Forget the Lobster Telephone, Salvador Dali’s pièce de résistance was crayfish with herbs

Do you fancy throwing together Bush of crayfish in Viking herbs for dinner tonight? This over-the-top recipe, included in Salvador Dalí’s 1974 cookbook Les Dîners de Gala, is one of the arch Surrealist’s more fantastical food concoctions. The art/food aficionado Sarah Urist Green, a former curator of contemporary art at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, re-creates the crayfish dish in the latest episode of PBS’s video series The Art Assignment. Green expertly constructs the towering sculpture of crustacea (be warned—this video shows live creatures being cooked), flavouring it with parsley, tarragon and dill. More outlandish food assemblages can be found in Taschen’s 2017 reprint of Les Dîners de Gala—named after Dalí’s wife and muse—which includes 136 recipes.