Strangest chow you've eaten?
Okay, so I'm just trying to get a sense of the wackiest, most off beat chow anyone has eaten. I don't want to use the word "weird" because "weird" is subjective.
Mine actually was eel intestine, by accident when I was in Tokyo. Was not pleasant.
What about you guys?
anon646
Jul 03, 2006 03:35PM
Horse sashimi, in Kyushu, Japan.
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WHAT?
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Yeah - I had lamb sashimi outside of Tokyo at a Okinawan restaurant. Meat tasted great, but the cartilege was weird. They have horser taretare at several places in Montreal.
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didn't have it as a tartare, but as a steak, oh yeah.
it's not written on the menus or widely advertised, but there are many places in toronto where you can get a good ol' horse steak. sometimes you can get the quack & track (feather & leather) meal... duck and horse together at last.
i recall enjoying it and being similar to beef but don't remember any distinct differences.
i wouldn't consider this my strangest food, but it hasn't been mentioned so i'll toss it out there: jellyfish. love the stuff.
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I've had jellyfish salad; consistency was of a lively noodle with a very slight crunch.
I guess strange is relative, since I too think the "weirdest chow has been in Asia" like gourmaniac said below.
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Where in Toronto would I be able to get a horse steak??
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la palette is most widely known for serving horse. however there are a number of restaurants who do so but don't have it written down for fear of the equestrians who might be offended.
many french restaurants would do it up.
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20 years ago, as a teenager, we took a family holiday to Kyushu, Japan where basashi (raw horse meat) is considered a specialty/delicacy. Kindly refusing another country's delicacy wasn't acceptable behaviour, so I ate it...tasted a lot like beef sashimi.
Having National Velvet/Black Beauty as a teen wasn't a mental block as much as eating Donald Duck as an 8 year old was for me.
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The horses are especially raised for sashimi (like Kobe beef) and the one time I had horse sashimi (in Osaka) it was pretty good. Seems most of my weirdest chow has been in Asia. Fugu bones steeped in tea had a slight tetrodotoxin-laced buzz (Tokyo) and snake soup was pretty nondescript (Guangzhou). The latter reminds me of a funny incident when my host took me touring in the old Shanghai markets. He would stop occasionally and asked "You like snake?" to which i replied that I'm not partial to snake. After several similar requests and rebuffs, we finally stopped in a dumpling house for a snack, which he pronounced "snake". the dumplings were excellent and had not a whit of snake in them.
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Lamb brains as part of the Moroccan experience in Marrakesh. It was intentional and voluntary, but still not something I would do again. The sauce was surprisingly tasty but the texture was revolting. Agh, I just gagged a little thinking about it :)
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Chicken testicles which we were told were "chicken beans" by my parents. We loved these and fought over them - we were three kids and couldn't understand why there were only two beans.
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HAHA thanks for the laugh. I'm going to chime in, the strangest food I've had that can recall at the moment were turkey testicles at an izakaya near my apt. Didn't really like them. They also serve bull penis.
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At a cooking class that was all about duck, we were served duck testicles - we were all surprised at their size - like Vienna sausages! I really don't remember much about what they actually tasted like or the texture, rather just the novelty is the only memory...
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I'd have to say balut. Definately the richest, most intensely flavored broth I've tasted. Perhaps a day or two younger would have been better as the crunchy beak and feet, while not offensive, is an aquired frame of mind.
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In my exposure to balut in the Philipines, I never saw anyone even try it who was sober. PS I was always sober.
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After YEARS of eating everything but the chick, I gave it a try about 3 years ago (sober). It was actually pretty good! But I probably will not eat it again unless I was trying to impress somebody!
As for my strange chow, it would have to be stir fried silk worms in China. Delish, but can only eat a few spoonfuls not the whole plate... with rice rice, of course.
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Big Mac.
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Witchetty grubs in Australia. I have to say that I don't think I could ever try balut, so hats-off to TomSwift.
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I totally agree with you - I'll pretty much eat just about anything but the idea of balut and large grubs is more than I can deal with...
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Ice fish sashimi.
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Crane soup as part of the farewell feast on a food tour of Hong Kong led by Martin Yan. I was not nearly as put off by the crane skulls floating in the serving bowl as I was by the flavor, which was mostly ginseng, a taste I despise.
Everything else was splendid...
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Assorted insects prepared various ways. I have had these fresh in SE Asia and canned. Fried baby bees, fried grasshopers, assorted fried grubs and such which are ok, and sauteed ground worm patties (nasty!!!, a practice session during survival courses.)
The nastiest stuff I have ever eaten is the glop that remains in the bottom of a food pack at the end of month long wilderness expeditions when I was working as an Instructor for Outward Bound. Students usually gorged on the food at the begining of a course and ate too much. They also never listened when warned to be careful with food packs, to not drop them or sit on them, and never let them fall into water (which always happens at least once on a canoe expedition.)
This stuff in the packs near course end was the remains of all the broken bags of powdered foodstuffs such as cocoa, assorted spices and garlic, biscuit mix, granola, oatmeal, jerky, powdered cheese, powdered milk, etc. Usually the last few days of a expedition it was either dump a few handfuls of this into boiling water and eat as a gruel or forage for something edible. I always ended up sneaking off to forage and privately eat some of my personal stash of emergency supplies and MRE's. I wuld still end up 10 lbs. thinner after each course.
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This reminds me of some of the things I ate during an Outward Bound-ish youth wilderness camp. On the first night, I bet some of my fellow campers that I could drink the salty, urine-colored water that they had boiled the hot dogs in in under 10 seconds (probably about a quart or two). I failed, having taken about 12 seconds, but still got points for completing the task. I remember that there were a dozen ants and some dirt that had fallen into the water that I ended up swallowing with the rest of the broth.
At another point during the trip, a friend and I set out to finish a two foot long stick of pepperoni in one sitting. I ended up having to pick up the slack when the other guy got a little sick of the bright orange sausage.
Another time we were camped out by a high-altitude lake and used the water to make macaroni and cheese. The water looked mostly clear when we collected it, but as the macaroni was cooking we noticed small pink particles floating towards the top of the pot. The millimeter long bits were actually tiny prawn-like crustaceans that made their home in the lake; their shells were turning pink as they cooked just like their larger cousins. We ended up getting some unexpected seafood mixed in with the mac n cheese.
Later on, I ate part of a block of sharp cheddar that I had been carrying in my backback for the better part of a week. Judging by the way it smelled, the lack of refrigeration had clearly taken its toll on the cheese, but for some reason I decided to eat it anyway. Within 10 minutes of swallowing the cheese, my stomach turned and I felt the overwhelming urge to defecate. The problem was, our party had stopped for lunch on the top of a mountain ridge well above the tree line so there were no trees, shrubs or even large boulders that I could hide behind. Consequently, my fellow campers had me run along the ridge, my sphincter loosening with each passing second, back the way we came until they yelled that I was far enough away that they wouldn't be able resolve the explicit details of my crouching form. Even though I knew that the limits of human vision would deny them the nasty details, I knew that everyone could watch as a teensy-tiny figure relieved his bowels by the side of the trail. I'll always remember seeing orange clumps in my "leavings" that were undeniably cheddar and being amazed that something could make its way through my digestive tract in such a short amount of time.
And then of course there was tons of grey-water stew that we drank throughout the course of the trip so we could avoid washing our dishes.
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Wow, you folks have had some strange chow! Down here in the deep south we eat cooter. Go ahead and laugh cause that is what it's called. Men, women, and children alike eat cooter and it is dee-lish-ous! For those of you that have your minds in the gutter let me set you straight! Cooter is fresh water turtle. And it can be served in soups, stews, grilled but I must admit - being a true southern girl I love it fried! My friends get a good laugh whenever I, a middle aged woman who looks like a Sunday school teacher,asks complete strangers in rural areas "Yall know where I can get me some Cooter?" But I love the stuff!
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Otherwise known as the snapping turtle. And if you ever find yourself in the San Gabriel Valley part of Los Angeles County, just go to any of the many Asian supermarkets and you'll see tanks of live "cooter" for sale in the seafood department. The fish guys will even butcher it out for you.
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I don't think Cooter is synonomous with snapping turtle.
Cooter is a turtle species name for certain types of river turtle from the south and east US.
P. alabamensis - Alabama Redbelly Turtle
P. concinna - Eastern River Cooter
P. floridana - Florida Cooter
P. gorzugi - Western River Cooter
P. nelsoni - Florida Redbelly Turtle
P. peninsularis - Peninsula Cooter
P. rubriventris - Eastern Redbelly Turtle
P. suwanniensis - Suwannee River Cooter
P. texana - Texas River Cooter
Two African tribes have similar words for turtle. The Mandingo word is Kuta and the Tshiluba word is Nkudu, and they possibly became the word Cooter.
One definition of Cooter is: In South Carolina, Georgia, and the Gulf states Cooter means the edible freshwater turtle of the genus Chrysemys (Painted Turtles) and, by extension, other turtles and tortoises.
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I grew up in the swamps of South Carolina, where "cooter" did not include the snapping turtle. To most folks "cooter" meant the common mud turtle, but some also called sliders by that name. However, the term did not include all freshwater turtles other than snappers. E.g., I never heard anyone call a soft-shelled turtle a cooter.
Jim
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I was taking my clues from the first "White Trash Cookbook", which defines cooter as I did. If this book is in error, then so am I, and I will apologize for my own lack of understanding. The guys that wrote the book can By God fend for themselves...
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I have consumed the mammary secretions of bovines (both fresh and sometimes aged for years when it can get real smelly), the ovums of birds, and the blood, fat, and flesh of porcine creatures preserved with salt and chemicals.
Strange can be relative.
But I do love good shiokara - described on the menu of my favorite Japanese Izakaya as "salted squid guts."
ed (old handle: e.d.)
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Dried seahorse.
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By itself? One classical pairing is with duck, typically in a soup.
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My dear mother hid it in the soup, and didn't reveal it until the end.
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deep fried chicken intestine that was extremely hard and chewy and flavored w/rosemary in a northern chinese restaurant.
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i had a brochette of some kind of meat at a road-side stand in the middle of a jungle in cameroon. i was so hungry that i didn't stop to consider until afterwards it may not actually have been beef as the nice vendor assured me. my first clue should have been the complete lack of grazing room for cattle. in retrospect, it was in all likelihood some kind of primate.
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dog...vietnam...the neighbors dogs have never looked at me the same since...
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My aunt's dog loves everyone except my dad, the only person we know who's eaten dog. I swear the dog knows. He won't go near my dad, even though other (less discerning?) dogs love Dad.
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Pickled Seal
As strange as it sounds, it's fantastic. It has the consistancy of brisket or some sort of beef cut like that (Stringy) and had a taste that would be like what you expect if you fed cattle nothing but fish. Fishy beef.
Try it, you'll like it.
DT
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sounds like the whale I had in Norway. filet mignon texture w/an iron fish taste, they served it with some kind of light gravy and ligonberry jam.excellent.
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Live whole baby octopus in Korea.
Was just texture, almost no taste except the sesame oil and raw garlic served with it.
The strange sensation was when it didn't want to be swallowed and used its suction cups and beak to actively object. I like it better when they cut it up first. Far less dangerous
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Do you know that scientists just released research that Octopi are as intelligent as cats?
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Hmmm, are you exaggerating about the suction cups and the beak? It is pretty hard to believe that something could still object after you chewed it...
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I saw this very scene in some travel show's episode on traveling through Korea on one's stomach. One of the locals (Korean) showed the proper way to eat live octopus and then asked the two college-aged hosts to follow suit. The resultant acts of survival from the live octopi had me rolling on the floor with laughter. The chutni or relish made one kid huff and puff it was so spicy-hot.
A Korean friend I described the scene to afterwards said the secret lay in how fluid the diner's motion was with how "resilient" the octopi were. He said it was not unusual to hear of someone choking because the octopi had tried to escape back out the diner's mouth.
The idea behind the dish is to squeegee the live octopus with your chopsticks from the tip of the head down to its tentacles. Holding the base of the body (where the tentacle and torso join), slap a generous portion of relish on all sides of the bulbous body. Then one gulps the critter down whole.
I like octopus but that is something I just couldn't do. Thoughts of "Alien" aside...
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Ok then, that is officially the weirdest I've heard. And I thought balut was challenging. About the most challenging thing I've eaten are duck tounges and congealed blood cubes - child's play compared to a snack that is resisting. Seriously, why would you want to experience that sort of struggle? Especially if there is no real taste involved.
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I remember the guide from that episode explaining it as the octopi were the "freshest" and the sauce made one feel "alive." Personally, I think it's simple machismo. Sort of like eating blowfish.
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I was with a group of Korean friends in Seoul and would have looked like an wimp if I didn't eat it. Yes it was just another case of useless male bonding. Rather expensive too for nothing but a very very chewy texture and lots of fighting.
I also did the Anthony B. thing in Changsha China(capitol of Hunan provence) and ate the beating heart of a snake. Once again just texture and no real flavor. Though the warm blood mixed with beer was really silky and nice.
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WHAT?? Picturing that literally made me lose my appetite. I hate to judge but that's just nuts.
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My husband had baby octopus in Korea. They did cut it first, but it was still wriggling and the tentacles would wrap around and suction onto the chopsticks. I'll have to tell him he got off easy, given the descriptions of the alternative.
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Pigs blood which is firmed to the texture of jello. Not too much taste, but when I was a kid, I just thought it was jello!
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As a teenangster, I was once served a lamb brains taco by my Gpa's neighbor. Gpa loved'em and cojoled me into giving it a taste. I shrugged and gave it a try. There wasn't anything -- no texture or taste -- beyond the onions and cilantro. I decided that I was missing something and allowed him to finish off the batch.
When I was just out of college, I was part of an international team of engineers. My culinary experiences really opened. We hit this sushi place in Cupertino and two of the team ordered uni (sea urchin) for everyone. I took a bite and didn't taste a thing. I popped the rest in my mouth and my look sent everyone into hysterics. It's indescribable; the entire lack of texture was very off-putting.
Recently I was served natto at a Japanese banquet. It was the guest of honor's favorite snacking item. All I can say is that I ate what I was served and tried to drown the remaining tastes and smells away with the free-flowing sake (which was also the GoH's only choice of refreshment.) It's an "acquired" taste.
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I tried a cow placenta soup. (Didn't enjoy it since my mom kept commenting that it smelled like baby.)
I like balut (in my language it is called kai louk). I agree with a previous poster that is the best broth. Duck eggs, chicken eggs, they're so good! And I agree that they are best young enough that the chicken doesn't have hard bits.
Yep, "strange can be relative". I love nectar regurgitated by insects in tea sometimes and so does my mom. :D
There are lots of other "strange" things I've eaten, but I want to hear more from other people.
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Cod fish testicles at the late lamented Benkay in Chicago. They were served in a broth of dashi, and looked like ribbons. More recently, at Matsumoto, we were served baby squid in a sauce of squid intestines, but I guess that doesn't count, since I refused to eat it.
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What's balut?
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Fertilized duck eggs with a partly grown fetus-duck inside. I heard about those when a kid and always wanted to try one but never have. Here is a long article on the social and semiotic signifigance of balut in Filipino culture http://www.findarticles.com/p/article...
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An Asian delicacy - here's more info with pictures.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut
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