Beware, this post shall be about food in general, carcasses and telling a lamb from a dog.
The great majority of Orthodox Romanians, author included, are preparing for the Easter religious celebrations held on 5 May this year. Generally, over here, the Easter menu must traditionally be about eggs, horseradish cream soup or roast, but also about lamb in all its forms: roasted, boiled, pudding and so on. Sticking to lamb, one does not normally find it available in supermarkets all year-round. But you certainly find lamb galore around Easter at every butcher’s shop. Going to the butcher’s means that you’ll end up with the best selected piece or get the whole carcass if you’re cooking for a whole army.
However, since we started this year having trouble in telling beef from horse in Europe, the Romanian national food inspection authorities thought it might be a good idea to spread tutorials in the news about telling a lamb from a dog carcass. Apart from the obvious like buying your carcass from vet authorized and certified outlets that are safe for one’s health, the vet inspectors thought it would be wise to give a detailed description of what a lamb carcass ought to look like.
So, after choosing your lamb carcass at the market, butcher’s or anything certified, be sure to inspect the teeth and hooves of your victim! The tutorial goes on specifying a step-by-step anatomy guide into analyzing the incisors place and the hooves shape. They add that when buying your carcass, you would normally want it to include the head and feet so as to be able to tell it’s a lamb and not a dog. All in all, over here, if you won’t have the whole carcass you won’t know it for sure! What a tricky way to boost lamb sales… Well, chewing it will certainly make a difference!
If you get to Marrakech and happen to eat outdoors in Djemaa El-Fna Square, you get to choose a whole lamb head for dinner in size, shape, brains in or out and what not! You certainly won’t see the hooves of it so won’t be able to follow the above tutorial but will certainly enjoy the company! Bon appétit!
Roasted lamb heads on display in Djemaa El-Fna, Marrakech
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