However, the clever (or crazy) kitchen sorcerers at Jacque-Imo’s Café in New Orleans, Louisiana, conjured up a savoury cheesecake whose main ingredient is the toothy swamp monster.

Alligator is an alternative meat that is fairly common in Louisiana due to the commercial farming of the reptile in the southern state.

While the most lucrative part of freshwater pearl earrings  the gator is its skin, the meat is also sold to specialty meat markets and funky eateries like Jacques-Imo’s who turn this powerful predator into a harmless and delicious appetizer made of cheese, alligator sausage and shrimp.

If you weren’t bitter before eating bitter melon, you will be after. It’ll turn any Pollyanna into a pucker-faced diner with one bite.

Momordicin is the component within this wart-riddled fruit that is responsible for its absolute astringency, and it’s a very bitter pill to swallow. Various methods are used to cut the bitterness of the bitter melon, like salting or blanching. In Pakistan, lamb and cultured freshwater pearl spices turn the bitter melon into a lively plate called karela gosht.

Oft times in life, enduring bitterness can lead to benefits, in this case, they are a combination of vitamins and minerals that have been shown to lower blood-sugar levels in diabetics. There is also early evidence of treating HIV.

Perhaps a good ad agency could conceive of a more appetizing name for this bloody slice of sandwich meat. Otherwise, this German cold cut (called blut zungenwurst in German) is quite delicious. It’s made with cow blood and tongue, seasoned, cooked, chilled, turned into a loaf, then sliced uber-thin and placed delicately between a crusty roll.

Although difficult to locate in common delis, a good German deli or pearl jewelry wholesale meat shop will carry it. The flavor of blood tongue is subtle relative to other blood delicacies like Chinese pig blood cake. Its flavoring is derived from spices such as anise. But it still does taste vaguely like a trickle of blood from a finger cut.