Strange tastes

[Van Canna]

We compounded our error by letting the deputy director pick the food.

Our Korean waitress started putting one dish after another on the lazy Susan. First came the spicy Korean cabbage, kim chi, then followed by roasted peanuts, raw onions and other uncooked lettuce and sliced vegetables.

She brought out a dish of brown stew which I thought was beef tendon. I started eating it and thought that, while it wasn’t bad, it didn’t really taste like beef tendon—a favorite Chinese restaurant dish usually cooked with braised beef in a brown sauce.

The dish turned out not to be beef tendon. The factory deputy director said to me in a clinical way: “It is bull’s penis.” I dropped the remaining morsel I had in my chopsticks. I lost my appetite. The factory director didn’t eat it himself.



Following a plate of cardboard-textured raw salmon, the waitress placed a whole fish on the table. The slices of oddly pink and slightly yellowish raw fish sit on a hill of white, rice vermicelli noodles.


I picked up a slice of the fish, dipped it in the green wasabi-laced soy sauce. Something told me not to put that fish into my mouth. I trusted my instinct and hid the piece of raw fish among the stubble of fried shrimp heads and shells that I had accumulated on my platter by that time.

Then, something horrible happened. The fish we were eating started to move. Its head jerked and mouth opened, just like the singing bass that was so popular in infomercials a few years ago. Was this just a reflex, I wondered, or were we eating this fish alive? I didn’t want to know. The fish was fresh, I guess, but I didn’t want to eat it or anything else.

But the parade of disgusting food continued. Our customer had ordered dog meat. I refused to eat it, and I noticed that some of our customer’s party was avoiding it too.

I once ate dog stew when I was a child in Hong Kong. My father wanted to gross me out by taking the family out to have dog. I understand that dog meat is a delicacy among quite a number of Korean—and Chinese—people. But while I can take sea slugs in stride, I don’t eat dogs.

[chef]

My husband was traveling in several Asian countries and had the following very strange foods:

Korea - 1000 year old eggs, which were buried in spices, herbs, and who knows what else. They were pretty tasty but dark black in color.

Japan - the inside of a sea urchin, most unusual

...so getting used to sushi and sashimi wasn't that difficult. We first tried both while in Japan in 1986...Wow! I can't believe it's all ready been almost 22 years since then.

We are avid sushi/sashimi lovers, like Bill, especially served with icy cold Plum Wine. I'm not much on Saki due to over-imbibing as a teenager on it.

Regards,
Vicki

[Bill Glasheen]

I'm not much on Saki due to over-imbibing as a teenager on it.

Well... There was that private pool party I had once when house-sitting at the owners of a major clothing chain. We were told we could have such parties and drink all we wanted, as long as it was for just a few.

And so it was with 3 couples, all the booze we wanted, optional attire, and...

Don't even let me smell Scotch wiskey any more.

I'm sure most of us have a story or two like that.

- Bill

[Chris McKaskell]

Nope, not me...

Um, recently...

I remember my dad once having eaten raw tripe.

It was on the menu of a fine resaurant.

He was sick for several days afterward.

He was never the same again.

Some food adventures are best left alone.

-- The raw stomach of a cow! Yuck!

[chef]

Here something for you - six of the strangest canned foods you can find:

http://www.trifter.com/Practical-Travel ... oods.78525

Which of these would you be brave enough to try?

Regards,
Vicki

[jorvik]

Quote
"I remember my dad once having eaten raw tripe. "

Well folks say that English cooking is bad .but As a child I used to watch my very carniverous family eat all sorts of things. Tripe was quite common, actually pig's tripe...Cow's tripe is white in colour and , and cooked in milk.....they also ate Brains and hearts...........pig's brains is called brawn and they would put slices of it on chips ( french fries to you) and it would melt like gravy........another delicacy is black pudding which is made from pig's blood mixed with fat and spices, and we would have that with a full English breakfast..............So I guess it's not hard to see why I am a vegitarian
These dishes may be common in the US as well..but it's only older folks who eat them here , now

[Chris McKaskell]

Amazing that older folks can actually become older folks with a diet like that!

Brains melting on chips. Yup, I can see how one might ultimately embrace vegetarianism.

[jorvik]

Well y'know
My grandfather and mother ( on Dad's side) lived to be 89 and 96.....and they had a Pub as well.and granny only stopped smoking at 85 ...so I dunno
but yeah the vegetarianism was easy to embrace .......I don't push it myself.if I wanted to, then I'd just let them live with my mother's family for a week

[Bill Glasheen]

The organ meat diet isn't so common in our country anymore, Ray. It's a bit more common in the Celtic regions on your side of the pond.

You found that sort of thing (once upon a time) in the more rural areas in lean times where absolutely nothing from an animal was wasted. Just about every part of a pig or a cow was savored from the tongue to the feet. And when you think about it, gravy has a base of defatted blood anyhow. There's a lot of good iron and B12 there for a rural diet where quantity of food was much more critical than quality.

These days the quantity of food isn't such a problem. In fact, it IS the problem. So the days of the organ meat diet are pretty much over in this country. There's too much saturated fat and cholesterol in the organs, as well as a concentration of some toxins.

Folks do however delight in eating exotic western plains food like prairie oysters (testicles) or rattlesnake. It's fun to at least try the stuff.

- Bill

[Shana Moore]

The organ meat diet isn't so common in our country anymore, Ray. It's a bit more common in the Celtic regions on your side of the pond.
[...]So the days of the organ meat diet are pretty much over in this country. There's too much saturated fat and cholesterol in the organs, as well as a concentration of some toxins.

Oh, I wish that were only true! Having lived in some of the more rural southern areas, foods like pigs feet, tongue, brain, chitlins (fried pig intestines...pray you never smell them cooking), etc. are still popular. I will say that it seems, IMO, to be mostly poor older folks who eat foods such as this, so perhaps it is a matter of "famliar" foods for the older generation or two. It's also still cheap food (tripe and some block food stuff that starts with a P and is basically fat and organ bits ground up) found in some rural supermarkets. As the GROWING population shows....most folks don't eat for health; they eat for convenience and cheap.

BTW, tried chitlins...wish I hadn't.
Shana

[jorvik]

Quote
"Folks do however delight in eating exotic western plains food like prairie oysters (testicles) or rattlesnake. It's fun to at least try the stuff. "

Over here lambs testicles are called sweetmeats.............I must say that the only thing that I do miss is the blackpudding.although I have tried a vegitarian version which wasn't bad.I've also had vegitarian Haggis

Quote
"The organ meat diet isn't so common in our country anymore, Ray. It's a bit more common in the Celtic regions on your side of the pond."

historically the English main staple was bread and cheese, whereas the Irish diet comprised a lot of potatoes.and about 100 or more years ago the difference in size between the English and the Irish was quite significant.the Irish being about 6ft 3 inches tall and the English about 5ft 8 inches I think a lot was down to the different diets..the Scotts diet is one of the worst in the world ............................if you go into a chip shop in Scottland they frie pies in lard.....and their speciality is to get a Mars bar ( do you have them in the US) dip it in batter and deep fry it

[f.Channell]

My grandparents were from Scotland and unlike my Italian friends who have all kinds of "old country" food. My only one was shortbread cookies and tea.

My dad would have eaten hotdogs and baked beans his entire life if my mom had let him. Veggies were rabbit food to him, not allowed on the plate.

F.

[jorvik]

Well I live in Liverpool and this is really a melting pot for Irish, Scotts and Welsh........my wife's father was the strangest.he was brought up in Oban which is in the highlands although his name was Jones.and he came from anglesey.which is a Welsh Island
Strangely I don't have any traditional recipes either.........probably not so strange when you consider I'm vegetarian, however the Scotts for a lot of the time eat porridge.but with salt added, and not sugar or honey.....this link may interest you.it's something that I would love to do

http://www.island-man.co.uk/

[Seth Rosenblatt]

i will try just about any kind of food at least once.

natto, which is fermented soy beans. half of japan swears by it, the other agrees with me and thinks it's foul. they have regular contests to see who can pull the longest string of "natto snot" on their chopsticks. the consistency, which is a cross between old peanut butter and half-set concrete, isn't anywhere near as bad as the smell, which is much closer to a dead body left out in the sun for three and a half days. it's often served with maguro nigiri.

you would have to pay me a lot of money to eat it again, and offer me some very nice sake to wash the nastiness down.

another revolting japanese dish is chawamushi, an egg custard with bits of seafood. unless you're lacking egg yellows in your diet, this is just a waste of good eel and fish.

i've loved uni (sea urchin) since i first tried sushi as a teenager. i liked the haggis i had in scotland, although the beer (caledonian 80) that went with it didn't hurt.

the scottish treat of deep fried mars bars was something best left to hangover-only days. one fry shop i visited in edinburgh would deep-fry anything - hamburgers, pizza, you name it. no wonder scots have one of the highest rates of heart disease in the world!

in china i had freshwater rice paddy eel. when i took a bite, i noticed there was a lot of orange gunk mixed in with the meat. the lady of the house i was staying in and i communicated through gestures, but it didn't take long for me to figure out that the orange bit was delicacy - the eel was pregnant.

the taste was bitter and bold. i gave half to the cat that was begging at my feet.

kangaroo has to be the most delicious red meat i've ever had. my financial and menu adviser and i found $200 sitting outside our tent one day, while camping, with nobody else around us. we ate roo for three days, done up in fancy restaurants and seared on the grill - lush and lean. never had a meat like it.

vegemite i can do without, though. blech.

[Bill Glasheen]

As a person trained in the life sciences, I feel a need to comment on one post here.

in china i had freshwater rice paddy eel. when i took a bite, i noticed there was a lot of orange gunk mixed in with the meat. the lady of the house i was staying in and i communicated through gestures, but it didn't take long for me to figure out that the orange bit was delicacy - the eel was pregnant.

the taste was bitter and bold. i gave half to the cat that was begging at my feet.

Let's start by talking about fish reproduction. If you've ever had tropical fish, you'll know that there are two different kinds of fish. A minority of fish species are of the "live birth" type. This would include guppies, swordtails, platties, and black mollies. Most fish species however are egg layers, which the male of the species fertilize out in the open water.

Freshwater eel
Long-finned eel, Anguilla reinhardtii
Short-finned eel, Antuilla australis
South Pacific eel, Anguilla obscura



Description
Freshwater eels become sexually mature at a wide range of ages, even as late as 96 years, at which time they migrate to the sea to breed and die.

To the best of my knowledge, all eel are egglayers. Some species can spawn as many as 2 to 10 million eggs.

When you eat fish eggs, they are generally retrieved from the belly of the live fish. Depending upon the culture, the species, and the venue, fish eggs are alternately called either roe or caviar. And both are considered delicacies.

Here is an example of small-grain fish roe that you'll find in a sushi restaurant. Note the orange color.



This is salmon roe, which my boys love. They like to pop the eggs in their mouths.



Here are four varieties of flying fish roe.



Here's a mix of caviar and fish roe.



As a teenager, I looked forward to stumbling on the egg sacks when cleaning salt water fish that I caught. Southerners tend to fry their roe, which IMO ruins it. But to each his own.

For the person with an eclectic taste in food, it's quite the delicacy.

The rest of the population still enjoys the eggs of another species.



- Bill