I’ve eaten guinea pig, snake and crocodile – why not horse-milk ice cream, too?

Forget cow’s milk – the future of milk is equestrian

How would you feel if I said today’s menu featured ice cream made from horse milk? Would you care to partake of the pony? Yay, or neigh?
Calm down snowflakes! We’ve come a long way (thanks be to soy, almond and the rest) since Heather Mills’s 2007 tirade at Speakers’ Corner in London’s Hyde Park, when she insisted that traditional meat and dairy were ruining the planet, and suggested the milk of rats, cats and dogs would be more eco-friendly.
Tiptoeing away from that sort of out-and-out lunacy, let me state for the record that I’m happy to try horse milk ice cream.
No, not Mr Whippy – that’s enough to give anyone flashbacks of disgraced dressage rider Charlotte Dujardin. I’m talking about the deluxe version.
Scientists in Poland have discovered that horse milk ice cream is better for gut health than the conventional stuff made with cow’s milk, as well as being delicious, leading to lots of quips about Red Rum and raisin.
Forget salted caramel, if they gallop some Seabiscuit over in a pony express saddlebag I’ll be tucking in before you can say “why the long face?”
I can’t pretend to be terribly fussy, as I once ate Italian horse meat salami in Veneto by mistake, and it was memorably tender and tasty.
Down the years, I’ve sampled various local delicacies in a “rude not to” spirit of gastronomic enquiry; crocodile in Mauritius, guinea pig in Peru and – I’m still horribly conflicted about this – whale meat when I visited the Faroes.
If anyone’s asking, it doesn’t taste like chicken. It tastes of millennia of sadness.
On a more upbeat note, I also ate sea cucumber at a rather magical two-Michelin-starred restaurant on the 18-island archipelago. You know, those long, black creatures that look like poo and live, as though freshly deposited, on the bottom of the ocean?
Stomach-churning thought but guess what? Even that tastes nice when boiled in wine for seven or eight hours – yum (ish). Well worth remembering if you’re ever invited onto Desert Island Discs and asked to choose your luxury.
Incidentally, I’ve also snacked on insects, although they were covered in chocolate, which is possibly cheating. And I once thought I had ordered mouse (souris) in France but it turned out to be souris d’agneau, which is lamb shank.
It was a disappointment and a relief combined. But, then, food is always tied up with emotion – I enjoy foie gras and having seen for myself how the birds are farmed and treated, it certainly hasn’t put me off.
And to my mind, horse milk – gently and humanely extracted – sounds like a great idea, especially if your ice cream gets a boost from their breed characteristics. After all, who wouldn’t appreciate being imbued with the energy of a thoroughbred or the balletic grace of a Lippizzaner?
And as for a Suffolk punch or an Irish draught, well that’s pudding and liqueur combined – and I for one never look a gift horse in the mouth.