Here's What The Food On Hannibal Was Really Made From
As far as interesting food-based television shows are concerned, viewers have plenty of options to pick from. Whether you're someone who prefers to watch reality TV such as "Top Chef" or like to look for food references in shows like "Hannibal," you're bound to find something that catches your fancy. According to Chef's Mandala, some of the dishes featured on "Hannibal" can actually be experimented with in real life, such as black chicken soup, steak and kidney pie, lamb intestine curry, and more.
For the food stylist who spends most of her time coming up with artful dishes featured on "Hannibal," Janice Poon, food was a crucial part of growing up. She told GQ in 2015, "I grew up in a family with restaurants and in a small town, so that means food twenty four-seven. That means chopping vegetables and doing mise en place before you go to school." She later discovered art direction and explored food-centric accounts, such as Kraft, Maple Lead, and McDonald's.
When it was time for her to work on "Hannibal," she went all in and took a leap of faith. Here's what she shared about the NBC show.
The scenes are carefully planned
Considering that "Hannibal" has plenty of terrifying elements, it was important for food stylist Janice Poon to work accordingly. In fact, when she first started working on the show, she got different varieties of pig lungs to the set in order to figure out what would work best for the scene. It took a bit of trial and error to get things right. She explained to GQ that she was inspired by old Dutch masters while seeking inspiration for plating dishes on the show.
"Hannibal" may be centered on cannibalism, but Poon wasn't keen on going to websites that discussed cannibalism. She turned to anatomy instead (via Mental Floss). The food stylist said that she is "like Dr. Frankenstein" and is "always stitching things, exchanging, putting one kind of meat on a different bone, patching stuff together." For her, the solution was simple: She wanted her viewers to use their imagination while watching the show. Poon used ingredients like veal shanks and prosciutto slices and somehow made them look like human flesh. Unbelievable!