Excited by new food

Some things I just cannot eat - I mean, I find myself thinking, why would anyone want to eat an ox's cheek ?

I think a lot has to do with food we (one) ate as children, as grannyactivist says too. My mother didn't ever eat or cook, pork (except very rarely bacon), or offal, liver, kidneys. So I never had a taste for any of that, still don't eat it. Never cook pork roast.

Re the question in the OP about new food - I'm looking forward to a cookery lesson next week on Persian cuisine.

When we visited our maternal grandparents back in the 50s and 60s there was always tripe, brawn, black pudding, kidneys, liver, heart, pig's trotters, cow heel, salt fish and other such 'delicacies' on offer. I wouldn't touch any of them and I still won't! We moved away for my dad's work and I know my mother was very nostalgic about such food but she never had them unless we visited (except for black pudding which she craved and bought from Debenhams delicatessen, eating it cold on the way home!)

I've also never eaten king prawns, octopus or squid, crab, oysters and most other shellfish, locusts, vs' legs, witchetty bugs or mopani worms. I have eaten scallops. They are fine. I tried lobster. Not impressed. It's very much overrated. I ate a snail (not in shell) and it was OK but I wouldn't go out of my way to have another. I tried a mussel. It was pretty disgusting.

My self imposed meat rule is four legs, two legs (poultry) or no legs (fish). I'm not looking forward to a time when insects are the only form of animal protein! That's when I'll be vegetarian!

Vs legs? Frog's legs! And I forgot the pig's head, pig's ears etc. at my Nanna's..

I love them all. Liver, kidneys, snails, octopuses, anything. Tripe, a bit funny, but I´ll eat it too. Funnily enough, the one thing that I cannot is rabbit. When I was a child my granny kept rabbits and then every once in a while I´d go out to feed them and the hutch was empty ...

I can't bring myself to eat pigeon.
Having seen the verminous objects scavenging in town centres, however the ones in my garden are plump ,glossy and very well fed.

Thanks for the link to the tapas website grandtante. It looks good.

We went on a self-catering holiday a few years ago with extended family and I took a large pork joint from the freezer with us. Unfortunately I only realised it was a boned pig's head after it had thawed!
I cooked it very slowly and served it sort of shredded - so only owned up to what it was after the meal was finished. The cheek meat on pork is absolutely delicious, but a head doesn't go quite so far as a proper joint.