From the Author of The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine

Five Questions for Steven Rinella

By Allen Jones, 3-24-06

New West Your new book, The Scavenger's Guide to Haute Cuisine, is largely a description of the year you spent building up to a single, three day meal. Inspired by a 1903 cookbook, the menu included some moments that appeared less than appetizing, including whitefish roe and carp, sparrows and pigeons. Is there anything in the cookbook that you shied away from because you didn't want to eat it? Did your iron stomach ever balk?

Steven Rinella The only thing that freaked me out was the carp semen. The author of the cookbook I was working with, Auguste Escoffier, used it to make a condiment called semen butter. I experimented with a few different varieties of fish semen as a build-up to the carp, but I could never get into eating it. The consistency is unappealing, and it’s not very easy to work with. Beyond that, I was thrilled to try everything. As a hunter-gatherer, I want to know how to use as much of my game as possible. I’ve always loved elk meat, and now I love elk marrow and tongue. You suggested that I’ve got an iron stomach; I think it’s more like my mind is stronger than my stomach. I can think my way into eating anything.

NW One of your interview subjects, Ron Leighton, is a subsistence hunter and fisherman in Alaska. You describe him with obvious admiration. But there was a shadow of concern that, given logging projects and development around him, his way of life might be threatened. Do you keep in touch, and how's he doing?

SR Funny you asked that, because my two brothers and I, along with another friend, just bought an old cabin next to Ron Leighton’s, out on Prince of Wales Island, off Ketchikan. I’ll start spending my summer up there, fishing halibut and shrimping, and I plan on jumping into the mix over this logging deal if need be. There are plenty of uninhabited islands in the surrounding national forests, and it seems silly to let out a contract in a drainage that directly supplies drinking water to a small population of subsistence hunters/fishermen. As for Ron, he’s having a problem with blood clots in his leg. He’s laid up, so this summer I’ll probably help him around his place a bit. I do admire him immensely, because he’s a very smart hunter and fisherman, and he knows what he’s doing. Beyond that, he’s a fearless conservationist and sticks up for the land and fish and animals.

NW Given how few people in modernity have any sort of connection to the food they eat, and after this year of aggressively filling your own freezer, do you have insights into what we may have lost, as a culture, by being so far removed from our calories? Do you see any positives about our sanitized and bloodless supermarket approaches to our various meats?

SR I have mixed feelings about our culture’s emotional and physical removal from the sources of our food. On one hand, I’ve always admired the sentiments of Camille Paglia, my favorite provocateur. She says that civilization is a mechanism by which we can lift ourselves up from the demands and confines of nature. So maybe it’s a blessing that we don’t all need to kill our own food. On the other hand, though, I think there could be cultural and ecological danger if we lose sight of our food and how it gets made. My feelings as an environmentalist come from my own realizations about my food sources. I feel compelled to protect them, because I see the beauty of their usefulness. The other day I was riding a bus into Boulder, CO to do a book signing and I overheard an upsetting conversation. The bus driver, a local, was telling a tourist that if mountain lions know people are their friends, then they won’t eat people’s pets. He said, “We’ve given up hunting, and are at peace with animals.” In the next sentence he was suggesting steak houses. So, you see, there’s this duality of thought about food and wildlife, and that frustrates and troubles me.

NW One of the things I enjoyed about your book was the implicit assumption (and the reinforcement of my own position) that while meat eating -- particularly if you harvest the meat yourself -- is a virtue, vegetarianism can be morally questionable. Have you had reactions from the vegetarian community (including your girlfriend) regarding the bloody slaughter of food items that was your feast? Do you find anything redemptive in vegetarianism?

SR You know, I expected to be attacked by militant veggies, but nothing’s happened. I’m just a guy who wrote a book, so I guess it’s silly to think that I’ll be singled out for persecution so long as larger targets exist. And, to be honest, if I wasn’t a hunter I’d be damn close to vegetarian myself. I don’t like buying meat; I like hunting my own. And I’m at peace with vegetarians. There’s a logical error called the fallacy of composition, or something like that. It’s the mistaken belief that what’s good for one person would still be good if everyone else did the same thing. Like if you stand up at a concert to get a better look, and then the guy in front of you sees what a good idea you've had and then stands up as well. We can’t all be hunter-gatherers. There’s a limit to the resources, so I’m not going to act like everyone should go kill an elk. If that inspires you and makes you feel whole, then great. If not, keep eating those broccoli crowns.

NW Apart from Escoffier, the author of the original cookbook, what other authors influenced you in this writing? Do you have models for your own style and voice? Literary heroes you'd like to emulate?

SR I’m influenced by all sorts of writers, both in the way I think and the way I write. Ian Frazier has influenced and helped me all through my career. And I love John McPhee, Susan Orlean, Jim Harrison. I don’t like to write sentences the way anyone else writes them, but I pick up little tidbits of style or technique from all over. My job is to melt all those influences down, boil them together, add in my own voice, and capture a unique “sound,” so to speak.

Thanks for the great questions. It was a pleasure.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.