IN MILAN'S immaculate food market at Piazza Wagner, you can find
stalls selling neat piles labelled nervetti (calves' feet),
lingua di maiale (pigs' tongues), musetto cotto (cooked nose),
piedini e codini (trotters and tails) and testina (head). The
different tripes from the first three chambers of a cow's
stomach are displayed in lush folds of white and grey. The
Italians, who possess the finest domestic cuisine in Europe,
retain a powerful appetite for bits of beasts customarily
discarded in Britain and America.  Ethically, there is much to
be said for total-body eating. After taking an animal's life,
the least you can do is use all of it. In the modern Anglo-Saxon
world, most offal (the “off-fall” from a carcass) goes into dog
food, but at one time we had more of a taste for strange meat.
Brawn was a highlight of medieval feasts, and British dishes
such as tripe and onions were popular until the 20th century.
Today, just a few culinary stalwarts do good business by serving
offal. The acknowledged leader of