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Wackiest thing you've ever eaten


Zingano

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I ate some strange stuff as I child. My parents grew up in a rural area of Portugal. They raised their own livestock so they were used to eating almost every part of an animal. I remember eating chicken feet in rice. My mom hasn't made that in years, but I remember I liked to play with the feet as a kid.

Has anyone eaten brains (pig, cow, sheep)? Apparantly, my parents fed that to me as a child but I don't remember what it tastes like. I heard it tastes kind of like eggs.

The discussion about blood pudding reminded me of a Portuguese chicken and rice dish with blood-Arroz de Cabidela. It's tastes like "arroz con pollo" but the rice is black. It's actually very tasty. It's made with the meat and the blood drained from a freshly killed farm-raised chicken. The blood is mixed with vinegar and added to the stew. You can't make it with your supermarket Purdue chicken. It sounds kind of gruesome, I know. There are probably similar dishes in other countries like Spain, Italy or France. Has anyone had something similar?

I found a recipe in English on this page:

Weird Foods From Around the World

http://www.weird-food.com/weird-food-bird.html

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The guy that runs the vegetable stand in my little town has always got a big pot of really spicy boiled peanuts (basically they are boiled in Zatarain's crab boil with about 10 heads of garlic) going. He throws them in as lagniappe if you buy enough tomatoes and satsumas. I love those things.

Is that the one across from the Abita Brew Pub? I love that place.

OK, here's my list of extremities:

"Mannish water" (goat testicle & green banana soup in Jamaica) -- delicious

Whole snipe, complete with its innards on toast and the head split so you could scoop out the brains, at St. John in London -- delicious

Kangaroo, both fresh & jerky -- pretty good as long as it's cooked rare; apparently it toughens up quickly

Durian ice cream -- I get this every time I'm in Chinatown, and the counter person always says, "You have before?" and makes a face

Natto -- possibly the most horrible thing I've ever eaten

Duck tongues -- tough but tasty

Squirrel and possum -- both quite good

Mockingbird (highly illegal, I'm sure, but I used to have a starving artist friend who just about subsisted on fresh roadkill) -- faintly rancid

Nutria -- not bad, but awfully lean

And all the usual offal, pig parts of every description, odd sea creatures, coagulated blood in congee, thousand-year-old eggs, etc. etc., most of which I enjoyed thoroughly (though the blood had an unfortunate laxative effect).

Oddly, the thing I was most discouraged from eating was not an animal part at all, but a soup of fresh bamboo shoots at a Vietnamese restaurant in eastern New Orleans. The waitress told me repeatedly that I would not like it, that it was very stinky, that I would still have to pay for it if I couldn't eat it, and so forth. Of course all this made me perk up with curiosity, and I convinced her that I had to have it. It was very good, and didn't strike me as especially stinky or extreme in any way.

Things I want to try, because I am a fool:

Lutefisk

The "walking cheese" of Sardinia

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The discussion about blood pudding reminded me of a Portuguese chicken and rice dish with blood-Arroz de Cabidela. It's tastes like "arroz con pollo" but the rice is black. It's actually very tasty. It's made with the meat and the blood drained from a freshly killed farm-raised chicken.  The blood is mixed with vinegar and added to the stew. You can't make it with your supermarket Purdue chicken. It sounds kind of gruesome, I know. There are probably similar dishes in other countries like Spain, Italy or France. Has anyone had something similar?

I spent six months in Brazil and greatly enjoyed something called Frango em Molho Pardo -- literally "Chicken in Dark Sauce." The sauce was blood-based; perhaps it's a similar dish. I tend to be a little squeamish, but this dish was always very tasty.

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The discussion about blood pudding reminded me of a Portuguese chicken and rice dish with blood-Arroz de Cabidela. It's tastes like "arroz con pollo" but the rice is black. It's actually very tasty. It's made with the meat and the blood drained from a freshly killed farm-raised chicken.  The blood is mixed with vinegar and added to the stew. You can't make it with your supermarket Purdue chicken. It sounds kind of gruesome, I know. There are probably similar dishes in other countries like Spain, Italy or France. Has anyone had something similar?

I spent six months in Brazil and greatly enjoyed something called Frango em Molho Pardo -- literally "Chicken in Dark Sauce." The sauce was blood-based; perhaps it's a similar dish. I tend to be a little squeamish, but this dish was always very tasty.

Free-range supermarket chickens in Portugal come with a little bag of blood alongside the giblets so that you can make cabidela whenever you want! :biggrin:

In northeast Brazil Molho Pardo is also known as Cabidela.

Chloe

In the bloody (porky) rice capital of Portugal

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  • 4 months later...

Wow, I've got some nominees from the last several months.

Braised eel. (Shanghai)

Intestine tacos. (Juarez)

Breyer's No Sugar Added ice cream. (Home)

Yum on the 1st two, ick on the 3rd, so I guess that's the "wackiest" in terms of where it lies on the spectrum from food to non-food.

Miss Tenacity

http://tenacity.net

"You can't taste the beauty and energy of the Earth in a Twinkie." - Astrid Alauda

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Food Lovers' Guide to Santa Fe, Albuquerque & Taos: OMG I wrote a book. Woo!

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I had lunch at a Prehispanic restaurant recently in Mexico city. Highlights:

- Red ant eggs

- Mosquito eggs (crunchy!)

- Armadillo in a mango sauce

- Rattlesnake tacos

Only the rattlesnake was tasty, the Armadillo was very very tough meat. Apparently in some parts of Mexico, the Armadillo was prepared cooked in íts own blood and served in its shell...

Arley Sasson

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I had lunch at a Prehispanic restaurant recently in Mexico city. Highlights:

- Red ant eggs

- Mosquito eggs (crunchy!)

- Armadillo in a mango sauce

- Rattlesnake tacos

Only the rattlesnake was tasty, the Armadillo was very very tough meat. Apparently in some parts of Mexico, the Armadillo was prepared cooked in íts own blood and served in its shell...

Fly roe tacos are delicious!

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Hmm...I like eel but don't think of it as wacky.

I probably would like the intestine tacos. Were they filled with pig intestines?

Nah, you're right. The eel was fantastic and I was looking forward to it for days in advance. :laugh:

I would assume it was pig intestines - they were about 3/4 inch in diameter, and methinks a cow's would be far larger than that. We had one taco that had the intestines fried (so therefore crunchy) and one that was just sauteed. I preferred the latter, even though it was slightly chewy like bad calamari. The crispy variety you just couldn't tell what you were eating (just tasted like crispy mystery meat), so that detracted from the experience for me personally.

Miss Tenacity

"You can't taste the beauty and energy of the Earth in a Twinkie." - Astrid Alauda

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Food Lovers' Guide to Santa Fe, Albuquerque & Taos: OMG I wrote a book. Woo!

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  • 1 year later...

In the space of one week here in Denmark and Norway, I had sürstromming, the Swedish fermented herring mentioned earlier in this thread; rakørred, the Norwegian version, which is fermented trout; fried bee larvae; and smala hove, which is a Norwegian smoked-dried-boiled whole sheep head.

Sürstromming smelled, literally, like s..., with the intensity level of dead skunk. The taste was pure salt, with the experience of having the smell right under your nose.

Rakørred was much milder in smell, but this allowed the rotten taste to stand out, along with the slightly gluey texture.

The bee larvae were not unpleasant, kind of like bitty soggy cheetoes, or those tiny fried shrimps that are mostly dough, with a little off-meat taste.

The smallehoved tasted like very fatty bacon and was absolutely disgusting to look at and dissect, but a fabulous macho experience, if you want to play gustatory one-up-manship with your dining partner -- an eye for an eye, if you will.

I wouldn't go out of my way to eat any of these again, but it was fun to share these experiences with other people! And what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

Chris

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I think Filipinos would feel comfortable in this thread with our:

Diniguan - Blood Stew

Adidas - Grilled chicken feet

Betamax - Grilled blocks of blood

Balut - boiled duck egg (with complete embryo inside)

IUD bbq - Chicken intestines, skewered and grilled

Tokwat' baboy - fried tofu/pig's ear marinated in soy sauce, vinegar and garlic + onions

And my favorite - brain omelet (with crispy golden brown garlic)

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

The dark side... my own blog: A Box of Jalapenos

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The wackiest thing I've ever SEEN anyone eat.......I worked for a year in a very remote region of Papua New Guinea up near the West Irian border in the late 1960's. A lone and intrepid southern Baptist minister from Alabama (I think) opened a small tradestore to sell things like canned mackerel pike and bully beef to the locals, in the hope that they would come to his church.

He was bemused when the Heinz babyfood sold out in record time. I asked one of the 'customers' why. Yep, you guessed it, everyone believed that they were canned babies, a logical conclusion given that there was a photo of a fish on the can of mackerel and a cow on the tin of beef. Opinion was that they would gain the white man's 'know how' if consumed. I didn't have the heart to put them right.

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The wackiest thing I've ever SEEN anyone eat.......I worked for a year in a very remote region of Papua New Guinea up near the West Irian border in the late 1960's. A lone and intrepid southern Baptist minister from Alabama (I think) opened a small tradestore to sell things like canned mackerel pike and bully beef to the locals, in the hope that they would come to his church.

He was bemused when the Heinz babyfood sold out in record time. I asked one of the 'customers' why. Yep, you guessed it, everyone believed that they were canned babies, a logical conclusion given that there was a photo of a fish on the can of mackerel and a cow on the tin of beef. Opinion was that they would gain the white man's 'know how' if consumed. I didn't have the heart to put them right.

OOOF!!! That puts all the jokes about Girl Scout (UK - Girl Guide) cookies to shame!

And it brings up a converse story, told to me by a Japanese friend in New York. She had another Japanese friend who complained to her that the canned tuna in the United States tasted terrible. Turns out she couldn't read English well, and she'd been buying canned cat-food tuna. She thought the pictures of cats on the labels were the brand's logo. :blink:

SuzySushi

"She sells shiso by the seashore."

My eGullet Foodblog: A Tropical Christmas in the Suburbs

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I think Filipinos would feel comfortable in this thread with our:

Diniguan - Blood Stew

Adidas - Grilled chicken feet

Betamax - Grilled blocks of blood

Balut - boiled duck egg (with complete embryo inside)

IUD bbq - Chicken intestines, skewered and grilled

Tokwat' baboy - fried tofu/pig's ear marinated in soy sauce, vinegar and garlic + onions

And my favorite - brain omelet (with crispy golden brown garlic)

I don't know, all of that sounds pretty darn tasty to me epecially the "IUD BBQ"

I love how the grilled chicken feet are called "adidas" ....kinda fitting name for them. :raz:

BEARS, BEETS, BATTLESTAR GALACTICA
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I would have to say it was the fried green tomato hornworms I made a few summers back...

I was trying to search to find the thread I wrote about it two summers ago, but it appears to be gone... Actually several of my threads are gone. Why? Maybe I need to post something elsewhere...

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Yeah, you'd be getting a post from a Huli saying the wackiest thing he'd ever eaten was an Australian :raz:

Seriously, at that time kuru, which is a disease like CJD or mad cow disease was affecting one particular tribe badly, mainly the women, because they would eat certain portions of a just dead relative as part of the burial process.

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Wow, I found myself addictively reading and reading, and finally on page 4 I had to stop! lol

Weirdest thing I ever ate would have to of been pan fried calves brain. When I was at my first real cooks job at a country club, the chef (who recently passed away, rest his soul), yelled across the kitchen, "Hey Bradley, come here, I want you to try this!"

My thoughts were, "Oh Sh*t", and around to the chefs station I went.

There he was, breading up what looked to be flat balls of bread dough or something and placing them in a shallow pan of rendered pork fat. He cooked them till they were GBD (golden brown and delicious) and put it on a B & B plate for me.

I looked at him as if he were trying to kill me, he looked at me with an evil grin as if to say, "Go ahead Braaaaadleeeey, eaaat iiiit (in his best Egor impersination, lol), and then I did it. I popped it in my mouth annnnd... YUM!!

It was delicious! It had a pudding-like texture and the crunchy pork-laden panko crust made it all work together like some sort of overture. I hadn't had it since (kinda hard to find), but I would eat it again if I had the chance.

I think because of that day, I've always been drawn to the undesirable cuts (offal) like tripe, sweetbreads, tendon and the like. (I've had them all, though not as shocking to me as the brains!).

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Chef Bradley - brain torta (brain omelet with toasted garlic) is a favorite lunch dish my grandmother would serve us kids when I was growing up. My grandmother is chabacano (spanish/mexican influenced province in the Philippines). It is still my favorite and will fix it if I can find brain here in Korea.

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

The dark side... my own blog: A Box of Jalapenos

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Hey Doddie - mum used to give us kids crumbed brain sandwiches to take to primary (elementary?) school which were delicious and I swapped them with some success until it became known what the mystery ingredient was :shock:

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Insomniac - how can you swap something so delicious? I'd also eat brain torta as a sandwich as oppose to the perennial Filipino way of eating it with rice. Mmmm good stuff!

Doddie aka Domestic Goddess

"Nobody loves pork more than a Filipino"

eGFoodblog: Adobo and Fried Chicken in Korea

The dark side... my own blog: A Box of Jalapenos

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