Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Extreme cuisine
Over at the Rara Avis mailing list this morning, the hb/noir folks are having a high time discussing whether art can be immoral and whether art has an obligation to be moral. Interesting discussion, but too dry for this boy. (If you’re curious, you’ll have to sign up, then look back into the archives a bit to find the thread.) I would rather talk about Challenging Food.
You know, stuff like huitlacoche:
Mmm. Corn smut. (Is corn naturally smutty, or does it only become smutty after being put to smutty uses by smutty-minded people? That’s the question.) No, I’ve never tried it, but I would. I’ve had my share of challenging foods; I don’t think I’ve ever refused a bite of this or that.
Erin O’Brien got me thinking about this. Her hilarious post about Hamburger Helper sent me on a web surf for extreme cuisine, and last night all I could find was this bit about eating guinea pigs:
Recently, I ate a guinea pig. It was a fatty little beast, beheaded, roasted and quartered, presented to me with a flourish in a fine resto in Cuzco, Peru. Kind of tasted like rabbit.
In the comments, Renee, bless her heart, remembered the site I wanted to find, Steve, Don’t Eat It. Coffee-snort warning on that site, folks. Steve ventures into dangerous gastronomic turf, from potted meat to Urkel-o’s, huitlacoche to natto, pickled pork rinds to breast milk. Breast milk? That’s challenging food? They feed it to babies, for heaven’s sake!
Here’s a short list of my most challenging meals. And, yeah, this is kind of a rerun. I’ve touched on extreme foods before, but that was over a year ago, and I’m willing to bet none of y’all remember back that far.
1. Squab. Which, as I understand it, is a fancy name for pigeon. I suspect my squab was a bad squab — the kind with swastika tattoos under their wings — since the meat tasted like beef liver and had a texture like river clay.
2. Stomach lining, and no, I don’t know whose stomach contributed this meal. My memory says, “Fish stomach!” but I’ve also been told that what I ate wasn’t fish stomach lining at all but some sort of rice porridge. Rice porridge hell. I know what rice tastes like and that was stomach lining, not rice porridge. It tasted fishy. And phlegmy.
Mostly phlegmy.
3. Sweetbreads. Had this at an upscale restaurant in Seattle. It was okay — edible, but nothing I would go out of my way to eat. I suspect sweetbreads are mostly a vehicle for sauce, since I couldn’t detect much of a unique flavor to the dish.
4. Skate. A skate is a ray:
The flavor is a little like crab and a lot like scallop. Really very good, but I couldn’t get past the notion I was eating an Alien facesucker.
I haven’t eaten insects, nor have I eaten beef testicles, pizzle, or bung. Now, is bung a cow’s vagina or anus? Really wasn’t clear from looking at it. When something is all frosty and packed in a shrink-wrap plastic, it could be anything.
I suppose some folks still consider sushi a challenging food, but I’ve been eating it since high school. I’ve avoided uni. Ankimo (monkfish liver) and I are best friends. Chicken or duck feet? No problem. Jellyfish? Yum. Seriously — yum. Tastes like good seaweed.
I won’t eat snake, nor would I eat anything that’s been pooped out of an animal (e.g., Argan oil, and kopi luwak). I have my standards.
So: what’s the strangest thing you’ve ever eaten, and how was it?
D.
this entry made me throw up a little in my mouth.
you know i’m a weird eater. i am also a very safe eater. i dont eat strange and unusual things–although, my favorite sandwich has been called gross by almost every family member. chocolate chip bagel with tuna and cheese. yummm…
I’ve eaten snake (barbequed, it was quite tasty, sort of like chicken but with the texture of crab meat), alligator (cajun blackened, quite delicious), and sweetbreads (like you, I found them pretty flavourless, but the sauce was fabulous). Oh, and I’ve eaten sea cucumber, which I really can’t recommend. Vaguely salty, with all the texture of an inner tube. The fact that we caught and cleaned them ourselves added immensely to the experience, I must say.
Sweetbreads…I ordered them once, not knowing what they were at this little restaurant in New Orleans, somewhere in the French Quarter. I wonder if it is still there? Anyway, I ordered them and enjoyed them immensely. They were breaded and sauteed and had some sort of mustardy-winey sauce. Mmm.
Let’s see, other than that, I’ve eaten gator. Battered and deep-fried, it tasted like chicken but was a little chewier. Does fish roe count as weird? It was not lah-ti-dah little beads on sushi or caviar with sour cream on a cracker as an hor d’oeurve but the whole “bundle” of roe fried with hotsauce and salt.
The most challenging/weird thing in my fridge right now: the pint of sweet corn ice cream I picked up at Whole Foods this morning. It was new and different but by a maker (Talapa? Halapa) I’ve enjoyed before, so I thought I’d give it a try.
Shaina, if you threw up a little in your mouth, then I have done my job and done it well 🙂
SxK, I’ve heard sea cuke is pretty vile. Of course, if it was rubbery, someone out there will probably accuse you of not having prepared it correctly. Kinda like abalone. You probably have to beat the bloody hell out of it to make it edible.
jmc . . . hmm, what’s the weirdest thing in my fridge right now? Olives stuffed with blue cheese, maybe, or pickled garlic; no, it would have to be my little fishies. “Odor frying fish,” teensy dried fishies in oil with red pepper flakes and black beans. Mmmm good.
Weird. When I first wrote that last response, I’d written,
Now, that would be extreme cuisine. Call it bird cuisine!
I lurve me the sweetbreads. But they have to be sauteed in butter with an extremely velvety sauce. Mmmm. Going into raptures just as I type this.
Weird food? I dunno. I’ve eaten lambs brains and calves brains (I live calves brains better: they don’t look like little brains on the plate, rather they are innocuous cubes of something sweeet and sauteed.) I’ve eaten sushi, curry, goat, octopus, baby octopus (Which again are alarming because they come to you whole), monkfish liver, salted cod roe sushi, various stuffed things, prairie oysters, and all sorts of sausages with Lord Knows What in them.
But I never really thought of any of that as being ODD FOOD. It was just food, and I was curious as to what the taste and texture would be.
In general I don’t like rice congee, or porrigey stuff (but I love oatmeal and Cream of Wheat), and I’ve never tried natto, but I keep meaning too. I LOVE Marmite. Mmm. Marmite on buttered toast? Heaven! (But then every time I see natto at the sushi bar I chicken out.)
I am really trying here to think of something truly extreme that I’ve eaten that would gross me out. Thought of eyeballs, but then realized that I’ve eaten a fish eyeball from a trout which was cooked over an open fire. Crunchy, but nothing amazing or even that gross. Don’t think I could look a sheep eyeball in the eye if it shoed up on a plate though.
OK. I hate cauliflower. There. I’ve come up with something which is truly detestable. Smells like broccoli fermented, and the squeaky texture is all wrong. That’s about as odd as I get.
I don’t know that I have ever eaten anything terribly odd. I live in the south and hunting is still a popular passtime around these parts, so I have eaten my share of wild game. Rabbit is delicious and venison is heaven if prepared properly. I agree with sxKitten about snake. The texture is very much like crab. In fact, I have a friend who makes rattlesnake dip. It is basiclly just a hot crab dip recipe and he substitutes the snake meat for the crab. Yummy! Now I am wondering if you could make snake cakes like crab cakes. I think I will ask.
Suisan, you’re the first person I’ve ever met who said she liked marmite. And what’s wrong with cauliflower? You’d like my cauliflower. As for baby octopus, yum. Which makes me feel bad because they’re so cute and probably smarter than 9/10 of the other food I eat.
KariBelle, nope, I’m still not going to eat snake. I’ll stick to crab. Nice and foreign and ugly enough that I won’t feel guilty eating it.
Sea urchin roe was the one that disgusted me the most – cold, fishy, rubbery, and, as a bonus, baby-poop yellow. I’ll probably try it again to see if my experience was a one-off, but it’s gonna take a while for me to get over that one.
Stinky tofu in chili sauce was interesting, but too pungent for me to finish more than 2/3s of. OTOH, I scored major ‘stupid roundeye’ points from the family that runs the restaurant.
I’ll put out a third ‘yum’ for baby octopus, tho’ that totally grossed my wife out (“You’re eating their brains!”). I’ve never had organ meat (that I’m aware of) apart from tripe and tendon in pho, and various livers in pates of one kind or another. And fish eyeball from a whole fish in black bean sauce was totally innocuous.
While their heyday is definitely past, brain sandwiches are still a big thing in and around St. Louis, as are fried squirrel brains; the sandwiches you can find at some older roadside places, while the squirrel is more of a home-cooked sort of thing. Regardless, I never could bring myself to try either. There’s a restaurant over on the metro-Seattle Eastside that serves curried brains, the same dish Anthony Bourdain chowed down on in the first part of his India show from last season. Again, I’m not sure I could work up the courage to give that a whirl… I’m not entirely sure why.
Kimchi. Does. Not. Taste. Good.
End of story.
Hmm. Add brains to the list of things I won’t eat. I remember this novel, Donovan’s Brain (yup, here it is, an old Curt Siodmak story) in which a person could acquire another person’s memories by being injected with an extract from that person’s brain. So when I think of eating brains, I have this irrational expectation that I’ll begin dreaming about that critter’s life. Which, I’ll admit, might be fun in the case of squirrel brains.
Kim chi, not good? Mmmm. Especially when you first open the bottle and the juices effervesce and the cabbage tingles on your tongue. I like to eat it in combination with my odor frying fish and kosher dills.
I’ve eaten fish eyes. Feh.
re: Kim chi – you’ve got to find the good stuff 😉
Kim chi fried rice is as sublime a Hawaiian dish as one will find: diced Spam and Chinese sausage sauteed with onions and kim chi, then topped with shredded scrambled egg & green onions. Mmmmm. Good eatin’ there.
We’ve found a locally-made brand of super-extra-firm tofu that makes for an amazing veggie fried rice; they also make at least a dozen varieties of superb kim chi as well. We’ve totally given up on the glass-jarred stuff in the produce section.
Does the odor frying fish smell as nasty as fermented shrimp paste? Because when that hits the skillet, it smells like you’re frying used kitty litter. Thai curry paste just doesn’t taste the same without it, though.
Marmite? Vegemite? Yummm.(Slightly more partial to Vegemite, but Marmite’s easier to get in my supermarket.) You have to spread it in a thin layer over a thicker layer of unsalted butter on toast. Brew up some tea. Put out some “marmite soldiers” and I’m all set for the afternoon. Do NOT disturb.
But my kids think I’m weird, and my husband thinks I’m weird, and my parents have no idea where this fascination comes from. Some mornings, I open the extra teeny jar of Marmite (it’s so kewt in it’s widdle yellow jacket) and take a deep breath to fortify me while the coffee is brewing. I never eat it for breakfast, but it is my afternoon snack for when no one else is around. With tea. Yum. Yummmm.
Kangaroo tail, and snake. I had both as a kid after my dad came back from a shearing trip. (This was a case of have to, not want to. Things were tight.)
From memory, both were quite tasty!
PS: Sounds good, except for the Spam 🙂
Suisan, think I’ll buy a jar just to smell the stuff. Not making any promises about EATING it.
Microsaur: so, what does Kangaroo tail taste like? And don’t say chicken.
Honestly, barring a major change of life circumstances that required me to start consuming various and sundry potted meats, it’s probably the only way I’d ever eat Spam. Between the Chinese sausage and the kim chi, it doesn’t taste half bad.
You could probably swap out cubes of ham instead (that’d probably be pretty yummy, now that I think about it) – but then it wouldn’t be quite so Hawaiian. (Now Spam musubi; that’s something that scares me.)
Kangaroo tail:
Well Doug, my mother basically casseroled it, so I didn’t get it straight up. I’ve had kangaroo steak (but not tail) recently as it’s getting more common on the supermarket shelves. It has a strong taste, like gamey, stringy beef. (Kangaroo meat seems more textured and tends to require some tenderization. They’re a pretty active, muscular animal, after all).
Oh – Loco Moco, on the other hand, is an absolutely amazingly delicious heart attack on a plate. I can feel plaque deposits forming in my arteries just thinking about it.
PS: Spam sushi, eeeew! In college, my friend Sam and I made apple and pear sushi, and Karen (not even my fiance at the time) found THAT offensive. But spam sushi . . . I’m sure the relationship would have ended right then and there.
Loco Moco looks pretty damn good to my eyes.
microsaur, k-tail sounds like goat. I thought goat was okay, but I’m not a big fan.
When I was living in a shared student house back in ’74, I once prepared a dish whose main constituents were tinned sardines and Tom Piper Camp Pie ( a local tinned meat similar to Spam, but if anything less flavoursome) on a bed of rice.
The rice was undercooked.
My housemate ate his entire helping.
Can you spell constipation?
I’ve eaten most of the stuff you have, Doug, and most of the other stuff mentioned in the comments, besides the prarie oysters and kangaroo. Come to think of it, I can’t remember if I’ve had snake or alligator. I had one of them, but I can’t remember which it was. I think it was the snake. Obviously, not terribly memorable.
Uni is okay, just kind of meh. The loco moco I had was meh, too – maybe I didn’t go to the right place. Oh, but the awa (kava kava in water)I had in HI totally sold me. Tastes like sucking on a twig but makes me much happier than alcohol.
I loves me some octopus. One of the best meals I ever had was fresh barbecue grilled octopus on a beach in Costa Rica, after emerging from a storm in the rain forest. Dee-lish!
I guess I’m up for almost anything but brains, eyes, anus(es?) and tongues – and I might try them all if they were prepared in non-obvious ways. Hell, I’ve had chitterlings, chicken feet, necks, sweetbreads, hearts, giblets & tripe, what’s the big diff?
Tripe ranks among the things I liked the least, but I think the weirdest, grossest thing I’ve eaten was raccoon. They truly taste like they live on garbage, stringy and greasy as all get-out. I’d gladly eat catfish from here to kingdom come, but never another raccoon!
The strangest thing I ever ate was my husband.
Oh, comment on the kim-chee…a good homemade kimchi is the perfect counterpoint to Thanksgiving turkey, really. It’s sublime.
microsaur, that recipe reminds me of the infamous Tuna Jello the co-op students made at Berkeley (which wasn’t nearly as bad as the Barrington Hall boys, who annually hosted a Bug Feast).
DN, it’s a shame they took kava kava off the market here in the US (it caused a few cases of liver failure). That stuffed did wonders for my insomnia.
Erin: yeah, you and a few hundred jillion other women. In general, that is — not just your husband.
Beard, I’ve never made homemade kimchi. Do you need a backyard in which to bury the jar?
Burying the jar in the backyard is how Mrs Smith made hers, and it was wonderful.
I’ve got an okay Korean cookbook that has several kim chi recipes – none of them call for burying anything (largely in the interest of keeing this accessible to American cooks). I haven’t tried making them because they’re a fairly time-consuming, and there’s no way under the sun that The Boy would even dream of eating kim chi. I figure that we’ve got a reliable source, so there’s no real reason for me to make our kitchen smell like someone set off a tear gas grenade.
(No, really. Real tear gas smells like very pungent vinegar.)
FYI, you can geet kava kava on ebay. I bought some, and it was pretty good quality. Not like the stuff at the awa bar in Kailua-Kona, but good.
Sounds good. Who needs a liver, anyway?