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The most exotic food you have eaten traveling?


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One of the best things about travelling is the opportunity to try exotic food that can kill you or, at the very least, foster intimate and unwanted relationships between you and your toilet bowl. And if neither of those things happen you may end up experiencing the kind of sublime gastronomic experience that, for years after, has the mellow nostalgia of a once-passionate love affair.
Lonely Planet.com

So, what is the most exotic food that you have eaten when you were traveling? :rolleyes:

Of course, Tony Bourdain could say any number of things in response: the beating cobra heart, or perhaps, fugu ...

Melissa Goodman aka "Gifted Gourmet"

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femented shark and lambs testicals in Iceland washed down with Brennivan...or pizza in Florida

tracey

The great thing about barbeque is that when you get hungry 3 hours later....you can lick your fingers

Maxine

Avoid cutting yourself while slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold them while you chop away.

"It is the government's fault, they've eaten everything."

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I lived in the Caribbean for a few years and was served "manacou" for lunch one day which ended up being POSSUM (too many little bones). A week later, some young boys on the street were selling iguanas (NOT for pets). My friend ended up buying all of them and setting them free. I have to admit I am still curious about what they would have tasted like.

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some young boys on the street were selling iguanas (NOT for pets).  My friend ended up buying all of them and setting them free.  I have to admit I am still curious about what they would have tasted like.

A friend whose husband is from Central America says they taste like chicken!

SuzySushi

"She sells shiso by the seashore."

My eGullet Foodblog: A Tropical Christmas in the Suburbs

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Nothing really very thrilling for me. However, in terms of my personal scale of exoticism, I would have to say that my family's visit to my grandparents' house in Ireland, when I was twelve, rates very highly.

They had a big house on acres and acres of land, all divided into garden plots, some of which were kitchen gardens. I remember eating artichokes for the very first time in my life -- freshly picked, with mayonnaise my grandmother made herself. And potatoes -- potatoes with names. Once, my grandfather dug some potatoes and buried them in a fire where he was burning some garden waste; we knocked the charcoal off them as soon as they were cool enough, and ate them right there -- amazing! I also had blood pudding for the first (and last) time there. Not that I didn't like it, but I didn't like it enough to ever again go in search of something with so unappetising a name.

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Roasted songbirds on a skewer in an Indian restaurant in NYC. I t was an appetizer.

I'm a canning clean freak because there's no sorry large enough to cover the, "Oops! I gave you botulism" regrets.

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Crispy fried grasshoppers and beetles from a street vendor in Thailand. Intestine of unidentified animal also in Thailand, cooked up with a tasty sauce. Just kind of like slithery, firm pasta tubes. Also paddled in the river uprooting lotuses to make a fish and lotus stem soup that was delicious.

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In Laos I was offered fried spiders, snakes and beetles. :shock:

But I cannot tell a lie -- I didn't taste them. I just... couldn't bring myself to do it. :rolleyes:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime." -- Mark Twain

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One of the best things about travelling is the opportunity to try exotic food that can kill you or, at the very least, foster intimate and unwanted relationships between you and your toilet bowl. And if neither of those things happen you may end up experiencing the kind of sublime gastronomic experience that, for years after, has the mellow nostalgia of a once-passionate love affair.
Lonely Planet.com

So, what is the most exotic food that you have eaten when you were traveling?[...]

Perhaps bull's testicles at Shaul, a Yemenite restaurant in Tel Aviv (in 1977) or pig's intenstine soup at a Hakka restaurant in Seremban, Malaysia (in 1976). The pig's intestines are really no big deal for Chinese people or Chinese restaurants, though. And neither of those meals fostered unwanted relationships with the toilet bowl. :raz:

Michael aka "Pan"

 

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That would be the cow's foot soup I had in Belize. It was beyond gelatinous... actually in a phlegmatic category unlike any other food I've tasted. The small bits of meat in it were good - a bit like oxtail - but the texture was just too weird. Even Marie Sharpe's hot sauce didn't help but I did finish the bowl (and won't ever order it again).

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Goose feet in Hong Kong, oh and steamed goose blood (it was set like a jelly and quivered).

Martial.2,500 Years ago:

If pale beans bubble for you in a red earthenware pot, you can often decline the dinners of sumptuous hosts.

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hmm i've eaten some pretty adventurous food at home too.. just part of growing up chinese :raz: that kind of stuff would include, snake, cow's tongue, duck tongue, intestines and other various organs.... needless to say, they're not my favorite and i don't partake of those as an adult.

while travelling in singapore and malaysia i had some pretty interesting food. in malaysia i went to a place in kajang (sp?) that served satay skewers of different meats. not an adventure in itself but the adventure in it for me was the fact that you tell them the kind of meat you want, chicken, beef, etc, and they just bring u a plate of them without asking for the quantity you want. you eat what you can and they count the skewers of what you ate and then serve the rest to other people (!!!!) yuk. in singapore i went with a friend to a little hawker stand and tried the frog in a chili kind of sauce that was cooked in a clay pot (very good flavour but i don't care much for frog, esp since they used the whole frog yuk again), we had the stringray barbequed in a sambal/chili kind of paste, which was delicious... and also we had venison which was stirfried ... was pretty good but overall preferred the stingray.

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Forgot to mention the pigeon in some type of puff pastry that had a very cinnamony flavor at an Algerian restaurant in Paris.  It was quite good.

B'Stilla? B'Stia? A neighbor taught me to make it several years ago---and it's usually phyllo, lots of layers.

Though I did chicken out and make it with.....well, you know.

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To me, Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich is very exotic when I first travel to North America. :biggrin:

We usually put condense milk and chocolate sprinkle on our bread in Jakarta.

Chemically speaking, chocolate really is the world's perfect food. --Michael Levine, nutrition researcher

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Forgot to mention the pigeon in some type of puff pastry that had a very cinnamony flavor at an Algerian restaurant in Paris.  It was quite good.

B'Stilla? B'Stia? A neighbor taught me to make it several years ago---and it's usually phyllo, lots of layers.

Though I did chicken out and make it with.....well, you know.

Bastilla, basteeya, pastilla... numerous transliterations.

The addition of cinnamon is regional. The pastry is traditional warka (this also has several dfferent names) phyllo or spring roll wrappers are adequate substitutes if those are all you can find in the States.

In Algeria Bastilla has many variations.

I can be reached via email chefzadi AT gmail DOT com

Dean of Culinary Arts

Ecole de Cuisine: Culinary School Los Angeles

http://ecolecuisine.com

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To me, Peanut butter and Jelly sandwich is very exotic when I first travel to North America.  :biggrin: 

We usually put condense milk and chocolate sprinkle on our bread in Jakarta.

I know what you mean! :laugh:

I can be reached via email chefzadi AT gmail DOT com

Dean of Culinary Arts

Ecole de Cuisine: Culinary School Los Angeles

http://ecolecuisine.com

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