I am fairly sure that this node will sound like "Memories of a Happy Cannibal" to many people - more the pity for them: you wanted an international Everything ? You wanted me to node what I know ? Here it goes:
Equophagia: the pleasures of eating horses
It is well known that the Anglo-Saxons do not eat horse meat. In their culture the horse enjoys a very privileged "pet" status, which nonetheless does not protect it from being ground up and fed to other pets either as frozen ground meat or (more discreetly) as dry pet food. Nor did its "petness" keep the old nag from the glue factory.
Anyway, other cultures (among them the Italian and the French) are not quite as squeamish when it comes to eating horse.
One should observe, though, that even in these cultures horse meat is considered something different, to the point that Italian and French law mandates that there should be special equine butchers, with different premises.
How to eat horse
Horse meat is usually dark red and quite lean, without much
marbling.
This means that the greatest problem in cooking it is that it tends to drying and becoming
fibrous and chewy. An undesirable outcoume.
That is why horse steak should be cooked very quickly in a very hot pan, with some cooking fat. Don't
barbecue it !
Another good technique is the pot roast:
For a pound of lean horse meat, cut an equal weight of onion in rings (this may sound like a lot of onions, but they shrink, believe me).
Sautee the onions, one chopped carrot and some garlic in oil (not butter: it would burn later).
After ten minutes, put the meat in the pot and cover it with the onions.
Cook well covered on a very low fire, barely enough to keep it sizzling. Turn the meat every quarter of an hour, and check that the onions underneath it do not burn.
There should always be some liquid at the bottom of the pot. Red wine can be added at the beginning.
It should be done in about one hour.
After taking the meat out of the pot, you can puree the vegetables and the stock to produce a tasty gravy: or you can serve them as they are, as a side.
Ground horse meat can be simply
sauteed until it turns gray, maybe with some
onions.
But the greatest delight is certainly raw horse meat, either ground and spread on bread with some olive oil, pepper and salt or served as a carpaccio.
Of course this requires high quality horse meat, although horses do not carry the wealth of diseases that pigs do.
Horse meat: a personal memoir
When I was a kid, I lived in Parma. Buying horse meat was the first outside chore I was entrusted with by mother. I was maybe eight, and I would proudly walk (or pedal) to the Macelleria Equina one block away, and buy "3 hectograms, ground horse, first quality".
Checking that the 300 grams did not include 10 grams of wax paper was my introduction to the subtleties of commerce and fraud.