Saturday, May 19, 2007

Y is for Yak

And other strange animals. Have any of you eaten any strange meat? The strangest I have eaten was fried alligator sausage, in New Orleans in 1996.

And what did you think of the Christian pretending to eat what he thought was stewed newborn baby? I could have lived without that anecdote.
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9 comments:

Erin said...

I haven't eaten much weird stuff. We had fried alligater at the state fair last year. I wasn't too impressed. I've had buffalo and venison, octopus and crawfish, but none of that is terribly strange.

My dad got a huge thrill out of trying weird foods, especially when he thought one of us would be grossed out by it. He used to say that the one food that he couldn't bear to eat was a baby duck cooked in the egg.

9:52 AM, May 21, 2007
kc said...

I ate horse in France, and a dish made of rabbit livers, and cow intestine (regularly), plus goose liver and some very bloody sausage.

The French are savage.

I savored those experiences at the time, but now they thoroughly gross me out.

I consider myself an adventurous eater, but I'll be quite content to never consume another weird animal thing as long as I live.

12:19 PM, May 21, 2007
kc said...

Oh, we also had tongue regularly, and I ate cow brain once, and I more than once saw two girls pick out the insides of a cooked rabbit skull.

Dégueulasse!

12:24 PM, May 21, 2007
kc said...

Oh, Fisher's kidneys — cooked in brandy and sherry — seemed rather Hannibal Lecterish to me.

Organ meats are no different from muscle meat, really, but they seem especially grotesque to me — maybe because, being a very small part of the entire animal, they have an aura of delicacy — almost obscenity — about them and are especially dense and rich. In the animal kingdom, I believe predators go for the organ meats first, then turn their attention to the rest of the carcass. A human interest in organ meats seems almost pornographic to me now, especially when prepared in a very precious and refined way, say with a nice chianti and some fava beans!

Do organ meats gross out anyone else?

1:05 PM, May 21, 2007
Erin said...

I get what you mean about Hannibal Lector and delicate little organ meats. I used to eat the turkey heart at Thanksgiving when I was a kid. I liked it. I wasn't grossed out by anything when I was a kid, but I probably wouldn't eat it now.

8:22 PM, May 21, 2007
kc said...

Oh, my brother and sister always ate the turkey hearts! They loved it. I wouldn't touch it, but, for some reason, I did eat things like chicken gizzards and livers (deep fried at the bowling alley — delish!)

9:44 PM, May 21, 2007
kc said...

Maybe organ meats also seem different because they are "vital" to the life of the animal — closer to its essence. Just a theory.

9:47 PM, May 21, 2007
cl said...

Make sure you check out our story in tomorrow's paper on an emu farm. The owner is clearly too close to the animals to kill them. Our writer had trouble finding recipes; it either was his conscience or their lack of culinary appeal.

8:00 PM, May 22, 2007
cl said...

I guess it shouldn't matter whether you eat a yak or a chicken, but maybe the connoisseurs of cow brains are gourmands at heart. They can't be satisfied with the infinite combinations of what's out there; they've got to prove their Darwinian superiority by ingesting the unusual and inedible.

Oh, well. I'm being ethnocentric.

Roasted locusts? Pass.
Oh, and sweetbread. The most misleading food name ever.

5:16 PM, May 23, 2007

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