This Valentine's Day, indulge in...goat excrement?

by Ellen Slattery, Posted Feb 14th 2008 @ 1:30PM

You thought today was going to filled with yummy, delicate posts about sweet treats and flowers, didn't you?

Think again.

Trifter.com has oh-so helpfully provided us with eight of the "most disgusting delicacies" - although we prefer to think of them not as disgusting, per se, but as ...daring. Different. Deconstructed.

Some of the more colorful examples? In Morocco, you can indulge in oil made from goat excrement. The goats climb the trees in search of food, and the resulting oil is though to have medicinal purposes. Or you could hop over to Italy and try some Casu Frazigu. Sound exotic? It's made when a fly lays its eggs on cheese, and maggots hatch and crawl throughout the cheese. So, essentially, it's rotten maggot cheese.

But that's just kids' stuff compared to what awaits you in Southeast Asia: balut, a fertilized duck egg, comes complete with a partially formed duck fetus inside - at no extra charge! Just season with salt and pepper, and dig in.

And for dessert, engage your senses with Sumatran coffee beans [ed. note - pictured]. Not adventurous enough for you? Well, they come fresh out of the digestive track of a civet, a small, cat-like creature. The civet eats the beans, and when they are excreted, they are scrubbed clean and brewed.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Source

Filed Under: On the Blogs, Food Politics
Tags: coffee, delicacy, duck, eastern europe, exotic, maggot, south asia, Sumatra, travel, world cuisine, WorldCuisine

Chew on This

Royal Wedding Cake Details Revealed! - YumSugar

Make Your Own Pop Tarts - CHOW
Denny's Introduces a Maple Bacon Sundae - Eater
Whole Foods Opening Bars in Stores - USA Today
Rules Of Bar Etiquette -- For The Bartender - HuffPost Food

Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

2-14-2008 @1:44PM juan said... You know... you can order balut here too

lol
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

2-14-2008 @3:06PM Kearns said... To the best of my knowledge Argan isn't eaten and excreted by goats, and even if it is the part that makes it into the oil is inside a hard shell protected during the digestion, so no amount of excrement would be involved. NYT certainly doesn\'t mention goats: http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/travel/tmagazine/14get-sourcing-caps.html?pagewanted=print

Oh, and Argan oil is quite yummy.
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

2-14-2008 @3:07PM Astin said... 1.- Not all Sumatran beans come from Civets. Civet coffee comes at a high premium compared to other beans because of the... unique method of cultivation. There's a much larger amount of non-civet beans from Sumatra (ie.- regular coffee) than the other.

2.- Sadly, since it's so profitable, the production of Civet beans has changed. It started off as wild cultivation, where people would go looking for the droppings and gather them. Since then, Civets are being captured and force-fed the beans in much larger quantitites than they'd eat them naturally (and without other foods to balance their diets). It's a cruel practice that hurts the animals and often results in them eventually dying from malnutrition and poor conditions. Good job promoting that one.

Reply

Vote upVote downReport

2-14-2008 @3:14PM Ellen Slattery said... Thanks everybody for your comments.

Astin, just to be clear, I report and comment on news, and I purport my opinions. In no way do I want people to think that I - or any blogger, for that matter - condones a certain practice just because they write about it. As a matter of fact, I'm a 13-year vegetarian and a huge promoter of animal rights. I completely agree with you, the production of civet beans sounds like a horribly cruel practice.

I would like to think that our site's readers would have the smarts and the wherewithal to make up their own minds about what is or is not okay to eat.

Thanks for reading.
Reply

Vote upVote downReport

2-15-2008 @9:44AM Nicole said... Speaking of those goats:

http://vincentmobile.blogspot.com/2008/01/mason.html

Scroll down this post and there's a photo taken by our friend while on vacation in Morocco.
Reply