitantly expensive meat. The common solution? Calf ’s head, which had a similarly jellylike quality and didn’t skimp on the richness. “Hannah Glasse, in the sixth edition of Art of Cookery (1758), added calf ’s head to her turtle soup recipe because it had the same gelatinous texture,” writes Jennifer McLa- gan in Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal . “In later editions, she doesn’t even bother to use turtle at all, replacing it

It’s a meat that can be very intense and tacky. In your mouth, [eating turtle meat] can be like that feeling you get after eating ham-hock greens or pig ears. Because of that, the intensity of our seasoning needs to liven up the ingredient, so that’s why we use a three-day veal stock and lots of spices and hot sauce in the dish.” Chef Rushing agrees. “Turtle meat is a lot like veal in a sense, but it’s a prehistoric animal. My dad would get turtles to make turtle soup, and the heart would beat for like an hour after butchering. They’re really durable animals that are hard to break down, and the meat itself requires a lot of attention. But when it’s braised properly, it can be as tender as veal.” While the Gulf South might be the only region still carrying the banner for turtle soup in the present day, it wasn’t too long ago that the dish was a nationwide phenomenon. Groups of men known as “snapper hunting parties” would venture out to catch turtles in much the same way they take to their duck blinds or tree stands now, wading through creek beds and ponds to grab up the terrapins with hands and hooks. Even America’s founding fathers — from George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, to Ben Franklin and Aaron Burr — were diehard turtle soup lovers, with an affection so extreme that one of the country’s first social clubs was named the Hoboken Turtle Club. When club members gathered, bowl after bowl of turtle soup was served, alongside a steady flow of cocktails and, according to some reports, stewed eel. Club member (and noted polar explorer) I.I. Hayes famously compared the taste of turtle meat to “fried seal’s liver and walrus bacon” while the description from an 1878 New York Times article on the Turtle Club proved a bit more flowery: “When you eat turtle soup you remove the spoon and shut your eyes, and your soul, on the wings of sensuous thought, passes outward into lotus land, and for a

dishes on the menu, and the recipe goes back probably 300 years.We like to say, ‘If it crawls across your yard, a person from Louisiana has a recipe to cook it,’” laughs Chef Tory McPhail of Commander’s Palace. “The recipe I use here is one that Paul Prudhomme and Ella [Brennan] came up with in the early 1970s based on tradition, history and our climate here in New Orleans. One of the things we make sure to do is always garnish turtle soup with eggs, because a century ago, if you didn’t have any fresh seafood to help fill out the soup, you could boil some eggs and chop them up to add a little extra protein to the meal during leaner times. Turtle soup really rings true to the heritage of Louisiana.” Today, the turtle soup that’s found on menus from the Grand Dame restaurants of the French Quarter to mom-and- pop joints lining the Acadiana coast is as singular and personal as the individual preparing it. Some, like Chef McPhail, add egg to the dish,while others slide a bevy of vegetables in alongside the turtle meat. The addition of sherry, for most, is a critical piece of the flavor puzzle. And there are even diehards who judge whether a turtle soup is truly “authentic” by the presence of two differ- ent kinds of turtle fats: the green-tinged calipash fat from inside the upper shell of the turtle and the buttery-yellow cali- pee fat attached to the bottom shell. No matter the specific preparation, though, the decadent, umami flavor and one-of-a- kind texture afforded by turtle soup ensure that, many times, this appetizer steals the show for the entire meal. “New Orleans is definitely a soup town. We serve thousands of bowls of turtle soup in the course of the year.During busy times, we serve hundreds of bowls a day,” says Chef McPhail. “We buy our turtle meat already detailed and grind it, but turtle meat is extremely rich, so we have to gently braised the whole thing down.

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