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Friday, November 19, 2010

Friday's Food for Thought - Unusual meats

The Boston Globe surprisingly printed an article on the growing purchases of goat meat, due primarily to the ethnic minorities where goat meat in other cultures is a norm. I was suprised since eating goat is a pretty exotic topic for such a bland, white bread paper like the Globe.  But that did get me thinking on general aversion to exotic meats or even exotic cuts of meat from mainstream animals.

Growing up in an Asian household meant that I was exposed to wide variety of unusual items that nowadays can usually be seen on gross-out food shows like the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. No, we didn't have snake or bugs growing up, but as a kid we pretty routinely ate offal (tongue, heart, sweetbreads) and fish with its head on was a common sight in my household. As an adult I've eaten ostrich (not bad, pretty lean), emu (delicious!), rabbit, goat, elk, moose and deer. I think I've listed them all. I think the only exotic game at Savenor's that I haven't eaten is kangaroo and I have no desire to try that any time soon (not sure if this is true, but the wild animals have a lot of worms so I've been told to only eat farm-raised).

Nor do I have the desire to cook any of these meats myself. Back in Montreal, rabbit is relatively common in French cooking, so we would see whole rabbits, sans fur but with head still attached and eyes in, wrapped in plastic in the meat case. Not exactly the most appealing, but I'm not turned off by the whole pig heads in the meat cases at the Boqueria in Barcelona. I guess I'm just not sure how to deal with a rabbit carcass or a pig head. I definitely don't want to take butchering lessons...

So what's the most exotic meat that you've ever eaten and what do you think you'd be willing to eat?

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

I was once tricked and ended up eating moose sausage-I was told afterward. It had a definite...aftertaste.

I've also had ostrich on pizza-but that's about it.

PharmaFoodie said...

As a follow-up - I was at Savenors the other day and they now carry farm-raised turtle along with free-range lion!

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