Offbeat or unusual cooking directions

I always enjoy adding to my cookbook collection, particularly when I come across a locally published or unusual cookbook. These often contain recipes for not found in more mainstream cookbooks and can present challenges, such as finding ingredients not readily available here or using offbeat measurements. But in a Moroccan cookbook I found yesterday, I came across one step in the preparation process that I'd never seen and which, uh, took me by surprise. The recipe is for steamed sheep's head and an early step in the process (after ensuring that your butcher cuts the head in half and cuts off the horns) says, "Take out the brains, and shake the heads hard to make sure that any maggots that might be tucked away inside the ears and mouth fall out." It makes perfect sense of course and yet, I will confess I've never run across a similar step before.

Got me thinking. What gems have other folks come across?

Hi,

Somewhere in my house, I have a hippie cookbook.

They prepared their chickens fresh, really fresh. Paraphrasing their thoughts, "Hold the chicken in your arms, stroking it and offering thanks for the meal it will provide. Grab the chicken by the neck and swing it around to break it's neck."

It was the swiftest transition from bucolic to death I had encountered in my then 19-years of existence.

Regards,

Garlic apparently does not pair well with dogs.

In fact, garlic IS toxic to pets, especially dogs. The problem according to the ASPCA is that they don't know what the "dosage" level is where toxicity begins and so they recommend no garlic.

It's worth mentioning that this was found on a kitchen wall, not in a veterinary clinic. The first 2 characters are "dog meat".

Ah. My misunderstanding. In that case, the dog is unlikely to be in any, um, condition, to object. In which case, hmmm. So...garlic doesn't go well with dog, huh?

Not so much a direction, but I was just reading my "Street Foods of India" cookbook I picked up on my trip out there, and at the end of the recipe for paan came this note:

"Condiments like opium (zarda) is [sic] also used."

The characterization of opium as a condiment made me chuckle. Yeah, it's right there next to the mustard and relish. (The other odd thing is that zarda is tobacco, so far as I know, not opium.)

Here's an interesting one to decipher, from The Donut Book:

Jumbles
(from Sir Hugh Plat, Delights for Ladies, London, 1609, "to Adorn their Persons, Tables, Closets, and Distillatories with Beauties, Banquets, Perfumes, and Waters."

Take half a pound of almonds being beaten to a paste with short cake being grated and two eggs, two ounces of caraway seeds being beaten and the nice of a lemon, and being brought into paste, roule it into round strings, then cast it into knots, and so bake it in an oven, and when they are baked, yce them with Rosewater and sugar, and the white of an egg being beaten together, then take a feather and gild them, then put them again into the oven, and let them stand in a little while and they will be yced clean over with a white yce, and so boxe them up, and you may keep them all the yeere.

Francis Mallmann's Seven Fires cookbook has some good ones, especially in his whole cow recipe...

With the aid of eight strong helpers, put the cow in the truss...take turns napping, with one member of the crew tending the fire. You might roast a lamb to feed your crew through the night.

Pie Lady wrote:Here's an interesting one to decipher, from The Donut Book:
Jumbles
(from Sir Hugh Plat, Delights for Ladies, London, 1609, "to Adorn their Persons, Tables, Closets, and Distillatories with Beauties, Banquets, Perfumes, and Waters."
[snip]

Luckily it's been done - several times
http://www.celtnet.org.uk/recipes/eliza ... z-iumbolls
a later version
http://www.ecwsa.org/civholidayetreats.html