This article was taken from the February 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
From pigs' organs to cranberry juice, Janice Poon --
Toronto-based artist and food stylist for the Hannibal series -- knows how to make gourmet gruesome. Pour yourself a nice Chianti, break out the fava beans and read on.
Employ animals
The script for the television series Hannibal calls for close-ups of Dr Hannibal Lecter tucking into fresh human organs.
But Janice Poon found a slightly more ethical alternative in an abattoir near her studio: "Luckily for us -- but unluckily for piggies -- the organs of domestic pigs are almost the same size, shape and colour as humans'," she says.
Go for the gore
Different types of edible blood are better suited to the types of meat that stand in for human flesh. "Reduced cranberry juice, mixed with corn syrup, works well with chicken," says Poon. "And puréed, seeded raspberries are good with pork. The look is important, but it must also be tasty because the actors have to enjoy eating the food for the dozens of takes required for each dinner scene."
Cast your net wide
This type of food styling defies recipes, seasonality and the confines of conventional cooking. "For a job I'm working on at the moment, I need live sea urchins," says Poon. "They aren't on the market yet here. But after a zillion phone calls to sleepy fishing towns up and down every coast, I now have six gorgeous sea urchins.
I'm keeping them alive in a salt-water aquarium."
Read between the lines
Hints and implications can be just as blood-curdling as openly gruesome food. "Lecter displays his veiled threats on the border of the plate," explains Poon. "His guest might find a bird skull beneath the endive, a marrow bone used as a salt cellar, or a jawbone from a fox standing in as a cheese knife -- and often, at the edge of the plate, will be a little fungus or moss to indicate decay."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
