Flashback Friday - Figckles

This post originally appeared on Minxeats.com on August 23, 2011.

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Recently, I picked up some fresh figs at the supermarket, and while I adore figs, I can never seem to get them all eaten before they start to spoil. In order to preserve them for a bit longer than the two days they're usually good for, I made a quick batch of pickles, based on the pickled cherry recipe mentioned here last week.

They turned out great, and worked really well as a sweet element to round out the flavors of a chicken salad sandwich. Granted, the sandwich was a little on the exotic side.

Figckles

3 tablespoons brown sugar

4 tablespoons fig or apple cider vinegar

1 branch fresh rosemary

six fresh figs, cut into halves

Bring brown sugar, vinegar, and rosemary to a boil. Add figs and cook about 5 minutes, using a spoon to baste figs with liquid. Remove from heat and pour figs and liquid into a glass container with a lid. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Eat within one week.

Chicken Salad Banh Mi

2 - 3 tablespoons mayonnaise

1/2 teaspoon Sriracha

1 teaspoon lemongrass paste

1 tablespoon finely minced cilantro

2 cups cooked chicken, cut or torn into chunks

2 scallions, white and some green part finely chopped

lime juice

salt and pepper 

Thai basil leaves

1 tomato, sliced

figckles

1 baguette, cut into 6" - 8" lengths

In large bowl, mix together 2 tablespoons of mayonnaise, Sriracha, lemongrass paste, and cilantro. Stir in chicken and scallions. If mixture is too stiff, add more mayo. Add lime juice, salt, and pepper to taste.

Arrange 2-3 tomato slices on a baguette. Top with chicken salad and figckles. Serves 2-3.

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Posted on Minxeats.com.

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?