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Thursday, May 13, 2010

Weird/Strange/Odd Food

Andrew Zimmern recently won a James Beard award for being a "TV Food Personality." Zimmern, as you may or may not know (or care about), is the host of Bizarre Foods, on the Travel Channel. He makes his money eating weird stuff like tarantulas, dung beetles, and fermented shark. That's a little too edgy for me - I'll stick to "average" weird edibles, like scrapple and squid.

Of course, one man's weird is another man's normal, and vice versa. While I wouldn't blink at eating a nice chunk of kishka (blood sausage), someone else might get queasy at the mere thought of it. Like you random vegetarian readers. Rest assured I feel the same way about brown rice and lima beans.

I've eaten abalone, alligator, beef tendon, blood sausage, buffalo, carambola, chicken feet, crawfish, cuttlefish, dragon fruit, duck tongues, eel, foie gras, frog's legs, gjetost, goat, huitlacoche, jellyfish, kidneys, liver, octopus, ostrich, quail, rabbit, salicornia, scrapple, shark, snails, squid,
sweetbreads, turtle soup, venison, and wild boar. Pretty tame stuff compared to what Zimmern eats on a regular basis, nor is it quite like the infamous warthog anus-eating of Anthony Bourdain, but still weird to a lot of middle Americans. I haven't yet tried tripe, or Rocky Mountain oysters, but they're on the list. And the "bullwhack" from Hunan Taste is intriguing, although this Serious Eats article makes it seem like it's not worth the effort.

Ordinarily I'll try anything once. However, I'm not sure if I'd be willing to try live lobster. (Not too long ago, I wouldn't eat raw fish at all, much less raw fish that was still alive.) Other things you won't find me eating: balut, live shrimp, cockroaches and other creepy-crawlies. And lima beans. What about you? What will you never ever eat? What oddities are you willing to try?

9 comments:

  1. I LOVED huitlacoche when I had it in a salad the first time I visited Mexico City in 1999. Not easy to find here. Impossible for me to find fresh. May have to grow corn myself to get corn blight.

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  2. I've found cans of Goya brand huitlacoche at the Shoppers on Joppa Road in Perring Plaza.

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  3. Just about anything, if I'm confident it's going to be good. But the one thing I'm refusing forever is that fertilized egg thing. ... Oh, and human flesh.

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  4. Extra for follow-ups, since the checkbox didn't appear the first time.

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  5. I've eaten enough cuticle in my day to add "human" to the list. Skin, at least.

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  6. Liver (as in liver and onions, one of my mother's favorites) and lima beans. I'll eat other kinds of liver, though. Fois gras, for ecample.

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  7. I tried calves' liver once. It wasn't as bad as I anticipated, but I don't need to ever eat it again. Foie gras, on the other hand - bring it on!

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  8. I'm pretty much up for anything. We did try cooking "Rocky Mountain oysters" once but apparently didn't know what we were doing as they were quite leathery (and looked like what they were). I actually like all the weird pork parts like head cheese (souse), chitlins, pigs feet, etc. I've enjoyed sweet breads, calves brains, all kinds of liver (esp. foie gras and other pates) and any kind of raw and cooked seafood I've yet to encounter. Tripe is yummy in menudo and pretty good served cold marinated in hot mustard as a Chinese appetizer. Even though we can get all the pig parts here in VA (and you're close enough to the South to find the same, Minx) it's unfortunate that blood and tongue loaf is not a featured lunchmeat here as I love it!

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  9. You couldn't pay me to eat geoduck.

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