Medusa, monstrous queen of the swamps, has a headful of hissing snakes. When she has a trim, it leaves quite a mess.

Ingredients

• 5 or more eels

• White wine

• Vinegar

• Onion

• Cooking oil

• Water cress

Dry Ice (This can be obtained from most good industrial gas dealers)

Method

• DO NOT skin the eels or take their heads off.—

• Roll the eels into rings and poach them in 2 parts wine to 1 part vinegar, seasoned with salt and pepper and grated onion.

• Leave to cool.

• Boil the cress.

• Drain and dry the eels and deep fry them in cooking oil.

To serve

Make a bed of the boiled cress on a tray. Heap the eels onto it, and curl them into various writhing shapes. Break up a piece of dry ice with a hammer, and place small pieces around the edge of the plate. They will start to steam immediately, and you will now have a dish that looks very much like snakes heads lying round a steamy marsh. Mmm.

Aphrodite, Goddess of love and pleasure, was born from sea-foam that oozed from the castrated genitals of Uranus, the Sky Father. This deliciously decadent recipe celebrates her birth.

Ingredients

• 500g chicken meat

• 100g pork fat or green bacon fat

• 1 teaspoon salt

• 1 teaspoon pepper

• 1 beaten egg

• 2 tablespoons breadcrumbs

• Natural sausage casings (Pig’s or sheep’s intestines, which can be obtained very cheaply from most butchers who make their own sausages)

• Butter

• Milk

• Flour

• Onion

Method

• Trim the chicken meat, removing any skin and bone.

• Remove any rind from the pork fat.

• Mince or process the chicken meat and pork fat together.

• Mix in the beaten egg and breadcrumbs.

• Add the chopped tarragon, salt, and pepper, and mix well.

• Soak the casings in a bowl of water for 30 minutes. It will also help to put the end of each casing over the tap and run water through it before putting the sausage meat in. (The casings can be as long as thirty feet, and it is quite entertaining to see the water fill the casing bit by bit, blowing it up like a long skinny balloon. Watch it curve over and around itself until you have a quivering, life-like pig’s or sheep’s intestine in you own kitchen sink!)

• Cut the casings into lengths 30–40cm long.

• Open the end of the first length and slide it over the thin end of the funnel.

• Start to push the meat through the funnel with your hands.

• Make a penis-and-testicles-shaped sausage like this: As the casing fills, page 103 twist it into links to make a chain of two short round sausages then one long sausage. Stretch the link between the long sausage and its neighbouring short round sausage backwards so that the long sausage can be
  placed between the two round sausages. Twist the link between the long and the round sausage around the link between the two round sausages. The long sausage should now be hanging between the two round sausages, and the resulting three-piece sausage should strongly resemble male genitals.

• Repeat this process with as many lengths of casing as you have enough sausage meat to fill.

• Fry the sausages in a pan. By opening each casing slightly at the end of the long sausage, you can encourage a knob of meat to ooze out the end to look like the head of a penis.

• Make a white sauce with the butter, flour and milk, adding salt and grating in a little onion for flavour.

To serve

Serve each sausage on its own plate in a pool of white sauce. The rose was a sacred flower to Aphrodite, so decorate each plate with a single rose at the side. The simple elegance of this dish is sure to impress guests.

Persephone, Goddess of death and destruction, keeps ferocious three-headed fire-breathing hounds to guard the gates of the Underworld. This breed of dog is unobtainable in the mortal world, but prepare this recipe, and you’ll have the next best thing.

Ingredients

• 3 dog’s heads

• Oil or soft butter

• Garlic

• Raisins or cranberries

• Several pieces of cotton dipped in spirit

Method

• Preheat oven to 325°.

• Remove the eyeballs from each dog’s head and lower the lids.

• Put blocks of wood in each dog’s mouth to hold it open.

• Make a garlic butter and rub it all over the heads.

• Cover the ears with aluminium foil, so they don’t burn.

• Place the dogs’ heads in a pan in the oven and roast until tender, allowing 30 minutes to the pound. Baste every 15 minutes with pan drippings.

• Remove the foil from the ears and the blocks of wood from the mouth before serving.

To Serve

Put the three dogs heads in the middle of the plate, facing outwards in different directions but touching each other at the neck as if they were joined.

Place raisins or cranberries in the eye sockets of each one.

Put the pieces of cotton dipped in spirit around the edge of the plate and put a piece on each dog’s tongue.

Light all the pieces of cotton, and carry the dish to the table. You now have a magnificent three-headed fire-breathing Hellhound, that tastes as good as it looks.

Enjoy!