Sanguinaccio

Hailing from the time when animals were butchered in a true snout-to-tail culinary fashion without a morsel going to waste, sanguinaccio emerged as a special dessert making use of those nasty but tasty bits: this Italian sweet pudding is made from fresh pork blood, milk custard, and melted bittersweet dark chocolate. For a richer version, the pudding is often flavored with cinnamon and cloves or lemon zest, and sometimes studded with raisins, toasted almonds, pine nuts, and candied fruit, whereas in some regions it is cooked with the addition of rice. In Naples and the rest of southern Italy, sanguinaccio is traditionally prepared during the Carnival season, and enjoyed with crispy fried ribbons of pastry called chiacchiere, an Italian version of angel wings, but it can also be served with cookies to dip, either the hard, crunchy biscotti or the tender Italian ladyfingers.