Having Hannibal withdrawals? Well, one thing you can do about it is re-watch the first two seasons. If you've paid enough attentions to the artful murders committed by Dr. Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen) and Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) during your first run, watch all the episodes again and pay attention to how Hannibal prepares his meals. They are advertised as part of human bodies but they aren't real. However, just like the killing scenes, the production team pay huge amount of attention to every detail of those meals to make them look real, classy, and elegant. These meals are part of the show's success. In fact, the NBC show has its own food stylist to perfect the recipes.
Meet Janice Poon, the woman tasked to prepare the food that makes audiences shriek, flinch, and puke. In an interview with Business Insider, Poon said that she puts in tremendous effort to make sure that executive producer Bryan Fuller will be satisfied of the meals that viewers will see. For her, it is not just art, it is also science.
"I can either rely on my feeble understanding of anatomy or I can ask Dr. Google what the dimensions are, what the skeletal structure is ... just the general appearance and then I think, okay, what in the grocery store looks like what I'm looking for," Poon told BI.
"It doesn't always have to be meat ... sometimes an eggplant will look like what you're looking for, like a wrist or something. Then you have to know the bone structure. It's got a tibia, but I need a fibula, or maybe it's the other way around."
One particular body part that she had a hard time working on is for a leg. To convince Fuller with her work, she improvised by cutting the cow's leg into a shape that will match her leg.
"I remember there was some doubt as to whether this shank that I was preparing would actually look like a cow's leg, so I put a sock on it and a shoe, put it up against my leg and took a picture and emailed Bryan, and they bought it," Poon said.
Things might become more difficult for Poon though next season as according to previous Hannibal Season 3 spoiler, Lecter will be in Italy. This means the foods that will be serve will be mostly Italian, something that is not easy to prepare.
To see more on how Hannibal prepare its foods, check Poon's interview here.
For more Hannibal Season 3 spoiler, click here.
