Telling History with Dragons

No, this is not me getting lazy three posts into my new blog. This a template for what I want to celebrate here. To quote myself from my last post:

"Today I read an essay that examined the Gilmour Girls reboot, JJ Abrams reboots, nostalgia, Twitter, the left, the right, election fallout, Camille Paglia and what the definition of conservative actually means. It was written by a gay, Australian, former BBC documentary producer who writes books about magic.

Now that is the kind of diversity of thought I am talking about. Rich, weird, delicious diversity."

Well, guess what? This is the guy I was talking about giving you a short tour of human history using Dragons. Literally. 

If you like this presentation click the Rune Soup link to the right and sign up for his site. Yes. I know!  This is EXACTLY the kind of bullshit I hate but signing up is the only way you can watch his presentation The Campfires Edge which is like this video but 11,000 times better and this video is very weird and very good. Please yourself, either way.

How to Eat a Dragon

I've never personally met anyone who has seen, let alone cooked or eaten a dragon but I have met a few who've eaten snakes and one guy who seemed to cook them fairly often.

The gentleman in question was a standard west coast bohonk type that worked for the Water Department. I met him at the scene of an extremely large "Arizona Red" rattlesnake crossing the narrow two lane blacktop headed towards Silverado Canyon. How large is large? 8 1/2 feet long and about as big around as a coffee can in the middle. As a person who has seen my fair share of rattlesnakes, I assure you that this was the biggest I had seen by twice. 

Anyway, frater bohonk pulled over to look on the large sandstone colored serpent just ahead of us and sprung from his Water Dept. utility truck to retain a shovel from the bed and unceremoniously lopped the head of the snake off and shoveled the carcass into the back of his truck. 

When I asked what he was going to do with the snake he responded that they were "Good eats" (a full decade before anyone would hear from Alton Brown). 

Recipe

His preferred preparation was to skin and bone the snake and then marinate the loin segments in salad dressing for a few hours before grilling and serving over a Caesar salad.  Taste? Predictably: "Like chicken!"

Pairing
 

A sprightly Picpoul de Pinet