Gourmet Gunk

Watching PBS's Saturday food lineup, I am struck by how TV chefs try to outdo one another with esoteric ingredients and precious preparation and cooking techniques. We haven't quite matched the Romans' taste for peacock tongues yet ... but we are getting close. To give you, dear reader, a taste of these far-out flavors. I've decided to compose a recipe that brings together much of what I saw throughout today's gourmet gunk preparations:

Take ten or twelve sea urchin gonads

Dip them in a wash of piping plover eggs whipped with pink sea salt and Amontillado sherry

Then dredge them in tapioca flour augmented with chopped ramps and white poppy seeds

Deep fry them in walnut oil heated to 375 degrees ... for no longer than 137 seconds

Remove these gonads and drain them on banana leaves for another 137 seconds

Sprinkle them with orange flower water and arrange them, once cooled, in the sea urchin carcases

Decorate everything with half-ripe peeled loganberries and crystallized violets

Open your kitchen trash compactor and toss the whole lot out

Spray the kitchen with Febreeze to dispel the lingering smell

Enjoy the rest of the evening dining at your local McDonald's