This was lunch at a rural restaurant. It’s one hunk of goat meat and then piece of goat stomach tidily wrapped in intestines, boiled in water. It cost 200 francs - $.35. We also had “mélange” (from “mix” in French): a plate piled with rice, fries, beans, carrots, local miniature eggplant, or whatever the restaurant happens to have on hand.
I managed to do a respectable job on the boiled goat guts, perhaps redeeming myself for Sunday night, when I only managed a few nibbles of cow leg – a hunk of cartilage and bone, as it turns out, that my Rwandan dinner companions seemed to think was a delicacy. You all know I’ll eat almost anything, but “food” that has no flavor, an unpleasant texture, and little in the way of nutrition isn’t for me.
Guts you say? Last saturday I attended a funeral for the father of a Chinese friend who gave a touching eulogy about his father's early years in a gold-bearing area of China. He explained that when his family cleaned a duck there, they would carefully examine the entrails which sometimes contained gold nuggets! Sorry, Rwandan goats may not be as discriminating in their food choices.
ReplyDeleteFor new year's feasts, the Chinese serve pig ankles, namely all bone and tough skin. Perhaps the idea is that the rest of the year one should never eat worse things? Last Chinese new year, only the Chinese members of the China Society (for which I am a member of the board) had any interest in eating them.
In Turkey, they serve tripe soup at wee morning hours. Seems it's supposed to help sober one. An acquired taste perhaps best left to the drunk. I never imbibed enough to enjoy the stuff.
Bon Appetite from Gail in LA