TO SERVE MAN: Mads Mikkelsen as Hannibal Lechter prepares tasty bits of his victims for unsuspecting guests. (
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In case you’re wondering, human flesh doesn’t taste like chicken. It tastes like veal.
This food “factoid,” dating back to adventurer and journalist William Buehler Seabrook’s 1931 book, “Jungle Ways,” is uppermost on the mind of the A-list culinary team assembled to create the dishes for prime time TV’s “chefiest” show ever: “Hannibal.”
Yes, that Hannibal.
NBC’s new series is a prequel to “Silence of the Lambs,” which takes us back to when the younger Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) was a brilliant psychiatrist employed by the FBI.
Lecter’s job is to help master criminal profiler Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) see into the minds of serial killers and periodically avoid the food at the government cafeteria.
On this show, yesterday’s autopsy is secretly today’s lunch.
The sick joke, for those who’ve never seen the movies or read the books, is that Lecter makes many of his “gourmet” meals from the humans he kills.
Graham and the other people who Lecter feeds are unaware of how the sausage was really made.
In order to create a culinary profile for a deranged serial killer — with a true gift for creating impeccable haute cuisine out of human beings — the show’s creator, Bryan Fuller (“Pushing Daisies” and “Dead Like Me”) has recruited superstar chef José Andrés as culinary adviser.
(In 2012, Andrés was on Time magazine’s “Time 100” list of the most influential people in the world.)
Andrés has had a great time riffing on darker side of what we eat: “Food is at the heart of who we are in the good moments, and the bad moments,” he says.
Janice Poon, the show’s food stylist, scours Toronto (where the show is shot) in search of assorted vital organs and edible food that the actors can actually eat under the glare of the camera and through repeated takes. Poon has found that pig organs are usually the closest match for humans.
Poon credits her Chinese heritage for the fact that she doesn’t tend to be squeamish around organ meats — and for her ability to scour the Asian food markets with the same dexterity as the Kardashians shopping on Rodeo Drive.
When there is enough time, Poon orders from an abattoir (a k a slaughterhouse) to get the animal parts with the most photogenic flesh.
The show likes those “money shots” of tissue being meticulously sliced away to reveal a heart.
Poon also has to develop dishes that the actors are comfortable with eating. Poon says that Mikkelsen, who has been incredibly game about eating everything, was a bit thrown when she disguised mortadella as pieces of liver.
Soppressata (dried Italian sausage) has doubled for lung and kibbe (Middle Eastern meatballs) has passed for tongue.
Poon marvels at the special effects team’s ability to make a mangled leg and thigh look like a leg of finely aged prosciutto.
The hardest thing to fake: human eyeballs.
Move over Giada and Ina, NBC is also planning to post recipes from the show.