Crooked Timber dining notes (MCXVIII) — Squirrel
This being a blog with global reach, you never know whether what you take to be exotic isn’t mundane in the region where your snarky fellow-blogger or commenter lives or comes from. So, with that caveat, I report that I had “squirrel cocotte” for my dinner last night, with, appropriately enough, hazelnuts. Now I’ve ticked it off the list of stuff I’ve eaten, I probably won’t choose it again from a menu, but nor would I turn it down if offered by a friend. Dark, intense, a bit like venison, with hints of chocolate (since you ask).
posted on Wednesday, April 16th, 2008 at 9:01 am
The only time I’ve had squirrel was at the spectacular
Well that didn’t work! Let’s try that comment again….
The only time I’ve had squirrel was at the spectacular St. John in London, where they serve squirrel liver on toast as a starter. It was terrific!
Maybe this will force some kind of solidarity between Donald Duck and Chip’n’Dale?
No squirrels, but I have had whale steak for dinner once (in Norway, of cause). As long as you park your environmental conscience, it’s quite good – tastes a bit like liver.
I’ve also tried seal lasagne (…! Now here’s for an odd combination of local dishes) but as far as I remember, that dish in itself does not merit a trip to Tromsø.
Just to round off, I’ve been told that bear tastes a bit like lamb, but haven’t tried myself.
I had kangaroo for tea. Tasty mascot goodness.
What I find interesting is the near-ubiquitous comment ‘tastes like chicken’ that accompanies descriptions of exotic eating. Since most commercially-produced chicken tastes like tepid slightly salted water [c’est-a-dire, bugger-all], how would they know? Or is it a confession that, in fact, their taste-buds have been sandpapered off by one too many hot curries?
Eating squirrel is deeply offensive to my religion.
#5 but squirrel doesn’t taste like chicken …
The only way I’ve had squirrel is in a Brunswick Stew once. At least, they told me it was squirrel..
@7, indeed, but neither bears, seals, whales or kangaroos are squirrels, and they got a mention in comments. I didn’t realise [since the OP doesn’t say] that remarks were to be confined to telling people what you had actually eaten. So sorry. I did at first try to work up a rather complex joke based on the mention of chocolate, in association with the old Topic ads, ‘what has a hazelnut in every bite?’, and the playground retort, ‘squirrel droppings’, but it didn’t come off. Sorry, again.
Was this at a restaurant in Bristol, Chris? If so, which one?
#10 Yes indeed, at Bell’s Diner in Montpelier, so rather up-market. The squirrel reportedly came from Barrow Gurney, where there are always lots of nuts.
I had smoked wood pigeon a week ago and it tasted utterly unlike anything I’ve ever eaten. I thoroughly recommend it and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.
As for weird foods, a Vietnamese friend of mine sliced his pet snake into chunks, wrapped it in basil leaves and deep fried it after it expired. Delicious apparently, and a great way to commemorate a well-loved pet.
According to Mike Huckabee, fried squirrel is a delicacy in the American South. He claims it tastes like squirrel, not chicken. (Perhaps with subtle hints of popcorn.)
Link to video
“The only way I’ve had squirrel is in a Brunswick Stew once. At least, they told me it was squirrel..”
Posted by MR. Bill
I’m sure that it was a small, four-legged, furry mamal. Albeit perhaps more familiar with alleys and basements rather than the treetops :(
From Wikipedia: “Recipes for Brunswick stew vary greatly but it is usually a tomato-based stew containing various types of lima beans/butter beans, corn, okra, and other vegetables, and one or more types of meat. Most recipes claiming authenticity call for squirrel or rabbit meat, but chicken, pork, and beef are also common ingredients.”
Was the meat red or grey?
Small shreds of meat, color a bit hard to tell (have y’all seen Brunswick stew? It looks nasty).
The camel’s hoof I had in Dunhuang was unremarkable…
“Squirrel Cocotte.”
Surprisingly not a googlewhack, but it was close.
@dave: I’m happy to say that neither whale nor seal tasted like chicken.
By the way: If you ever visit a Danish supermarket or buy Danish meat, you should check if the packaging says that the meat contains natural marinade. This means that the processing plant has pumped water into the meat.
Marketing rules.
I had some camel meat, including a bit of hump, which was tasty, perhaps because it was stewed for a very long time in various spices.
Pigeon stuffed with rice is also pretty common in Egypt. It was delicious but frustrating, since pigeons don’t have a lot of meat.
#19 – yes but the other hit for “squirrel cocotte” (besides this page) points to a photo of a cute squirrel named Cocotte. It is of course possible that it was this particular squirrel ….
I have read that squirrel brains are to be avoided (a potential link to CJD) – just in case anyone was contemplating same…
Moroccan pigeon pie, which is basically flaky pastry, pigeon and sugar [large quantities] is also an acquired taste.
I’m surprised no-one has yet mentioned haggis, particularly the extraordinarily flavoursome mountain variety – of which, of course, only the shorter pair of legs is served.
Bear does not taste like lamb, it tastes like pork. (And has the same trichinosis risk.)
Squirrel is good.
Perhaps my least favorite in all my years was pig snout, sent to our table by the owner of an establishment in Mexico City who looked on with great expectations as I choked it down. The taste was bland, but, ugh, the texture is exactly as you would imagine it to be.
Pig ears, at a Chinese restaurant somewhere in the Kansai region of Japan (no, I don’t remember, but it was at a banquet of some sort with people that I don’t remember.) I loved them—finally was able to understand what the dog saw in them.
I’ve had barbecue rattlesnake. I enjoyed it. The texture was similar to pork, but as it was served in barbecue sauce, it was difficult to tell what about the flavor was meat and what was sauce.
A friend of mine who grew up in Tennessee assures me a cherished memory of teenage summers was to rise with the dawn, shoot a half-dozen squirrels and bring them home where his mother cooked them for the family breakfast. He maintains they were delicious. I can only vouch personally for the pleasures of pigeon and rabbit.
The best “odd” thing ever is sparrow fried and then served in pomegranate sauce. A delicacy in the Levant. And utterly delicious. And fun to eat, as you eat everything – bones and all.
Anyone ever had Cornish ram’s bladder, emptied, steamed, flavoured with sesame seeds whipped into a fondue and garnished with lark’s vomit?
Engels – Ah, those dew-picked frogs: I’m grateful to you for reminding me that a certain species of restaurant menu has literally been beyond parody for over 35 years . . .
Peche a la frog or frog a la peche?
Grasshoppers in soy sauce were not nice, not so much for the flavor, but for the fact that little bits of exoskeleton got stuch in my teeth.
The oddest mammal I’ve eaten was Kudu. Fresh was not bad, but the last bit had been sitting around too long and gave me a nasty case of food poisoning for the flight home.
Speaking of squirrels, Rocketboom has this.
People used to always get worked up when I told them I’ve eaten squirrel—and not at your fancy-pants restaurants, it was one my dad shot and fried up for the Superbowl. I’ve also eaten roadkill turtle, which tasted like nothing.
For unrelated reasons, I’m a vegetarian now.
I have had dog a couple of times at Korean cafes here in Bishkek. It also taste nothing like chicken. Rather somewhere between lamb and beef. They serve it with a chili and garlic sauce.
The ‘fiyah hut’ in Belize City serves a very nice gibnut – stewed, quite tasty. (Gibnuts is a rodent). They are fond in Belize of boasting that they served Queen Elizabeth II rat to eat.
Also had the hormigas de mayo in Guatemala – huge flying ants that appear once a year. We lightly fried them in butter. The squishy inside once you crunched through the crispy body was a bit disgusting really, with a strong formic acid aftertaste.
Cuy (a South American rodent commonly identified as “Guinea Pig” but which looks different from a GP, more like a rat) is pretty readily available in some neighborhoods of Queens—specifically Elmhurst and Corona. I have never eaten it or wanted to. I believe it is not legal to sell but I’m not sure what the law is.
OTOH, “squirrel coquette” is a googlewhack
Kangaroo, at least the way it was prepared in the Aussie place in the Sony Center at Potsdamerplatz, was to lamb as lamb is to beef, as best I can recall. Definitely different. I’m sure I’ll always regret not going back to try the crocodile.
According to my notes, pigeon (rotí en cacao) tastes like duck.