David Wallechinsky - The Book of Lists

I love to use this sparkling wine to mix half-and-half with fresh fruit of the season as an aperitivo.

An unusual, dry Riesling from a great Barolo producer.

This perfect, perfumed Pino Bianco from Friuli complements the fabulous fish dishes of Venice that I love to cook at the River Cafe.

My favourite summer red. Light, beautifully crafted, young drinking wine. Delicious chilled.

Amazingly clean. A modern-style of Amerone which I love to use to drink and also to make Amarone Risotto in the winter.

This year they used all the grapes from their top vineyards in this blend to make a superb concentrated, spicy Chianti. A fantastic buy.

My favourite super Tuscan from one of the genius Chianti producers.

As I love game so much, I love this wine, which is complex with interesting, spicy fruit and savoury flavours.

For Bruno, the wine maker, this is a perfect representation of the elegance of Barbaresco.

When I get my hands on a white truffle from Alba, the pleasure is always completed by a bottle of this brilliant Barolo.

Calvin W. Schwabe is a professor of epidemiology and veterinary medicine at Cal State Davis, California, USA. Among his goals is that of helping people overcome existing prejudices about food, and introducing international ways of eating to the Western world. Schwabe serves as an advisor on numerous international committees devoted to nutrition. In 1979, he wrote the groundbreaking work, Unmentionable Cuisine , published by The University of Virginia State Press.

Put olive oil in earthenware casserole. Add halved, parboiled lambs’ brains, turn over and coat with oil, add salt and pepper, capers, crushed garlic, pitted ripe olives and bread crumbs. Bake in 400° oven for 10–15 minutes. Brain Casserole — Algeria — (Mokh) is an alternative. In Turkey, Brain Salad is commonly eaten.

This popular dish is not only a temptation for frustrated parents. Rub a skinned, eviscerated kid inside and out with: chopped nuts, parsley or coriander, chopped fresh ginger, salt and pepper. Stuff the kid with cooked rice, mixed nuts (pistachios, almonds, pignolias), sultana raisins or seedless grapes, plus residue of kid rubbing mix. Sew up opening, paint with melted butter, roast on a spit over charcoal (or in a 270–300° oven) until brown and tender. Serve on a mound of the stuffing. Guests sit on the floor and dig in.

Trim beef or pork heart, cut into one-eighth inches. Julienne. Marinate with sections of scallions in a mix of cornstarch, water, soy sauce, sherry, sugar, salt and minced ginger. Drain vegetables and stir fry medium hot. Pork heart must be thoroughly cooked.

‘For the cook,’ writes Professor Schwabe, ‘who has successfully subjugated most of the family’s food prejudices…’

Stuff a pig uterus with cumin, leeks, pepper, garum, pounded pork meat and pine nuts. Cook sausage in water and oil with some garum, dill and leeks.

Prepare a stuffing of dormouse meat or pork, pepper and pine nuts, a tasty broth, asafoetida, and some garum. Stuff the dormice and sew them up. Bake in oven on a tile. (In 1972, an enterprising chef in Britain revived this recipe, hoping to acquaint modern diners with cuisine of ancient Rome. The results of his mission remain unknown.)

Spread unsweetened crêpes with a mixture of chopped fish sperm and mushrooms bound with fish-based bechamel sauce. Roll crepes and set in a buttered dish, sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and melted butter; heat dish in a 350° oven until top browns.

Soak a calf’s mesentary with the udder of a young beef in cold water, blanch for 30 minutes in boiling water. Dry and cut into small pieces. Sauté a generous amount of chopped mushrooms and some chopped parsley and shallots. Add salt, pepper, nutmeg and a glass of white wine. Remove from heat, and thicken with five egg yolks. Stir in the meat and stuff the mixture into the pig rectum. Tie off both ends, poach sausage for 45 minutes in stock mixed with white wine. Allow to cool in pot.

Mix small cubes of poached beef brains, chopped buttered spinach (spinach goes well with brain), a crêpe batter and pepper and salt. Fry spoonfuls in hot oil until browned on both sides.

Collect ants in leaf cups, put directly into the hot ashes of a fire for just a few minutes. Remove ants and make into a paste. Add salt and ground chilli, then bake. This chutney is said to have ‘a sharp, clean taste’ and is eaten with cocktails and other curries.

Schwabe allows that this recipe ‘sounds weird’, and suggests as an introduction for the family ‘shark fillets a la meunière’.

The recipe for fermented shark: Eviscerated sharks are buried in the sand or kept in an open bowl for three years to ferment. The much-prized result resembles in taste a ripe cheese.

Marinate larvae, sliced onions and lime leaves in coconut cream with some pepper. Wrap in pieces of linen and steam; serve over rice.

De-bone kangaroo rats, pass meat through fine blade of grinder. Sauté with bacon fat and garlic. Add chopped cooked spinach or watercress, salt and pepper, and stuff raviolis. (In New Orleans, Louisiana, a variant, alligator and cream cheese ravioli, is served.)

Caterpillars of skipper butterflies, which live on the maguey cactus, are toasted or fried and eaten with mescal. Since the maguey is the source of pulque and tequila, ‘caterpillar pretzels’ are a favourite in Mexico, even available canned.

Boil dragonfly nymphs. Eat them.

Epicharmus, a Greek dramatist who lived during the golden age of Sophocles and Aeschylus, wrote a comedy titled Orya (‘The Sausage’) around 500BC. Because the play exists today only as a fragment, we will never know exactly what the Greeks thought was funny about sausage.

The ancient Romans were so fond of pork sausage spiced with pine nuts and pepper that the dish became a staple of the annual Lupercalian and Floralian festivals. Since these pagan celebrations usually degenerated into orgiastic rites, the early Christians looked upon them with disapproval. When Constantine the Great, a Christian, became emperor in AD324, he outlawed the production and consumption of the sinful sausage. But the Romans refused to cooperate and developed a flourishing black market in sausage. They continued to eat the bootlegged delicacies throughout the reigns of several Christian emperors until the ban was finally lifted.