Excerpts from the Melmac Recipe Book

 

Excerpts from the Melmac Recipe Book

From the Geminga Goumand

In honour of Melmacian Cat Day, we present these excerpts from the Melmac Recipe Book.

Have a happy Melmacian Cat Day.

Other than bats, there is not really any indigenous mammals to Araxes. Near the spaceports and settlements with a lot of offworlders, there is inevitably it seems to be an infestation of rodents. Some offworlders have cats as pets. Some become feral.

When planning to emigrate offworld, usually seeking adventure either in the Imperium Navy or on a private merchant vessel, sometimes native Araxi try to get acclimated to eating mammalian flesh. Hence, we have a lot of recipes for preparing various rodents, but also cat.

Easy cat recipes for first time and inexperienced cat cookers from the Melmac Recipe Book.

 

Mozzerella Cat Whirl

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds ground or minced cat

• 1 1/2 pounds chopped onions and green peppers

• 1/2 cup soft bread crumbs

• 1 egg, lightly beaten

• 1 tablespoon dry mustard

• 1 teaspoon salt (Italian seasonings and garlic/onion powders also acceptable in place of salt)

• 1/8 teaspoon black pepper

• 1 (6 ounce) package mozzarella cheese, sliced

• 3/4 cup ketchup

• 3/4 cup water

• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce

Directions

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

• In a large bowl, combine cat, bread crumbs, egg, mustard, salt and pepper; mix well. On a sheet of waxed paper, pat out cat mixture into a large rectangle. Cover the surface with slices of cheese. Starting with the short side of the rectangle, roll up and remove waxed paper simultaneously. Place in a shallow baking dish. In a small bowl, mix together ketchup, water, and Worcestershire sauce; pour over cat.

• Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour and 10 minutes.

 

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Slow Cooker Cat Roast

Ingredients

• 2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed cream of carl soup (cream of mushroom is a good substitute)

• 1 (1 ounce) package dry onion soup mix

• 1 1/4 cups water

• 5 1/2 pounds cat roast

Directions

•In a slow cooker, mix cream of carl soup, dry onion soup mix and water. Place cat roast in slow cooker and coat with soup mixture.

• Cook on High setting for 3 to 4 hours, or on Low setting for 8 to 9 hours.

For optimum flavour catmeat should be soaked in spring water for three days before being stewed. Which of course means, casseroles. Any casserole recipe will probably do as long as you soak the meat as described.

Cat casserole is a famous dish in Tuscany. Vicenza, where I bought a suitjacket once, the people are referred to as magnagati, which means, "cat eaters" in. To differentiate rabbit from cat, butchers leave the rabbit's head on!

Spit roasting the cat is best when basted in garlic and olive oil. Take the garlic with oil mixed with good broth so that it is coarse and pour it over the cat and you can eat it for it is a good dish.

Ironically, euthanised feral and domestic cats find their way into cat food. Go figure.

Support your right to eat cat (felis domesticus), or any other game meat in the privacy of your own home.

 

PREPARING YOUR CAT FOR CONSUMPTION

Since cat meat isn't typically commercially available, you'll probably have to kill and prepare the cat yourself.

First, get a large cutting board and lay out your cat. Lop off the head, the tail and the feet with a sharp butcher's knife. These parts of the cat contain little usable meat, so toss them aside.

Pro Tip: If you hunt cats with buckshot, the prep time increases dramatically as you have to pick out all of the buckshow. Use a proper lead-slug thrower and learn how to aim.

Next, make a longitudinal incision on the cat's abdomen. Reach your hand (wear gloves if you’re a sissy!) into the body cavity, and remove all of the internal organs. Discard them- especially the liver. It may look tasty, but the liver of a felis domesticus is frequently too toxic except for Eluvians.

 

SKINNING YOUR CAT

Despite the popular aphorism to the contrary, our exhaustive research and experimentation reveals there’s only one way to skin a cat. Use a sharp knife to trim off the skin, and pull it back, snipping away at the muscle tissue. I would hazard a guess all those people talking about how there is more than one way to skin a cat, have never skinned a cat.

The final step before cooking is to wash the meat of stray gristle and hairs. Nobody likes cat hair in their food.

 

COOKING YOUR CAT

Now you are ready to cook! Place the cat in a very high powered magnetron microwave. The magnetron microwave can cook a cat in approximately 10 minutes- the proteins are denatured (cooked), and sugars caramelized by microwave heating. The cat may be "cooked" but won’t taste very good.

For the best taste, slow cooking the feline carcass. Our favourite is the slow cooked Beer Roasted Cat. Other cat recipes you may enjoy are classic Cat Tamales, Cat in Spicy Ginger Sauce, and Cat Au Gratin.

 

BEER ROASTED CAT (really a stout, but you get the idea)

1 cat cut into a roast

1 can of Cream of Mushroom soup

1 cube of beef bouillon

1 clove of garlic

1 Fine Irish Stout

Scraped Cat. Cover and soak cat roast in salt water for 24 hours. Drain water and then cover and soak in beer for 6 hours. Drain and place in crock pot with your cans of soup. Add a clove of garlic, and a cube of beef bouillon. If you start to slow cook your cat in the morning with your George Foreman’s Head Cooker (or it's ilk), you'll have finely cooked feline in time for supper.

If a slow cooker is not available, a cat can be baked at 350 degrees for 2-3 hours in a conventional oven and still come out pretty good. Beer Roasted Cat is fantastic served with mashed potatoes, collard greens, and fresh, homemade egg rolls. When planning a full meal just remember- cat is a course best served hot!

Skinned Cat may not be the most glamorous, or tastiest of game meats, but with a little thought and preparation, Baked Cat can make the belly of the persnicketiest diner glow with home baked goodness.

Don’t have a George Foreman’s Head Cooker, never fear…

How to cook a cat with your coffee maker

Lazy night, hanging out in the café. Hungry, but the only cooking ware available is a coffee maker. Never fear, there is a solution.

Done right, hunting might be the most humane way to kill animals for food. And what could be better for the local ecology that hunting down local feral cats?

I thought that the offworlder neighbor’s cat, the fat one, Gucci, would be an easy shot but she managed to escape surprisingly quickly. It was the sun that eventually was Iggy’s downfall. She is quite photophobic so she could hardly see where she was going. Stared at me like a deer in the headlight, and BAM, easy shot for me. I don’t eat the head anyway.

Despite what you may have heard, there is really only one way to skin a cat. The hardest part is the neighbours screaming while I try to field dress my kill. "You killed our poor dear Iggy! I am going to call the constable! You Monster!" blah blah blah. Keep your cat in your house, lady. Pfft, tourists.

"Cats are monstrous, kill them for food."

Cooking with your coffee maker

Time

    5 hours

Ingredients

    1 cat

    ½ red onion

    1 pimiento

    1 clove of garlic

    2 ½ dl coconut milk

    2 ½ dl cream

    2 tbsp meat extract

    Juice of lime

    Ginger

    Butter

Instructions

Skin, fillet and chop the kitty cat. Start your coffee maker, grease the heater and place the pieces of your cat onto it. Fry it until they are cooked throughly and tender, it will take about an hour (it depends on what cut of meat you’re using and how fresh it is). Remove the meat and wipe the heater.

Chop all of the remaining ingredients that shall be chopped. Put a dollop of butter into the carafe, let it melt and then put the onion and the garlic in the carafe and fry it for about half an hour. Season with ginger. Add coconut milk, cream and meat extract and let it cook for two hours – it should get really warm. After that add the cat meat and wait a bit longer. Finally add pimiento pieces, lime juice and season generously with freshly ground black pepper and just a little salt. Turn off your coffee maker.

The best way to serve this delicious cat stew is accompanied by a glass of a tasty red wine and freshly baked bread.

Add lime juice.

Wipe the heater after the cat frying.