Embarking on a Gastronomical Noah's Ark
Whenever you meet a new person, there is always a brief informal interview to ascertain whether or not you would be much disquieted by this person's disappearance into the ethereal void. You each ask a series of seemingly trivial questions that will determine your ongoing level of acquaintanceship. Typically, this begins in the manner of "How are you?" or "How do you do?" Although you're both subconsciously aware neither of you really has much concern for the other person's intimate well-being at this point in the conjunction, you waltz through the usual social more dance. The rest of the basic idiosyncrasies of one's miserable being are laid out sequentially in no particular order: where you're from, your profession, your studies, your family, the size shoe you wear, and so on and so forth. Once you've awkwardly meandered your way through this meaningless part of the interaction, you begin your affable interrogation. This is a significant milestone in your newfound alliance; this is where you ask the questions that really matter.
These questions vary significantly by person. Some people are interested in learning your political affiliations (nowadays this is the equivalent of trying to figure out whether you're willing to commit manslaughter), others may be interested in hearing about your hobbies (such as horse breeding, canary falconry, or ghost hunting). While these questions may lead to satisfactory answers for the glue-sniffing layman, I, for one, resort to an inquiry of higher intelligence: what is the strangest food you've eaten?
If I were to ask this question from a non-North American standpoint, then I would be forced to include answers like root beer and corn dogs. Answers which are relatively weird in all honesty. But as a red-blooded American, I'm looking for something more alluring that deep-fried hotdogs in the form of vein-clogging popsicles (wait no, that's pretty exotic).
The "Weirder" The Better
I don't mean to come off as culturally insensitive when I refer to the foods of other cultures as "weird." Other cultures' foods aren't necessarily weird, so much as they are different. But we need to be honest, that when coming from certain cultures, the first thing we very well exclaim when coming into contact with a food like balut may very well be "That is weird as hell."
Case in point, balut (not the bear that sings "The Bare Necessities") is a popular street food across Southeast Asia, particularly in the Philippines. What it is, is "a fertilized developing egg embryo that is boiled and eaten from the shell." Basically, it's a semi-formed duckling fetus that you eat whole. If you didn't just exclaim "That is weird as hell." Pat yourself on the back, you culturally sensitive paladin of the masses. For the rest of you, please climb down from your high horses and other tall equines, and join me in relishing in our cultural callousness.
With that said, I'm not going to NOT try it. That's the whole point of "weird" foods; they are completely peculiar from my own usual culinary repertoire. These strange foods often have brilliantly colorful and interesting historical backgrounds that tell a tale of the culture from whence they came. Thus, when I think about "weird" foods, I find that the stranger they are, the more interesting their origin.
Granted a lot of odd foods originated from the oldest form of creative motivation: hunger. The same way that medium-security prisoners will pour you a fine vintage of pruno, people around the world have been devising new ways of consuming things for millennia; we create from a place of necessity. Take the variety of dishes created during the Great Depression or any meals I whipped up freshman year of college. They're not pretty, but they're edible.
A superbly gut-wrenching tale of digestible horror that arose from desperation is that of hákarl, the national dish of Iceland. The process is about as coarse as it gets. First a Greenland shark is gutted and beheaded, then placed into a shallow grave where it is left to ferment in its own bodily fluids, including ammonia and uric acid, for a few months. The tomb of the Nordic Jaws is exhumed, then the fetid corpse is dried for several months. If this doesn't scream desperation, I don't know what does (except maybe Limp Bizkit's supposedly upcoming album). Hákarl was described by Anthony Bourdain as "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing" while Gordon Ramsay couldn't even swallow it when he tried it. I can't think of a better marketing campaign. How could I not want to try it?
Some, however, are invented by pure dumb luck. For example, surströmming. You've most likely heard of this dish from the litany of juvenile YouTube videos depicting some sucker desperately attempting to open a can of it without emptying their stomach (a process that often goes unsuccessfully). If there is any dish that proves that humanity is actually just a cosmic joke, it must be fermented herring. Legend says that a handful of miserly Swede sailors in the 1500s found their barrels of herring had gone rotten on route to Finland. In a skinflint attempt at making back some gas money for the trip home, they sold the barrels to the locals anyways. Call it a fluke (herring actually) or blame the Finns for burning away their taste buds with grain alcohol, when the Swedish sailors returned, they found they had more customers for their spoiled fish. Not ones to be one-upped by the Finns, the Swedes threw back a few of the fish themselves and found them quite tasty. And so surströmming was born. I'm not convinced that Scandinavians' tongues aren't vestigial.
Farm to Table to Mouth
Like some zoological Hannibal Lecter, I pride myself on my continuing curiosity of consuming everything that has walked, swam, flown, or stumbled upon this green earth (excepting people... but if we get stuck on a deserted island, I can make no promises). Part of the splendor of living in a world with such a vast variety of abundant species, is that so many of them are absolutely delicious. Thus, I find it our dietary duty as the species at the top of the food chain (I arrogantly announce until I stumble into a studio apartment filled with grizzly bears) to attempt to try eating as many (edible) creatures as possible. Within reason of course, I'm not going out of my way for an endangered gorilla burger topped with tiger bacon.
Personally, I've ventured decently far into this carnivorous campaign. My individual list of consumed animals counts among it the classics of American farm animals such as cow (steaks, burgers, tripe, blood sausage, liver), pig (bacon, ham, chicharrons, sausage, various charcuteries), chicken, duck, turkey, goat, lamb (including my favorite Scottish dish of haggis), horse, and rabbit. Growing up coastally, I've plunged significantly into Poseidon's kitchen with its fares of lobster, crab, oysters, clams, mussels, slew of fish, octopus, squid, and caviar.
Right away, I would argue this is a pleasantly diverse list of predacious achievement. Fortunately, I've also had the pleasure of trying other interesting meats including deer (perhaps not so interesting for my other Mainahs), ostrich, bison, frog, snail, and eel. For some, these meats aren't quite noteworthy, but for many North Americans, I've just placed myself on a list of people never to invite to supper (or definitely to and to get me to try something new).
Dish It Out
While the concept of eating every kind of animal certainly is one that intrigues me, I'm far more enticed by the preparation of the sundry of meats I've just listed (and the numerous other ones I haven't). Eating a weird meat that has been prepared improperly isn't interesting whatsoever, it's simply a vulgar knockoff of Fear Factor. For a dish to be palatable physically and psychologically, it deserves to be cooked the right way. And the "right way" is a superbly subjective term. Every culture has its own versions of dishes from other places; it's the little idiosyncrasies of how the dish has been cooked that interest me.
Traditional foods and dishes are, to me, the finest way to experience someone's culture. They're the result of decades, if not centuries, of culinary effort. They are the recipes your grandmother's grandmother's grandmother created. They reflect a sense of history, a sense of deeper meaning to culture. So, when I travel to a new country, not only do I want to eat that nation's traditional foods, I want traditional recipes cooked traditionally. I don't want O'Sullivan's Irish-Style Tortas (though that actually sounds sweet), I want your abuelita's tortas whose recipe came directly from Pancho Villa's own abuelita herself. A good traditional dish comes not from the kitchen, but from the heart (I mean literally it comes from the kitchen, but you catch my drift). Food is meant to carry with it more than just nutrition; it's a biography of one's culture.
Some people unfortunately can't seem to nail this concept into one of the dozens of lonely braincells that have cached themselves away in that desolate vacuum they name their gray matter. They see dishes that confuse them, and because the cymbal-clapping monkey in their subconscious has ceased banging away, they asininely rebuff any attempts at trying something new. This behavior infuriates me. If you come to my house and I labor away on a pot of menudo, I wholly expect you to at least try it (admittedly I would never cook menudo for someone I wasn't sure would try it... also I've never cooked menudo, so I'll have to add that one to the "to cook" list). If I come to your house for dinner and you present me with a plate of fluffernutter sandwiches (peanut butter and marshmallow fluff for those of you without a wholesome New England upbringing), I'm going to gladly sit and eat them (but then I'll go light off M-80s in your toilet for having the nerve to serve me some Boston schoolkid's lunch for dinner).
One dish that may elicit a gag out of some would be snails. For the average paint chip eating American, the idea of some Frenchman decked out in beret and striped shirt ordering "escargots" might elicit a braindead chuckle. At first glance snail meets all the requirements of "strange." They're slimy bug-like sentient phalluses that spend their lives with their own home attached to them. However, once you've eaten snail, it becomes a bit lackluster (albeit utterly delicious). Escargots are the classic French way to serve snails. The snails are cooked in garlic butter and served with herbs such as parsley. The snails themselves actually have very little flavor and the luscious taste of the dish derives from what they're cooked in. If anything, it's the texture of the snail that makes them so off-putting. But this dish is a case of expertly preparing an otherwise curious meat. If your concept of eating snails is to throw them in a pot of boiling water then call it a day, it's no wonder that you would have no desire to try them.
Well Done
For a food-centered post, that's a pretty clever concluding heading.
What am I trying to say in these ever long ramblings? Try some new foods. Every time you're presented with the opportunity to eat something weird, do it. What do you have to lose? Oh you don't like the taste? Then don't keep eating it, nitwit. You don't have to Stockholm Syndrome yourself into eating everything. But at least give it a try. Worst case scenario you find that it "tastes icky." Best case scenario you've just discovered that pan-fried tarantula is your new favorite snack (odds are slim admittedly).
And if you have some cool recipes from your culture, please share them with me. Or cook for me. I entertain you. That's got to be worth something tasty.
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