We did a huge favor for some Baja Fishermen and their cantina, we fixed the generator for cold beer, food, etc.
They treated us to turtle soup, they explained some small sea turtles get caught in the nets and drown on occasion. Since these men and their familie were hand-to-mouth they thought it was silly to waste the meat.
After that we were also treated with great respect and friendliness.
I feel if you are eating what someone else killed, and not for you especially, in a foreign land, where such is accepted- it is the smallest of Venial sins. Just dont make a point of it, dont go out of your way to order it.
If “transgressive” means “animals most people think are cute,” I guess llama or kangaroo? (I felt pretty guilty about the kangaroo; not so much about the emu or crocodile I tried at the same meal, but I have to admit kangaroo, if very lightly grilled and served rare, is the tastiest of the three.)
If it means “stuff I really shouldn’t eat given my stated principles and values, but do anyway,” then probably beef.
I’m not particularly squeamish about food, as evidenced by my willingness to eat popped-out fish eyes, but tongue kind of grosses me out. I don’t want to taste anything that can taste me back.
Going with the definitions of transgressive from the OP and mentioned so far in the thread…
Rocky Mountain Oysters (because it creeps out a lot of guys)
Rabbit, Elk, Venison that was hunted, and not humanely harvested (by family, not myself)
Goat (again, not really a big deal in most of the world but a lot of Americans find it weird)
Ostrich (quite tasty, from a game menu at a nice restaurant)
‘Live’ boiled crayfish (grabbed out of a tank and thrown in a boiling pot of seasonings and stock)
Chili Dusted Fried Crickets (of course, fine except for getting stuck in teeth)
Alligator (farmed, and yup tastes like fishy chicken)
Durian fruit (after a bunch of friends and I dared each other at the Asian market, did NOT care for it)
My kids bought me a scorpion in chocolate. It was just a bit crunchy.
Must get round to tasting some other arthropods before I go fully vegan; crabs and lobsters are fine, so there should be other edible creepy-crawlies out there
I hadn’t thought about fruit. Here’s a transgressive fruit that I will shortly be eating.
Last Saturday we found ourselves at a local farm shop which was selling medlars. Wait, what? Never even heard of them - I’ll take a bag, please. (Interesting question: how can I never have heard of a fruit that has been grown in this country for thousands of years?)
Anyway, as we later discovered, the medlar, AKA Open Arse (the French have a different take on it: Cul de Chien = Dog’s Arse) has to be bletted before you eat it. That is to say, basically, rotted. Here’s a picture of bletted and unbletted fruit.
Cripes. Half my haul is currently sitting in the garage, bletting away. The other half I gave to my friend J, mentioned in my whisky post above, #27. She’s a biologist and recognised them without ever having seen one in the flesh (!). She too is bletting away. I can’t wait to compare notes. Courage, ma amie!
I never happen to have seen rabbit on a menu, but if I had, I wouldn’t consider it at all transgressive. I don’t know if I’d like it, but there’s no reason I wouldn’t try it.
I’ve had bear, alligator, and rattlesnake. The bear, I remember liking, but that was probably largely the psychological aspect of “Oh, cool, I’m eating bear meat!” (I was a kid at the time). I couldn’t tell you now what it actually tasted like. The other two, I had in a sausage, and it tasted, well, like sausage.
The only rodent I’ve eaten is groundhog. Grampap used to shoot them as vermin, and waste not, want not. It tastes about like any other red meat, and can be used in place of hamburger. Mom tried to cook up some squirrels once, for the cats, but apparently there’s some gland that you need to remove first that she didn’t know how to remove, with the result that you could smell the stench from a block away.
I had turtle soup once. I don’t know what species, but I presume it was a non-endangered one. It was terrible, probably because the college cafeteria didn’t know how to make it properly. They were quite good with familiar foods, but their reach sometimes exceeded their grasp.
That is so cool! Be sure to let us know what you think after you eat a few.
As to durian, I know a lot of people don’t like it, but good durian is delicious. The first time I had it was in Boston, when we bought some frozen durian in Chinatown. It was nasty - tasted like rotting onions. Only when I moved to Indonesia and had access to fresh durian did I realize how delicious it can be. (To be fair, a lot of people don’t like durian even when it is the good stuff. That’s okay - more for me!)
During my trip to Japan in 2008 I had shark fin soup. I am ashamed to admit we did look for a place serving whale, but we were unable to find it. Most of the people we asked about it while there treated it like a taboo subject.
I tried fresh durian when I was in Malaysia a couple of years ago. It was neither as good or as bad as I had been led to expect. I liked it a lot, but wasn’t the incredible ambrosia many accounts suggest. On the other hand, while it was mildly stinky it also wasn’t as reeking as its reputation.
Rabbit is delicious in a slow braise to get it tender. Famously, the French simmer it in a mustard braise — Lapin au Moutarde. As was pointed out, it’s very lean meat, so it won’t be greasy…just tough unless you do it slow and low.
OTOH, I’ve had grilled rabbit in a Spanish cafe, which was very tasty.
