Stuff I eat: Lengua con alcaparras (tongue with capers)

I've been globetrotting for a while and journeyed back to the homeland last week, so I've been missing in action around here. I'll try to catch up as best I can.

I didn't intend for every food I featured on here to be gross, bizarre, better-in-the-garbage-than-on-your-plate type stuff. But it's managed to work out that way so far, and today's entry is no exception.

Source

Name: Llengua amb taperes

Translation: The name above is in Mallorquin, the local language of Majorca. It'd be "lengua con alcaparras" in Spanish and in English "tongue with capers," which are the unripened buds of a plant found in the Mediterranean.

So what is it exactly? It's veal tongue - boiled, peeled and cooked with onions, capers and tomatoes.

Where I ate it: Cura, Majorca, Spain (a small town in Majorca, one of the Balearic Islands)

Before trying it, I was thinking...: "It's amazing how many times I find myself in a situation where I'm eating oft-discarded animal parts. And if my dad were here he'd tell me I'd never eat this if he put it on my plate back home."

Texture: As tender as it gets. Knife not needed. You don't even need teeth, really. You could gum the stuff and enjoy it just the same. Now, in my last post about oxtail, I also talked about incredible tenderness but in a negative way. I said oxtail was so tender that it lacked substance. The good news is that veal tongue didn't dissolve in the same way oxtail did. You don't have to chew the tongue, but it doesn't immediately disintegrate either. It was a slow melt-in-the-mouth, one you could appreciate and enjoy. Luckily, the meat (which is really mostly muscle and fat) didn't linger long enough for me to really think about the fact that the stuff falling apart on my tongue was, well, tongue.

Taste: This may or may not be surprising, but the tongue tastes like...beef! Even better than that ambiguously generic "beef" description: It actually tasted like roast. Yes, roast. OK, wipe that disgusted look off your face and think about this: As this guy explains it, round steak, for example, is none more glamorous than butt. If you can eat butt, you can eat tongue.

As for the capers, although familiar to people raised in the Mediterranean (or in Mediterranean-like climates), they're nothing like anything this Midwesterner had tasted before. They're tiny but packed with flavor. They've got a tart, slightly bitter punch. They don't taste like Greek olives but have a similar sort of mild kick. Just try them.

Verdict: Absolutely delicious. I owe my Mallorquin friends big time for exposing me to two gross-but-actually-not-gross dishes: tongue and frito mallorquin, which is liver and blood. I enjoyed the tongue so much that I'm dying to try a tongue taco at a traditional Mexican taqueria.

I think there's one saying that's perfect here: One man's trash is another man's treasure. So here's to eating trash - and liking it.

Un saludo,
Teresa