What strange or old-fashioned things have you eaten?

[johnnychips]

This follows an extraneous discussion on the supermarket thread.

Supermarkets discussion

A good horse steak is sublime. Is it illegal for supermarkets (or anyone) to sell it in Britain or just a cultural thing? For example, supermarkets don’t sell goat, but I can get it at Sheffield market. I thrived on the horsemeat that was provided at every meal in the Imperial Hotel, Moscow...

www.railforums.co.uk

What unusual things have you eaten abroad, or indeed in the UK? What were they like?

What things were commonly eaten when you were younger but aren’t now? Again, what were they like?

For me, in China I ate a lot of things like ducks’ tongues and chicken feet, toads, snails and other things. They all had a rubbery, chewy texture and tasted of whatever sauce that they were cooked in.

In Belgium, I have had rabbit’s brains - delicious!

When I was younger my mum cooked heart. I am not sure what animal it was, but it tasted good.

 

[jfollows]

In the UK I've had heart, my mum used to make it occasionally, it was nice. Today I cook chicken hearts occasionally but I use a pressure cooker. I had chicken liver for lunch yesterday, cheap and cheerful, and I like kidney but don't like the preparation. My mum once did conger eel but I don't recommend it, too many bones.

I had pigeon in Hong Kong a long time ago, it was fine.

 

[johnnychips]

Just thinking about hearts, it must have been a lamb or a pig. An ox heart would be too big, chicken too small, and other animals weren’t available in the 60s.

 

[Lampshade]

In the Philippines I tried Balut, chicken and pork intestines, pig cheek and ears.

 

[Strat-tastic]

I had zebra in Namibia, where you can get all manner of safari creature served up!
A bit tough; maybe it was overdone. A friend had springbok and I tried a bit - much nicer, very tender.
Also had various antelopes like kudu and oryx, if memory serves, which were a lot like beef.

 

[birchesgreen]

In the Philippines I tried Balut, chicken and pork intestines, pig cheek and ears.

Have you tried dinuguan? Pork blood stew. I had it once, never again.

 

[Jimini]

I had a Kangaroo steak in Sydney once. Bit chewy.

 

[Ediswan]

Haggis
Heart (Father's risotto recipe)
Snails (France)
Frogs legs (France)
Horse (France)
Brains (Spain, 1970s)
Unidentified small molluscs served as an appetiser in a Belgian fish/seafood restaurant. Initially visually misidentified as pistachios.
Late addition, kangaroo (Hertfordshire)

 

[azt]

Snake, China. Tasted great!

 

[ASharpe]

Slightly odd things I've had in the UK but don't know where to find again: rabbit, pigeon, guinea foul, veal, white pudding and venison.

Lots of farm shops sell various frozen burgers but I juat don't like the idea of frozen minced offcuts.

 

[Lampshade]

Have you tried dinuguan? Pork blood stew. I had it once, never again.

Tried and made myself, I love it!

 

[DelW]

In Lyon, andouillette sausage, containing bits of animal innards that I wouldn't normally consider edible, not an experience I'll be repeating.

In Munich, weisswurst, I'd thought I liked all German sausages until I tried that. It was at breakfast time which somehow made it worse.

Again in France, lamb brains, due to an error on my part translating a French-only menu. They weren't unpleasant in taste or texture, but the look was rather off-putting - they came wrapped in silver foil and I was rather taken aback when I unwrapped them. My wife averted her eyes as I ate them.

 

[Calthrop]

In Zimbabwe, crocodile (gently fried, if I recall correctly). In this instance, had to be rated one of the most boring things I've ever eaten -- taste-wise, like plainly-served cod, only with a good deal less of the flavour !

Back in Blighty: have eaten grey squirrel -- can be got from some specialist game dealers. Usually reckoned best done stewed, which I how I had it -- definitely pleasant -- marked resemblance to stewed rabbit.

 

[contrex]

In Lyon, andouillette sausage, containing bits of animal innards that I wouldn't normally consider edible, not an experience I'll be repeating.

Me too. Andouillette de Troyes. I thought it was just a sausage. It smelled and tasted like a pigsty, but I got it down. Needed an extra carafe of rouge though.

 

[simonw]

In china, dog. Was a bit ruff

 

[52290]

Growing up in Lancashire in the 1950's I ate plenty of tripe.

 

[PeterC]

In England
Lambs heart
Kidney
Liver
Cod roe
Black pudding
Cockles
Eel
Pig's trotters

In France
Sweetbreads
Pike
Perch

 

[GRALISTAIR]

Home and abroad especially South Korea I have eaten all organ meat imaginable- in Korea it was cooked in front of me.

 

[Bevan Price]

Reindeer steak; very nice, much like venison.
Kangaroo burger, ostrich burger. Both edible but undistinuished - but that might be down to the recipe not the meat.
Also had some very strange tasting sausages from (UK Chinese) takeaways a few years ago. Only God knows what they contained

 

[GRALISTAIR]

When I lived in rural Missouri I had deep fried bull testicles ( rocky mountain oysters) at a farmers fry up.

 

[Shaw S Hunter]

Growing up in Lancashire in the 1950's I ate plenty of tripe.

Growing up in Surrey in the 70s I also occasionally had tripe but my mother did grow up in the north. While living in Holland horse meat was a regular sandwich filler: quite nice with a sweet pickle.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Snails in garlic - sublime.
Kangaroo steak - I echo others' comments.
Goat - served wrapped in newspaper. A dish I'll avoid in my remaining years.
Pig bonemarrow served in the cooked trotter - the look on other diners' faces...

 

[randyrippley]

When I was younger my mum cooked heart. I am not sure what animal it was, but it tasted good.

Probably stuffed ox heart
My maternal grandmother used to cook it as a Sunday / Christmas roast. Quite a common "delicacy" in her generation.
My mother tried it a few times but my father put a stop to it.
He was an iron-willed hard-nosed b*****d but chewing that was a step too far.
Made me throw up

Most obnoxious thing I've ever eaten was in a Chinese restaurant in Clonmel, Ireland.
A carp fish, around 4-5 pounds in weight, alive, on ice, dissected alive with resulting fillets flash fried as needed.
My bosses loved the ethnic authenticity. Happy to say I was sacked not long after.

While working at the same place we had a chap who spent a lot of time in China.
His photos of delicacies such as bluebottles or scorpions threaded on strings was educational. As were the photos of dogs, cats and other animals in the abbatoir queue

 

[40C]

In Greenland in 2006 I had Whale meat. Could be described as ''fishy beef''.

 

[AndrewE]

I think (Bury) black pudding is great, hot or cold, and still have it regularly although I don't remember having it as a child in SE England
Some makes of White pudding are OK but nothing in that line is anything like as good as Devonshire Hog's Pudding which we would bring home from all our holidays with family in S Devon
Again, as a child I remember saveloys, which I think dad brought home after buying in the E end of London

and when we were young, married about 10 years and poor, on our first trip to Paris, eating in a self-service restaurant and having Andouiette - it was disgusting! Balls of tripe in the Auvergne were so bitter they were hardly edible.
One of the pubs near Temple meads station used to offer Chitterlings (fried intestines) on a Saturday night.

Staying with my grandma in Torquay (summer holidays) while we played on Torre Abbey Sands she would be collecting winkles, which she boiled and ate when we got back to her house.

In somewhere like Zamora, before getting a bus to the head of the railway in the Douro valley, having cow's lip/muzzle cubes in a piquant sauce in the bus station cafe. Gelatinous but not unpleasant! Unlike the smoked chicken sausage in a cheap dining hall in Braganza which was vile, full of bits of gristle (leg joints etc) - it also tasted horrible. Smoked chicken doesn't work for me, even char-grilled is unpleasant.

 

[Bantamzen]

Not son long ago I had wood pigeon at a local pub, utterly delicious! Other unusual foods I've had are kangaroo burgers, bison burgers, and shark (in Greece) as well as some kind of rare fish which I can't remember what it was called in a poke dish in Hawai'i. I also currently have a jar of bee pollen that I bought when I was in Portugal recently, that I put on cereal.

 

[Sun Chariot]

Not so long ago I had wood pigeon at a local pub, utterly delicious! Other unusual foods I've had are kangaroo burgers, bison burgers, and shark (in Greece) as well as some kind of rare fish which I can't remember what it was called in a poke dish in Hawai'i. I also currently have a jar of bee pollen that I bought when I was in Portugal recently, that I put on cereal.

Medium-rare wood pigeon is a personal favourite. As is red snapper - a fish I've sadly only seen offered in warmer seas.

 

[jfollows]

In Greenland in 2006 I had Whale meat. Could be described as ''fishy beef''.

I had whale in Iceland and I agree; I’m also glad that it was a small part of a ‘tasting menu’ and not the main component of the meal but it was nice enough.

Snails in garlic - sublime.

I love them too, but ten years or more ago my body suddenly stopped tolerating them.
Not allergy, just intolerance, and I tried two more times in Barcelona and in Paris to be sure, same effect.
Funny how the body works!

 

[Sun Chariot]

ten years or more ago my body suddenly stopped tolerating them.
Not allergy, just intolerance, and I tried two more times in Barcelona and in Paris to be sure, same effect.
Funny how the body works!

I've found similar with some other foods; fine until the past few years. The curse of advancing years.

 

[Calthrop]

In England
Eel

This being about the European eel, Anguilla anguilla: I have had in Britain and on the nearby Continent, on a few occasions, dishes involving this fish prepared in various ways; which I found delicious. Strong sentiment felt, alas, that nowadays one should abstain from said type of eel -- it's highly endangered.

However -- another thing done with the European eel, I've found a very different proposition. This is jellied eels -- something I have tried once; and reckoned once, more than enough. I've heard this dish likened to "plastic shirt-collar-stiffeners in aspic", and find that an apt description. Wouldn't rate my experience of the concoction, as outright nasty -- more, largely just kind-of "nothing" -- tasteless apart from the, to me, not-overly-pleasant flavour of the "jelly", and laden with inedible bone bits (the "stiffeners"). My jellied-eels experience was in London: had long imagined it to be a dubious delight pretty well confined to that city's East End; but, now living in Birmingham, have been a bit surprised to find that it seems to have some popularity up here too. "For them as likes it", fine ...