Chilling time: 5 to 6 hours

Don’t worry, these diners are not being tricked into it, they are intentionally ordering offal dishes. (Appropriately enough, some may feel, offal is pronounced exactly the same as the word “awful.”)

Offal includes various non-muscular or non-skeletal parts of beef, veal, mutton, lamb, and pork such as: hearts, livers, tongues, glands, feet, tails, heads, and anything edible, including, of course, the Undead favorite – brains.

In a recent article by Bruce Palling in the Wall Street Journal, Anissa Helou, author of The Fifth Quarter: An Offal Cookbook was quoted as saying:

“These days, any self-respecting foodie will want to eat offal or at least boast of having brains—it is a badge of honor, really.”

Fergus Henderson, British chef and author of  The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating believes more people easily will be converted to indulging in offal dishes:

“All it really takes is common-sense cooking. It is nothing to do with challenging your culinary boundary’s blood lust—offal is just nutritious, delicious, wonderful stuff.”

We always knew the Undead were cool and hip! If you want to get in on this trend you can visit one of the ritzy restaurants near you serving offal dishes, or check out one of these new cookbooks that will tell you all about how to prepare your own offal food:

Chef Andy has served a Meathead at his Halloween parties for at least the last five years…It never fails
to impress (and distress!) the guests! Start with a plastic skull. Wash it well, and make sure that it’s clean enough to eat off of. Because that’s what you’re about to do!

Here’s the whole recipe: Chef Any Presents: Meathead!

Keep in mind that in Lordaeron the ingredients used in these recipes are a bit more… interesting, and the skulls would be real.

This next one can be whipped out on Valentine’s Day or any romantic time…

From Penn and Teller’s “How To Play With Your Food”, here’s the perfect recipe for someone who’s cynical about Valentine’s day. “As your guests sip their coffee, you unveil a glistening pink gelatin heart on a pedestal cake stand. Then you whip out a carving knife and stab it.”

Here ya go: Bleeding Heart Gelatin Dessert

Some of the dishes found in other parts of the world might even be called, disgusting. Of course, it’s all a matter of taste, right?

So the RatesToGo blog has a few Mexican delicacies to stimulate your imagination. Perhaps to go along with Thanksgiving dinner? Especially if you want to insure that your relatives don’t come back?

Everyone has their favorite dish – whether it be a personal or local favorite. Depending on where you visit, a dish you might consider off kilter may be a favorite and well-respected delicacy. Such was the case when we visited Mexico, where we found some truly disgusting dishes we just can’t quite bring ourselves to prepare at home…
Here’s the rest: Disgusting Delicacies of Mexico

I looked around a bit and found out that Stinging Nettles are actually well known, in certain circles, as valuable herbs and for their nutritional value. They’re rich in vitamins, minerals, protein, make excellent fertilzer, and when they’re dried the make a great livestock feed.

Here’s another video on nettles and here’s an article by Euell Gibbons, with several nettle recipes.

Speaking of recipes, Mary sent us this one. She’s from Italy and it seems that the nettle is a pretty popular herb over there.

Stinging nettle Frittata

Time: About 30 minutes

Ingredients for 4 people: (Here’s a conversion chart for the units used)

• 6 eggs,
• 200 gr. of stinging nettle, basil and parsley finely chopped,
• 50 gr. of grated parmesan,
• 5 spoons of extra virgin olive oil,
• salt and pepper.

*Preparation*: Clean, wash, and dry (use clean paper towel) the stinging nettle (use a pair of gloves)

In a non-stick fry pan, heat up 2 spoon of extra virgin olive oil adding the fresh and dry stinging nettle, and let them to absorb the oil fragrance for 5 minutes (use gentle cooking.)

In the meantime in a large bowl put in the 6 eggs and beat them till become creamy.

Once ready, add the grated parmesan cheese, parsley, basil, a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper. Mix everything well and add in the stinging nettle that you have previously cooked.

Once again, mix it all together and after you have heated it up add the remained 3 spoons of extra virgin olive oil, pour all in the fry pan and cook it well on both side. To cook it on both sides, use a large salad plate or the fry pan lead to turn it on the other side.

As an alternative, if you don’t want to fry it, you can bake it in a pre-heated oven for about 10 minutes. Use a non-stick oven dish and it works better if you have oiled the bottom part of the dish before poring in the ingredients.

The above “frittata” can be enjoyed with some mounded pears, fresh figs, and some soft blue cheese…some rye bread and some white wine will do the rest

A little secret…You can use stinging nettle as an alternative to spinach whenever “spinach” has been mentioned!

Now you can do it in the real world. The people at LearningHerbs.com have a video for you, in anticipation of their new site. The video shows you how to collect and eat Stinging Nettle.

No mention is made of what heals or buffs you get from eating this, and yes, he does recommend adding it to your salad. In place of the spinach.

Here’s the video

Here’s the site

Enjoy your salad.