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I eat everything, including lots of things I shouldn't. I gleefully eat things that are colored a toxic shade of blue or orange, stuff I find at the bottom of my purse, and once on a bet when I was working retail I ate a security tag to see if it would go off when I went through the door. It didn't. (Protip: want to boost that knife set? Open wide.) Once I even ate half of a fortune cookie that I dropped onto the grubbiest, sketchiest street here in Seattle. It's like the pavement-equivalent of the Victorian-era Thames River, and like Ye Olde Thames, is also probably one step away from being on fire. I blame pregnancy on the cookie incident, but I probably would have done it on a non-pregnant day as well.
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So, as an avid home cook and unrepentant omnivore, I was excited when my friend put Fergus Henderson's offal bible, The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating in my hands a few months ago. Though it was first published in 1999, the book seems to only really be catching on here in the U.S. as of late. Chef Fergus Henderson is now infamous for reintroducing things that we don't usually eat anymore at his London restaurant, today in the time of prepacked boneless, skinless chicken cutlets (now with more vitamin C and MPGs). In case you haven't had the pleasure of flipping through it, it's full of recipes for animal parts I don't even know how to get, and the recipes have titles like "Blood Cake and Fried Eggs." That sounds kind of like a euphemism for something you'd find in a men's' bathroom after a Saturday night in a sketchy bar, doesn't it?
"Oh, sweet, " I thought. Now I'll have something to do with all those trotters that are stacking up in the freezer." Except...not. Despite my love of trying new and weird things (which in this case is weird and old things, as humans have been eating "odd" animal bits for thousands of years), could I do what this book outlined? Did I even have a pot big enough to hold a sheep's head? No, I did not.
I began to have a suspicion at this point. This fellow, that Hell's Kitchen guy, Batali, they're all part of that studly modern chefery thing. I don't know if mere mortals without a professional kitchen and a bead on the funky bits market are supposed to even try these recipes. I know people who cook in various ways with organ meats, but I don't know anyone who was raised on fried pig's tails or potato-stuffed trotter and is going "Oh NOM, just like grandma used to make." Henderson includes a recipe for lamb's brains, and notes they are, of course, still illegal in the UK where he is based. Are these recipes or museum pieces?
So I had an epiphany. Hey, this is the internet. If anyone is experimenting with this book, I'll bet they're bragging about it to their friends. I took a look around and discovered that loads of people have the book, and make vows to "try some things in it in the next few months, maybe." I did find a few brave souls who were experimenting. Some people looked like they were having fun, but in other cases it look like that studly modern, er, oven-mitt waving.
It looks like I somehow missed National Pig Day this year, March 1, which has ties to and embraces the offal movement. Many celebrated that day by partaking in the "nose-to-tail" eating philosophy, such as being involved in pig roasts. One author toasted her pig throughout the day, the culinary equivalent of pouring a fotie out to your homie, except I don't suppose you can call what happens to farm animals "drive-bys."
Others, like redsquirrel, went smaller scale by starting out with one of the egg recipes, which is a good compromise. Recently, the author of cook eat fret had a chef-guest who made her a sizzling, delicious-looking plate of pork belly, and you bet she mentions he is a fan of Henderson. A couple of days later she follows up with roasted bone marrow.
My curiosity was satisfied. There were some people out there in the real world having fun with some "unusual" foods that our grandparents of 150-200 years ago would probably find totally normal. (It's too bad we can't
