Duck Tongue
Duck tongues, like bedsheets, are a lot about texture. Stir-fried with scallions, ginger and hot pepper, ya-tzi (be warned: the word is also Mandarin slang for a male prostitute) tongue tastes like chicken heart: dark meat, slightly, pleasantly fishy—with a spine of cartilaginous bone you’ll nibble around to get at the slivers of goodness.
Absinthe
To get the taste of absinthe, mix licorice ouzo with cough syrup and rum; let it steep with fennel; sip it icy cold. The Green Fairy might not appear, since the original wormwood’s been replaced in the new absinthe by a related, less potent species. But you probably won’t be compelled to van Gogh your ear, as he did after
drinking the original.
Snipe
Missouri’s bag limit while snipe hunting—and no, the joke is actually on you—is eight, or dinner for four. Gotta eat ’em whole, entrails and all, roasted; the breast meat is pink-delicate like a Cornish hen, though richer; the pearly spiral of intestines is chewy, tasting like a clam neck; the liver is mildly bitter, like a chicken’s.
Shiokara
This is better known as squid that is fermented, along with salt, in its own intestines. Still reading? The texture straddles the line between “rubbery” and “meaty”; the flavor is bitter. Shiokara tastes a lot like low tide smells. It isn’t a meal. You nibble shiokara, along with rice and good sake, and the combination gives the squid its yummy, slimy goodness.
Pig Snoot
Crispy’s the way to go with snoot. In K.C. they’re boiled and barbecued. Here, fried crisp, they achieve culinary greatness. They’re smoky, like incredibly rich bacon, with a satisfying crunchiness, and an undercurrent of porky fattiness. Think of them as a thicker, more flavorful version of
pork rinds.
Chicken Feet
Al dente though gelatinous, chicken feet are like poultry-flavored noodles, with skin like a chewy, delicate jerky. They’re fried first—after the nails are clipped—to puff the meat and tossed in a black bean sauce; the trick is using teeth and tongue to pull apart the joints, sucking the meat and then discreetly spitting out the bony nubbins.
