The Wordsmith&#39;s Forge

Before I learned about the sentience level of octopodes, yeah, I've eaten them.

When I was a kid, my mother was on a veal kick as a diet measure, but I won't touch the animals now because of the way they are raised.

Finding /real mutton/, not LAMB, would make my decade!

I've eaten roasted grubs, roasted scorpion (bland as paper, in both cases), cabesa (cow brains), but stopped that during the last mad cow disease scare. Chicken livers were a staple menu item when I was a kid, and I occasionally indulge in them deep fried, but usually in Cajun style dirty rice. I've had rabbit twice, but can't find a reliable source for it.

One of the dishes that youngest enjoys is steak and kidney pie, which appears on the menu here every few months.

Goat is delicious, and there was a local halal food truck that served it on weekends here. My kids don't balk at things like head cheese or braunschweiger. Yet, there's a delightful vegetarian/vegan restaurant that I am DETERMINED to taste through the entire menu available to me sans allergens.

Oddly, the issue of horse meat illustrates my biggest problem with the food chain in America today: I have involuntarily eaten it because certain fast food chains were proven to have meat which contained horse. Frankly, I may or may not be willing to try it voluntarily, since I do love buffalo, but I resent to the ends of the Earth the fact that I wasn't given a choice in the matter.

I haven't made any decisions about the relative intelligence of horses, but I'm pretty okay with pigs as food animals... even as I find the idea of eating whale or dolphin as upsetting as human cannibalism.

So, yeah, there's bias in there, all tangled up with observed versus unexplored assumptions. I love conversations that make me THINK about those assumptions.

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Rabbit isn't a lot like duck, although wild rabbit is more like duck than it is like chicken, which cage-raised rabbit somewhat resembles. I find rabbit closer to turkey myself. I like all of those.

Frog is nothing at all like chicken, I don't know why people compare them. Neither is alligator, although frog and gator are similar to each other. Both are more like fish than like chicken.

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siliconshaman

I draw the line at eating people... cats, cetaceans, octopuses, elephants, primates, corvids, otters and canines, count as people. [although some humans I have my doubts about!]

Pretty much everything else is fair game, unless it's fish or eats a lot of fish.. I have an allergy. Alligator is ok, but it tastes fishy which is just off-putting. Rabbit is good, and was kind of a staple around here until a few years ago, ditto lamb and mutton. [venison is tasty, ostrich and kangaroo too. Snake is just blergh!]

Anything that's essentially a carrion eater,is usually nasty and carry bacteria that would not be good for you.

Kidneys you just have to know how to cook, but you can't go far wrong with a curry. Actually, pretty much all the organ meats you can cook up a tasty curry with, which should make you very suspicious of cheap curry houses!

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snippy

I'm not very adventurous now that I'm older, largely because so many of the things I tried before I was 30 didn't taste good to me. Prime example: jellyfish. I've had extreme negative reactions (taste and/or texture) to insects, eggplant, and coffee. I feel slightly squicked by most non-muscle meat; OTOH I love chicken liver pate. Most of the meat I eat would be defined under kosher, except I like pork and crab and lobster and scallops. I've had horse and didn't hate it; same with goat. Then there are the vegetables that I like but don't agree with me: most legumes and brassicas. I sometimes have hives after eating tropical fruit.

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Reading everyone else's comments helps me remember things like, "Ooh, I tried that!"

Beef liver is delicious to me, but hubby can take or leave it and kiddo hates it-- and all three of us cite the texture as a reason! Laugh. Oddly enough, Italian wind-dried beef doesn't appeal nearly as much because it's so greasy feeling.

I've not tried ostrich or kangaroo, but alligator jerky was a lot of fun. Crawdads are a LOT of work for the amount of food, frog legs were extremely stringy and salty, which I think was more about poor cooking skills than the food itself.

Duck was, again, very, very greasy compared to chicken or turkey. I can see why it's fallen out of favor in the US holiday season.

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mount_oregano

I'm an omnivore and proud of it, but a dairy farmer convinced me not to eat veal because of how cruelly the young animals are raised. He loved cows.

I've eaten octopus, various fish, assorted seafood, venison, bison, goat, rabbit, pigeon, duck, rattlesnake, frogs, and various cuts and organs of beef, pigs, and chickens, and I like them all.

Still, for health reasons, I try to eat relatively little meat, sometimes only as a flavoring to a dish, and happily eat vegetarian and vegan some days.

I have yet to meet a vegetable, fruit, or legume that I don't like.

Bugs? If I get the chance, why not?

As I said, I'm an omnivore. Or maybe just a scavenger.

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Basic dietary rule: If eating the thing makes you sick, don't eat the thing.

If you don't like the thing, don't eat the thing, provided you can get a varied and healthy diet elsewise.

Me, I like trying new foods even though my digestion is iffy. I'm more likely to have a bad reaction to artificial stuff than to single natural ingredients like a new fruit or meat. If it tastes bad or bothers my guts, I don't have to try it again. But sometimes I find new favorites.

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>> Finding /real mutton/, not LAMB, would make my decade! <<

I have on occasion, but not often.

Similarly, what is sold as goat is more often chevre (kid meat) and the two are not identical. Recipes designed for mature goat or mutton will overwhelm kid or lamb.

>>cabesa (cow brains), but stopped that during the last mad cow disease scare. <<

Sadly, I came to the same conclusion.

>>My kids don't balk at things like head cheese or braunschweiger. <<

<3 head cheese.

>>Frankly, I may or may not be willing to try it voluntarily, since I do love buffalo, but I resent to the ends of the Earth the fact that I wasn't given a choice in the matter. <<

That's an example of how America's food system is not based on safety or consent, but on money and power. >_<

>>So, yeah, there's bias in there, all tangled up with observed versus unexplored assumptions. I love conversations that make me THINK about those assumptions. <<

Yeah, and that's exactly why I need like-minded friends. Most people find my favorite conversations boring, scary, or offensive. I feel the same about theirs, especially when they won't shut up about the sex lives of people neither of us even know.

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So many people spend so much time speculating on the sex lives of others that I genuinely wonder how many world-changing discoveries have been left in dark corners, lost in the shuffle.

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Second octopus and cat for "too sapient to eat". Pigs.... dangit, PIG MEAT. But not the little potbellies. Those are pets. There's a pair of them - Basil and Borage - at my favourite OMG-this-is-multiple-benjamins-and-SO-WORTH-IT restaurant, out back; they're the ... compost processors. And they love it when the patrons come and feed them the kitchen scraps (which are had from underneath the counter at the coat check, between courses)...

Duck and rabbit are both very greasy. I've had excellent duck, done rather slowly on a charcoal grill... slow enough for the excess fat to drip out and thus smoke the duck... I wasn't really super impressed with rabbit, but if I had to choose between rabbit stew or taters again for the fourth time, Thumper's getting a load of #6 from Old Betsy.

Agreed on frog. More towards duck than anything, but more tender. And not much of it.

I always thought gator was more towards chicken or turkey m'self. Loves me some gator tail.

As for kosher animals: Outside of the usual menu, venison and elk are both yummy... for as big an animal as it is, elk is quite delicate. Oh, and goat is yummy too. Our ~~motorcycle gang~~ foodie group with a motorcycle problem roasts one every June and has a big shindig... NOM.

Edited (goat roast) Date: 2018-02-12 03:28 am (UTC)

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I'll be after havin' the recipe for chicken livers in cajun dirty rice. NOM.

Seconded on goat, NOM! And pig meat.

I couldn't find kidney, so I figured out how to cheat: Use chicken livers instead of kidney. Makes a damn fine pie. First time I made a GF crust, too - dead simple, rice flour and shortening, I don't remember the proportions but it turned out just fine.

Oh. Best vegetarian restaurant in Seattle? Kosher Chinese place called Bamboo Garden. Kashrut certificates visible from outside the door. Neither meat nor milk enter the building; it's all veggie, and they can do things with tofu and mushrooms like you would not believe. This certified carnivore took home leftovers... and ate them happily!

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gatheringrivers

Other than cats, if it walks or flies, I'm willing to TRY it once. (I don't *normally* do seafood on account of parental stupidity. The exceptions I *can't* have often because they're very high in mercury - things like Tuna.)

I may ONLY try it once, and a lot depends on how it's prepped (because food sensitivity issues) these days.

I don't like a lot of commercial feedlot practices, and I *really* dislike people/groups who abuse/neglect the animals before killing them, so I buy most of meat from small farms now.

I've HAD kangaroo, camel, and a couple other oddities (one of the grocery stores in the outer "boonies" (a/k/a countryside) actually stocked some exotics, and we picked up "one of each" in ground meat. We still have froglegs that we haven't done anything with yet, I really need to look up how to cook them...

Had tongue, heart, liver and kidney. I prefer fattier cuts of meat. I use gizzards as stock fodder. Have NOT had the opportunity for "critter nuts" or "rocky mountain oysters" :) but willing to try if they're available.

The "hard lines of NOPE NOPE NOPE!" for me are: (1) cats, and (2) food that's still alive when it's on my plate.

I don't want something like octopus trying to crawl BACK out of my throat, and I don't want to chase it around the table.

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gatheringrivers

Ostrich is much like beef in flavor, just very very lean. It really needs to be "medium rare" or "rare" for best flavor, not more "done" than that. I like it for the novelty, but it's not something I'd eat on a regular basis because I prefer fattier cuts.

Kangaroo is also tasty, though I don't recall anything memorable about the flavor. Just a mental flag of "Sure, I'd eat that again!"

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Crawdads... it's all in the technique. break'em off at the head, suck that if you like it (I don't), pinch the tail, boom done. Next. It's the Maryland blue crabs that are too darn much work.

I like (beef) liver and onions, very light on the onions please...

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>>I've not tried ostrich or kangaroo, but alligator jerky was a lot of fun. <<

Ostrich is a bright red meat, quite tasty.

>>Crawdads are a LOT of work for the amount of food<<

Yeah, unless you find really big ones, better to pay someone else to do the cleaning.

>>Duck was, again, very, very greasy compared to chicken or turkey. I can see why it's fallen out of favor in the US holiday season.<<

Duck and goose are waterfowl. They have a layer of insulating fat. So either you skin them, or you prick the skin all over. I prefer the latter because then the delicious fat runs into the bottom of the roasting pan, where it can be sucked up and saved to make delectable roast potatoes or latkes or whatever.

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Vast treasure warrens full of them, I should think.

I mean, look at some of the stuff I've turned up. Everyone else found worlds full of superpowers and all they wrote was crime drama. For decades. I'm like, don't you want any of the other genres? Because hey, if you're not gonna eat that...

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I prefer farm-raised anything to factory-raised anything, when I can find and afford it. Often I can't. But we get things like eggs and meat from small farmers when possible. Harvest Market and the Farmer's market make it easier to find, although they're so expensive we have to be sparing.

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The last cookbook I bought is from the 1930's, "Polish Cooking," which is a delight to browse. I pick a new recipe each week to try. This week, it was liver dumplings, which were mostly beaten eggs, bread crumbs, and a few tablespoons of chicken liver, made into VERY small balls and cooked in stock. Best as a contrast to some strongly salty stock, like miso soup...

My dirty rice recipe isn't really a RECIPE as a starting point, but here goes:

Dirty rice

1 lb sausage (note, I use ground chicken and spice it myself- start with ½ Tbsp sage and ¼ tsp red pepper flakes, and an equal amount of nutmeg, plus a pinch of WHITE pepper. Fully cook a marble-sized sample and taste, adjusting spices)
1 lb chicken livers
A few tablespoons of oil IF using homemade, lower-fat sausage.

1 medium green bell pepper, diced
2 red or orange peppers, diced
1 large onion, diced fine
3 stalks celery, chopped fine
2 cups long grain rice (Frankly, I've used lots of different types. Don't use black rice or sushi rice, but other than that, use what's to hand and tastes good to you.)

2Tbsp Worcestershire sauce
a full bunch of green onions, chopped fine
3 cloves of garlic (I usually use two per pound as a rule of thumb)
a bunch of parsley, of your preferred type, chopped very fine. I also use curled parsley and cilantro half-and-half for this
salt, white and cayenne pepper
½ tsp sage (if you use ready-made sausage)
2 or 3 bay leaves
hefty pinch of gumbo file (NOTE-IF you like it, you probably LOVE it, and if you don't you can leave it out. For those who don't know what it is, "gumbo file" or "file powder" is ground sassafras leaves.)

A quart of flavorful liquid –stock, potato broth, garlic broth, whatever's easy. For those who buy it, two cans of prepped commercial broth is another option.)
1/2c to 1c of extra water if needed.

Start by chopping, dicing, and mincing the vegetable ingredients and keep them in separate piles for the moment.

Roughly mince the garlic, then put the salt on the cutting board and use the flat of the knife to make the garlic into a nearly perfect paste. It takes only a couple of seconds, and is a tremendous help to the flavor. For those who need to use less garlic, this will maximize the flavor of even a single clove.

Use a heavy skillet (my cast iron is perfect for this), brown the sausage and livers together, mashing the livers into smaller bits while stirring, until there is NO PINK left. None. It's not worth rushing this step, even if you KNOW you're going to keep it on the heat for twenty more minutes.

Drain off all but roughly 3Tbsp of oil-- when using homemade sausage you will NEED to add liquid oil or lard for it. Conversely, keep draining the commercial sausage as you work, or you'll practically be deep-frying the meat!

Add the diced (bulb) onions, the peppers, and celery, and stir attentively until the onion pieces begin to turn translucent.

Add the garlic paste, the cayenne, white pepper, and bay leaves along with the rice and green onions, and keep stirring for just a minute or two, until the rice just starts to become translucent. This step will allow your rice to remain separate rather than sticky, and actually cuts about ten minutes off the overall cooking time. Once you master this technique, Rice-A-Roni becomes “Box-o-Ripoff.”

Add a quart of flavorful liquid and the Worcestershire sauce, stir to coat everything, then turn the heat to low. Simmer, COVERED for twenty minutes.

Pick out those pesky bay leaves before they break into little shards of viciousness!

Cook until the liquid is mostly absorbed. Taste and correct seasoning with a pinch of black pepper, a bit more cayenne, or an equally tiny pinch of smoked paprika, depending upon your preferred flavor profiles. Add the parsley (or parsley and cilantro), and stir attentively to cook through for another minute or two and incorporate the last of the liquid.

I seldom have leftovers for this dish, no matter HOW big the batch is-- but expect this to serve eight as a generous main dish. (When feeding teenagers, this was called “a snack.”)

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No: Carnivorous land animals, horse, octopus (didn't like it before I knew how smart they are, now *really* no); not a big fan of summer squashes (though okra, fried or in gumbo, is good), picky about brussels sprouts, green veg need to be still screaming (once they've gone limp I'm not a fan); not a fan of strong onion or either end of the pepper spectrum - chipoltle, ancho, serrano are good; don't like the sour of bell peppers, and once you get too far up in the Scoville range, it's just PAIN, not flavour... don't like cauliflower atall, or jicama. I never liked SPAM, and outgrew things like potted meat and vienna sausages... most cream of anything soups by themselves, not so much, although cream of mushroom with garlic is good in Skillet Algorithm or as a base for chicken pot pie.. and of course there's cream of bacon soup with potato and clam, aka really good clam chowder ;) Oh, and tilapia... ptui.

Yes: Most things from the water. I'll pass on farmed Atlantic salmon if I can; the way they do that is pretty gross... the Norwegians, OTOH, have gotten good at it, nearly as good as wild-caught Pacific. Most whitefish, except the tilapia, baked with butter and lemon pepper; snapper is particularly good this way. Cod or haddock in a good beer batter, with proper chips... OMG. Copper River Sockeye Salmon (everybody goes nuts over king, but IMNASHO Sockeye is better) is to DIE for. Pretty much any shellfish, bivalve or crustacean - gimme a plateful of assorted water bugs and a ramekin of garlic butter, and I am a happy bear... and also squid, but NOT octopus. Oh, and catfish and eel, too. (Funny, the one you'd get in a BBQ or other Southern place; the other is most commonly found in sushi joints... unagi, mmmm... but they're sorta similar...)

Birdie: Most fowl, from game hen to goose; I've not had a lot of exotics here. Goose a couple times, duck a couple times, like the duck better. Turkey is yum and dead easy; just takes a while. Chicken's rather a staple hereabouts.

Four-foots: Cow, pig, lamb (not had mutton, wouldn't mind trying), goat, deer (YUM!), elk (also yum), buffalo (is good, but I don't actively go after it, partly price, partly there aren't many of'em left anyway, farm or no)... did NOT like kangaroo the one time I had it... gator, frog, turtle (in order of decreasing enthusiasm)... rabbit... not had squirrel, but my dad has, probably one he shot himself at that... see above remark about taters again...

Offal: Love chicken livers, ever since I was a kid. Like beef liver enough to order it occasionally at diners. Had steak and kidney pie in Blighty, liked it. Gizzards are too chewey. Why my ex likes'em, I dunno. The only other weird stuff I eat like that with gusto is pork rinds. NOM. (It's what you grow up with.) Hearts, too, though they're kinda hard to get...

Oh. This is my privilege showing, I know, but if at all possible, frozen or fresh, not canned veg. Meats, I'm okay with, especially since they're usually either going to end up as an ingredient rather than by themselves on a plate (ham, chicken, fish and shellfish) or already are in something (roast beef in gravy, corn beef hash)... exceptions are sardines and oysters, which I'll happily eat straight from the tin.

Oh, and I like my soup CHUNKY. With a couple exceptions. Egg drop, making that chunky would just be wrong, and the matzoh ball soup I just had for dinner, which was essentially one big damn matzoh ball in a bowl of good strong chicken broth. Now, if I'm making the soup myself, I make ping-pong-ball sized balls and otherwise make the soup the usual way (though if at all possible I use kosher chicken, because let's get as close as we can, shall we?), but just chunks spooned out of that softball-sized hunk and good broth was just what Dr. Brown ordered today. (I was COLD from the ride in...) Oh, and chili has beans and beef, unless I'm feeding vegans, which case it has TVP, but still beans.

That reminds me. I rarely partake of the wily tofudebeest, but will forgo that restriction for a particularly good preparation. Fake cheese, I'll skip; that includes Ch**s* Wh*z and that orangey sliced stuff that's more a lab experiment than an exercise in culinary arts... OTOH, a mild bleu is about as far down that road as I want to go either. (That's an acquired taste, as is feta.)

I had haggis, once, in one of the better restaurants in Edinburgh. Not impressed. The venison, however, was *excellent.*

It occurs to me that I might be able to *make* a haggis I liked. It's essentially meatloaf only with odd ingredients. Sheep's liver, oatmeal, onion, spices, suet... there's a butcher down south called "Proper British Bacon" (OMG do I miss a bacon butty) that could probably set me up. Hmmmm! Hey, I've got eleven months to master it... (Burns Night being 25 Jan...)

Sooooo... what are Rocky Mountain Oysters like?

And how old *is* your inner teenage boy? Mine hasn't grown up quite that much. He's ten. But he's really smart, and gets all the dirty jokes. ;)

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