The first ingredient in the Basillico Del Mare is Scallop balls. Please tell me these aren’t what they sound like.
My godmother sent me one of those little squibs the New Yorker used to put at the end of articles (we hate you, Tina Brown & Co., for becoming so parsimonsious with those). It was from a local newspaper in rural Indiana:
Deep Fried Sugar Balls
Beat together 1 c. butter and 2 c. sugar. With your hands, form balls, about the size of gum balls. Heat lard to 360 degrees. Fry balls until golden. Serve hot. Kids love them!
More recently, I was in Barnes & Noble and picked up a copy of the old good Joy of Cooking, not the new, nasty, evil one. I happened to open it to the chapter on small game, and in particular to a rather peculiar illustration of a boot attacking a squirrel. On closer examination, I saw that the drawing accompanied instructions for How To Skin a Squirrel. I will not repeat them here.
Her advice on Opossums is priceless: “If possible, catch the 'possum before killing it, and feed it milk and grain for ten days.”
She also includes instructions for all sorts of animals I have seen only as roadkill: armadillo, racoon, and…
porcupine?
I guess you don’t need a toothpick afterwards.
I have got to try this!
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gigi, can you really not stand water? People always look at me funny when I try to drink it and start gagging. Yes, it’s that bad.
…
I probably won’t be eating for a few days after opening this thread.
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eat biltong. it’s good, really. yes, dried and spiced meat (of any kind, i’ve had ostrich, eland, antelope, zebra, wildebeest)is great. think beef jerky on a good day.
sugar balls remind me of yellow man, an irish sweet. you get sugar, golden syrup and water and bring to the boil, add 1/2 teaspoon of vinegar and a lot of bicarbonate of soda. the thing fizzes up and bubbles away like a volcano, remove from the heat. break into pieces with a hammer. eat. call your dentist, so you can get your fillings replaced.
what about vegemite? it’s called marmite in the UK and ireland. it’s yeast extract, and to be honest, tastes a lot like spunk. you spread it on toast.
or bovril? it’s contains yeast extract and concentrated beef stock. you add boiling water to it to make a sort of hot beefy-yeasty drink. tastes even worse than marmite.
My daddy used to like beef kidneys, but he didn’t clean them well so they tasted a little pissy. The tripe he cooked a couple of times was pretty stinky. We ate horsemeat a lot. Tastes like beef (not chicken!).
My Chinese wife occasionally prepares:
[ul]
[li] pork kidneys. Not so pissy. (She soaks them longer.) Not bad in sesame oil.[/li][li] pork stomach. Not stinky. Stewed together with:[/li][li] chicken gizzards and…[/li][li] stewed pig’s ears. Crunchy cartilage. It’s a texture thing. Supposed to be a treat while you drink beer. (Think peanuts).[/li][li] and when she can get them, duck tongues. She bought a whole bag in Chinatown. Poor mute ducks.[/li][li] jellyfish salad. Crunchy & rubbery. A different texture again.[/li][/ul]
Many Chinese also like different kinds of fermented bean curd; the name of one means “stinky bean curd”, but they both have a strong smell that many Americans can’t stand.
In China, I’ve eaten:
[ul]
[li] fried grasshoppers. Crunchy & quite tasty.[/li][li] fried silkworm pupae. Sort of musty-tasting.[/li][li] fried scorpions. This freaks out even a lot of Chinese. They’re crunchy & slightly fishy-tasting. And no, they don’t sting, but the stinger’s a little hard.[/li][li] dog. It was pretty fatty.[/li][/ul]
But without getting overly politically correct, isn’t this pretty ethnocentric? Many Chinese find bleu cheese disgusting and they don’t think much of what to them are over-cooked vegetables. Speaking of cheese, many French cheeses smell pretty strong. Most French people like their steaks rare (or even raw, as in steak tartare) and are disgusted by the way we Americans “over-cook” our meat. And once you get used to baguettes (real French bread), American mushy “wonder”-type bread is an outrage.
And you don’t have to go to India to find people disgusted by dead cow.
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Haven’t you tried blood sausages? These are sausages made primary of…pig’s blood. Made with a bit of rice and spice to the mix, cooked really well, tastes delicious. Just don’t think too much about where they came from.
Also, cow’s heart? Tried them in Peru, they taste good. A friend tried the guinea pig, he found it too salty.
My parents introduced me to that culinary delight known as lutefisk. If you take some perfectly good cod and soak it in lye and you’ve got lutefisk. Once prepared it could be left on the open deck of a sailing ship without spoiling. Preparing it for consumtion involves boiling the fish in salt water to remove the lye, when served it is pretty much like fish flavoured jello with a bad aftertaste. Some people smother it in butter but I don’t see that helping the taste much either.
I’d suck back a steaming plate of guts before I ate lutefisk again.
No-one’s mentioned casu marzu yet? Moldy cheese with live maggots. Never had it, and don’t wanna.
How can you mistake the majesty of Marmite with that tasteless impostor vegemite? Although both based on yeast extracts, vegemite was invented here, down under, five years after Marmite came out in the UK, with a number of differences, mainly the inclusion of caramel. You have to go to NZ. to get decent Marmite here though, as the Australian brand for some reason has sugar added (scandalous). Agree with you on the Biltong, yummy.