Mystery meat haute cuisine

Slate reviews The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating, a trendy new English cookbook devoted to the preparation of offcuts, snouts, rectii, marrow, and bladders of all description.

One reason seems to be the frisson of naughtiness associated with eating such things. Due to the crackdown on the consumption of various meat byproducts in a post-mad cow U.K., lambs' brains are still illegal in England. (But this hasn't stopped Henderson from jotting down a few recipes, "so that when lamb's brain is freed from its sentence we shall be ready to celebrate its liberty.") Wondering about the legality of lambs' brains—given that I'd eaten them, or at any rate trace quantities of them, at Babbo—I went to Ottomanelli's butcher shop in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. Frank Ottomanelli told me that lambs' brains are legal in America. "What happens is you buy the whole head, and then I'll get the brains out for you, as a courtesy," he smiled. I ran through a list of other Henderson ingredients I was curious about: pig's head? pig's spleen? pig's feet? "The only thing on the pig that we don't have is the squeal," Frank said. So, tally your ingredients, intrepid chefs, and get thee to a butcher shop. And for those of adventurous tastes but milder temperament, just head to your local restaurant. I hear the Testa's good.

Link (via Megnut)