Bad? It was offal...

[khiemtran]

After a long search in a local supermarket for chicken livers, I finally found them ... in the pet food section. I had a brief chat there with a man who also turned out to be looking for the offal section. He was pointing out the different things he used to eat to his teenage son, who seemed to be taking it rather well, considering that the tripe was nestled up against the cat food ("you'll like this, I remember once I came home and my mother was cooking and I went 'Phew, what's that SMELL?'")

I know this is The Shire, but still you'd think they'd put the liver in the food-for-humans section. I suppose they think that once you're prepared to eat a cow's innards, there's not much else that would put you off.

Comments

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

Over here, liver is considered food for humans, but only if it comes from mammals (I assume it's beef, but I haven't checked because I'm vegetarian anyway). Chicken liver is not food unless you go to the butcher shops that have wisened up to the presence of a large and lively Chinese community in Dublin city centre. Here you will sometimes see stuff in the windows which is only labelled in Chinese, or otherwise bilingual -- and that includes bits of chicken that the Irish would not consciously eat, like livers and hearts.

Back in Italy, of course, chicken-livers-and-hearts is what you use to make very traditional and very yummy "crostini di pollo", which is more likely to be a temptation for me than your average steak...

Italy has all kinds of "peculiar" meat dishes. Tripe is a local speciality in Milan where I grew up, and as a child I was often fed boiled calf's brain with lemon, which was (pre-BSE) a standard thing to give small children "to build strength"; batter-fried beef entrails (bits of brain, lung and other bits which I forget) are also a traditional dish from Milan, called by the innocent-sounding name of "mixed fry" (fritto misto). (Note that "fritto misto" includes very different ingredients in different parts of Italy: most often it's small fish and calamari.) Liver with onions is a Venetian dish (but beef liver is eaten all over Italy); grilled goat's testicles are eaten all over Central Italy. And of course there is horse meat (my favourite version was tartare, that is raw horse mince with a mustard-and-egg sauce). And donkey meat in some parts. Songbirds are also eaten, not to mention molluscs, which tend to gross out the Irish... Pig's feet (with the nails still on) are a traditional and delicious (and extremely cholesterol-laden) New Year food, also eaten at other times.

However, most Italians will be disgusted at the thought of eating a potato without removing the skin... :-)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

I'll usually have either beef tripe or chicken's feet as part of dim sum once a week. I think I'd draw the line at horse though.

Do hardcore vegetarians eat things that others turn their noses up at?

[sciamanna.livejournal.com]

I think that depends on what you mean... I know a lot of people who turn their noses up at seaweed, tofu or tempeh...

I think horsemeat is really something that either you grow up considering it normal, or it's just not going to appeal :-) In my case it was the first of course -- it wasn't *everyday* food, more like special-treat food, but I never considered it strange beyond that. I liked the tartare, while I found the cooked steaks to be a bit too strong-sweet for my taste. (Conversely, I found beef/veal tartare to be too bland-sickly compared to horse...)

I've never had chicken feet, largely because I became a vegetarian before I ever came across the idea of eating them... They started to appear a few years ago in the Chinese/Asian shops, frozen in large plastic bags; now they can also be found fresh in the same butcher shops I mentioned. I assumed they were used for making stock, but now I'm going to check out some recipes just out of curiosity. I mean, what's there to eat on a chicken's foot? :-)

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

It's all about the texture. In terms of flavour, there's not a whole lot there - it's mostly skin and fat and tendon, but when combined with a suitable sauce, the texture is wonderful - slippery, gooey, coarse and smooth. Then there's the whole kinesthetic thing of eating the skin of the tiny bones - do you suck it off the Chinese way, or do you nibble patiently, like you were picking through a crab?

I'm not sure why I would hesitate over horse, but not over, say, pig, say. Well, socialization is obviously a big reason, but I don't think that's all there is. I was about to say that it's because I'd class horses as "friends" rather than "food", but I grew up on a small farm and I've never had a problem with animals being both friends and food. Maybe it's just hypocrisy on my part. I do think if I happened to visit a culture where they eat horses, I'd probably eat it if offered, even though I've refused dog in the same situation.

[anghara.livejournal.com]

You remind me of the woman I overheard buttonholing a meat section worker in a local supermarket with, "If I were liver, where would I be?"

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

:) At least she wasn't looking for the nut section...