Strange Eats and Other Treats

Recently the Wenches were discussing strange foods we've tried, and more familiar foods that some of us love -- and some of us avoid like the very plague. There are strange foods such as sheep's heads, familiar foods like liver and onions and other nasty things that our parents may have foisted upon us in childhood (I'm not a fan of liver 'n onions!). Preparing food can be an art, eating an adventure -- though eating adventurously can provide authentic historical research now and then!

So here's a smorgasbord of some of the things we brave (or not so) Wenches have tried, enjoyed, endured, run from, or found absolutely squicky, as Mary Jo likes to say. 

Mary Jo Putney...

I've traveled to five continents, but I'm pretty much of a food wimp. The weirder foods all seem to be animal in origin, and they bring out my vegetarian tendencies. I won't eat cute little guinea pigs baked in clay, Peruvian style. Or anything with a face that looks back at me, though I'm enough of a hypocrite to enjoy a fish fillet. 
 
No ants dipped in chocolate, or offal, no matter how many interesting nutrients they might contain.  I avoid sushi since I have no interest in raw fish.  Or Cornish hens, who lie there with there little legs helplessly stuck in the air.  I'd never be able to manage the European custom of serving little songbirds! 
 
Here in Maryland, where the natives think it's good fun to spend an evening smashing steamed hard crabs with a hammer and picking out the edible bits, I confine myself to neutral crab cakes.  And let's not talk about soft crabs with their legs dangling from a bun!  I'll leave the real eating adventures to the more carnivorous among us. <g>  I might have starved in earlier days when a cook would use every part of a pig but the squeal.  Or much more likely, I would be a LOT less wimpy!  Our modern abundance of food gives us lots more choices, and the freedom to be picky."
  

Joanna Bourne…

I lived in France for a good many years.  Now, the French are widely famous for their, shall we say, laissez-faire attitude towards edibility. They have no silly prejudices about claws, shells or
exoskeletons and proceed to, as my husband puts it, 'eat their way through the food chain'.

Normandy, France. 
Imagine a pretty, middle-class restaurant overlooking the harbor. Open windows with curtains billowing in the warm breeze.  Into the scene steps the lithe, dark-eyed French waiter who looks like he's been sent along by Central Casting to play 'minor member of the Maquis who does something heroic.' He ceremoniously presents the specialty of the house. Fruits de mer.
Literally, 'fruits of the sea'. You know those critters that crawl about in tide pools and cling to the craggy, sea-splashed rocks of the intertidal zone? The ones you studied in Oceanography 101?
That's them. The fruits.

You must understand, I am more adventurous in spirit than in action. This is useful for a writer but inconvenient when confronted, in Real Life, with the results of ordering adventurously from the menu.

I had children to set an example for and the honor of America to uphold so I did not say, "Will you take all those beady little eyes and armoured carapaces back to the video game where they are playing Invading Horde of Evil Minions and bring me a nice fish?"

Instead I smiled and picked up a pointy metal stick just as if I knew what I was doing and said gaily, "Dig in, my chicks," and attacked my first periwinkle.

It is one of the sad truths of this sublunary world that unknown foods fall into three categories; (a) tastes like chicken, (b) tastes like rubber bands, or (c) where is my napkin so I can inconspicuously spit

this out? Periwinkles fall into the rubber band food group. Fortunately, this was France and they followed one of the basic lawsof classical French Cooking, i.e. -- 'Put it in garlic butter.'

I rather liked periwinkles when I stopped thinking about it.

Jo Beverley...

I care about taste and texture, but I'm not so squeamish as some other Wenches. It might be because the reality of meat was all around me when I grew up. Some butchers still had game, such as rabbit, hare, pheasant hanging outside, head, fur, feathers, feet etc. Chickens were sold with head and feet, and we children got the feet to play with. Pull the tendons and the feet contracted. The giblets were all inside, and I was fascinated by the tiny heart and liver, and the emptied stomach. Herring and mackerel needed to be gutted at home etc.

This would be the experience of most characters in our books and more so. They would have witnessed slaughter and in many cases killed some food animals themselves. If they did any cooking, they'd be dealing with dead bodies. Or even live ones at times.

Odd foods in the past. They used everything! I have recipes for stuffed cockscombs (and not the callow young men,) baked ox palate, giblet pie, and broiled cod sounds. Anyone know what bit this is? I couldn't find a definition, but the instruction "Preparatory to boiling cod's sounds, it is quite necessary that they should be soaked in milk and water for at least six hours" is ominous!

Nicola Cornick...
 
My biggest eating challenges have occurred in Scandinavia. I really don’t like eating anything that still has bones in, let alone with wings, claws, beaks and feathers still attached. On one memorable occasion we were in a restaurant in Iceland and the speciality of the day was gannet. I knew that in remote societies like St Kilda the gannet was the staple food for centuries and people would risk life and limb climbing down the cliffs to catch the birds and take the eggs from the nest, also risking a face full of half-digested gannet bile in the process. Apparently the St Kilda population developed prehensile toes over the centuries as a result of this way of life. Gannet, however, was not for me, nor was the puffin that was also on the menu that day. On another occasion, in Norway, I was offered reindeer steak with loganberry sauce but again I couldn’t accept, this time because I had sentimental visions of Christmas running through my mind. I could not eat Santa’s furry helpers!


Cara Elliott/Andrea Pickens...

I'm pretty adventurous with my body-I've climbed to 13,500 ft mountain peak, I've golfed in gale-force winds in Ireland, I've  mountain-biked down steep forest trails in the Alps. But when it comes to what I'll dare put in my mouth . . . well, call me a wimp.

I remember when I was little, my parents and their friend for some reason decided to have a party with really weird  and wacky food-you know, pickled grasshoppers, rattlesnake, chocolate-covered ants. I look one look and . . . ran for cover. Anything with identifiable body parts intact (chicken and turkey wings I can stomach) is not overly appealing. I'm semi-vegetarian (chocolate is a vegetable, right?)  so I dig right into risottos and quesadillas. But when it comes to more esoteric fare, like creatures with eyes, tails, spindly appendages, etc-my fork becomes a defensive weapon.

Which is too bad, because I've traveled to a lot of places where the cuisine has a lot of local color. In Scotland, haggis-a mixture of sheep's heart, liver and lungs minced with onion, oatmeal and suet, all cooked in a sheep's stomach-is a traditional staple of post-round golf dinners, served up with single malt scotch. I took a mulligan. French country cooking is delicious, but pig's feet and frog legs can take a hike, as far as I'm concerned. And on my recent trip to Marrakech, a popular snack was roasted sheep's head, displayed in a neat row. Brains were arranged in a neat little pile on the side for those who preferred a smaller nosh.  I decided on dried apricots and dates from the neighboring stall.

So what's the most exotic thing I've tried? I did venture to order wild boar in Switzerland. However it was a filet, and steak looks like, well, steak.

Patricia Rice...

I'm so very not a foodie that I'm not totally aware of what foods are historically accurate unless I look them up. But I do remember with great fondness my Irish grandmother's soda bread. I want fruit for breakfast and pasta or chicken with veggies for supper and anything cooked to death in heavy sauce is off the menu. But I do admire the historical ability to eat vast quantities of animal fat and not become obese and keel over into the eels!

Anne Gracie

Food fashions have changed dramatically in the past 50 years. My mother regularly ate sheep's brains. Loved them. Poached, fried, or on toast, usually. None of the rest of us would touch them. You used to see brains in the butchers, but not any more. Her generation regularly ate cuts like liver, brains, tongue, tripe, kidneys, sweetbreads, etc.  I can't bear the thought of eel, either, but my dad used to love it. He caught eels as a boy and ate them with relish. People in the past, rich or poor, ate a lot more of the animal than we do now — and a lot more animals.

I have a 1790 English cookbook that has recipes for pickling sparrows and fricasseeing larks and potting swans, of a sauce to go with boiled cock's combs, and a dish of lark's tongues (how tiny must they be?) Cod's heads were roasted and served with gravy, pigs ears and pigs cheeks made into a "ragoo" (ragoût) and calves foot made into puddings.

I think we're more squeamish these days about the cuts of meat, too. We grow up distant from the reality of the animal and only see nicely wrapped slices. And the names of cuts that are graphic, or the cuts that look very lifelike (eg tongue), have gone out of fashion. But I think all sorts of offal is coming back into fashion; certainly I've seen expensive restaurants serving it in various fancy dishes.

As for terrible meals, the worst meal I ever ate was fed to me by a very poor old woman we'd stayed with (someone's relative.) All our meals with her up to that point had consisted of bread and cheese, or soup, or beans. For our departing breakfast she made us what she obviously thought would be a real treat — cubes of pork fat fried in olive oil! I remember choking it down with polite murmurs of appreciation and afterward we sat in a bus that hurtled and bounced down a never-ending twisty mountain road. We grimly held onto our meal. LOL.

Susan Fraser King...

Like Joanna Bourne, I had a similar experience in France when I encountered a big fish on my plate in a Parisian restaurant. Whole. Tail, fins, eyes. The thing was practically bigger than its platter. I'm squeamish about flesh foods to start with and couldn't even begin to dig in and fillet that thing. It was crusted in herbs and covered in butter, but it was ... looking at me. Or not, since it was cooked. The very nice waiter took it back, got it all sliced up and transformed into nicely anonymous protein, and I ate a little of it. But, having seen the poor victim of my meal in the flesh, so to speak -- I didn't eat fish for a long time after that!

Being a writer of many Scottish-set novels, I've tried lots of Scottish foods, including haggis. Most people who haven't tried it think it has to be pretty nasty, though it's actually not bad at all. I did try it years ago, but now that I don't eat meat, I've lost my haggis eligibility. My husband loves haggis, which is hard to come by in these parts except at Burns Suppers held by our Scottish friends, so any haggis that's on my plate on those January evenings I gladly pass over to him.

And if you've a taste for pastries, there's little to top a high Scottish tea for the comfort factor of sweets and carbs, with the accompanying pastries, scones and goodies (and a true high Scottish tea includes sausages and heartier fare as well as pots and pots of steaming hot tea!). As for historical Scottish foods, I'll stick with porridge and oatcakes, salmon and soups, and not even think about that peculiarly Highland delicacy: raw oats mixed with fresh blood tapped from the nearest cow.

Now that we've possibly spoiled your breakfast, lunch or dinner with our food ramblings, let us know some of your favorite strange foods -- what have you tried, what do you love, and what would you never, ever touch? 

Susan

Comments

[Patricia Rice]

After reading this discussion, I'm so obviously a food wimp, that I have to throw in my husband's tendency to attempt exotic foods, like the stuffed octopus he had in Turkey. He wanted to take a picture of it rather than eat it.

Personally, I can't tell the difference between haggis and liver. Blech.

[maryjoputney]

LOL! I'd much rather take the picture of the stuffed octopus than eat it. *G* Great fun, Susan. I'm glad to know that I have Wenchly company in my food wimpiness. Maybe being writers makes it too easy to imagine our food alive. *G*

[NinaP]

I stand with you Prof. Pat~

I come from a long line of native Marylanders who adore the tradition of breaking open a crab and having at it. Sucking the meat from the claws, licking away those little fleshy tidbits which come when the fins are yanked out. Then comes the ripping open of the body, and scooping out the entrails ("mustard") and pushing aside the lungs to get at the "good parts.”

When I was in seventh grade, I did an award winning Science Fair project on the life cycle of the Maryland blue crab. I never touched another crab, again.

And my grandmother... she loved liver and onions. To me, eating liver is akin to eating the oil filter on your car. I guess I just know too much about how bodies work.

This is probably why I am a food wimp. If the item(s) on my plate represents its native form in any way, I'm gone. Without doubt, I’d never make it in Regency England, though I am jealous of people who will eat anything.

[Linda Banche]

When I was a kid, people made fun of me because I always trimmed the fat off meat. They thought the fat was the best part. Well, they could have mine! I'm not crazy about taking bones out of anything either. And I don't like fish of any kind. If it comes out of the water, I hate it. People would wonder why I didn't like lobster. Apparently, according to them, I was supposed to like it because it's expensive. Huh?

[liz m]

One of the best group posts ever - I snorted at 'put it in garlic butter'.

Spouse always had reindeer in Sweden and says it's quite good - that was one I balked at.

I'm surprised at how many don't like the bones on their meat - what about ribs? BBQ ribs are a reason for living!

[Jill Q.]

I'm a pretty adventurous eater, but then so are my parents so I was given lots of opportunity.
I ate octopus and squid as a child in Italy and really, after eating tentacles (these were not fried or covered in breading) nothing is too scary.
I even ate baby pickled octopus at a Japanese restaurant. That one grossed a lot of people out.
I'm not only an omnivore, but I also eat all of the "cute animals" that many Americans don't eat. :-) When I was in Spain, my host mother's daughter was making a special meal for the family and she hesitated to make rabbit and offered to make hamburgers instead.
My host mother said proudly "Don't worry about Jill! She eats everything."
I have to admit I would pause before trying some of things the Wenches faced. Maybe not out of fear, but puzzlement. I try not to eat things that are tricky to take apart. You see I'm a brave eater, but not a neat one.
Also, the one thing I truly hate? Mayo. I just can't stand it or anything with it.

[Sherrie Holmes]

Sherrie, here. I'm glad to see there are others who don't like bones in their food. I could never be a vegetarian because I love meat too much, but I always try to buy boneless meats. If it does have a bone, the first thing I do when I take it out of the oven is separate the meat from the bone and gristle.

One of my biggest food blechs is to bite into a nice juicy hamburger and find a bone chip in it. This often happens when you buy cheap hamburger.

I used to be more daring in my youth. I'd try anything once, like the canned rattlesnake (one bite on a cracker). And yes, Joanna, it tasted like chicken. But now that I'm older, I am much more discerning in my food choices. As a very young child, I loved liver and onions. Now I won't touch it. Nina, I laughed at your likening L&O to eating an oil filter.

I have a very good sense of smell, and hence a very good sense of taste. By taste and by smell I can tell when milk is getting ready to turn bad or when meat is on the point of turning. Once I open a container of food, I write the date on the label, to avoid guessing when I opened the milk or the salad dressing or the jar of jam.

[Susanna Fraser]

We live near an ethnic grocery store. The owners are Vietnamese, I believe, but they try to cater to all the major immigrant communities in this part of the city, so they have a whole range of Asian and Hispanic foods. I often go there because it's convenient and has better prices on staples than the chain groceries. Not to mention they sometimes have red bean paste flavored mochi (Japanese ice cream), which is delicious. But they also sell every part of the animal but the squeal, and I find those packages of tongues, sweetbreads, etc. at once fascinating and offputting.

The most adventurous things I've ever eaten were haggis and lamb fries (i.e testicles breaded and fried--my husband's relatives own an Italian restaurant in Krebs, OK, where they're a specialty). The haggis was bland and the lamb fries tasty but with an odd, squishy texture.

[Jo Beverley]

Jo here. I should mention that I really like tongue. My mother used to cook an ox tongue sometimes, which was off-putting simply because it's so huge. Made me realize how much of a tongue is out of sight.

Another odd one is yeast. Sometimes my mother would buy baking yeast -- it came in waxy cakes back then -- and we'd nibble on it on the way home. B-vitamins, I suppose, but I liked it. No, we didn't explode.

Jo

[Laura Vivanco]

Nowadays you can get vegetarian haggis. Macsween do a really good one: http://www.macsween.co.uk/product-range/vegetarian

[Susan King]

Ah, now I'm remembering other squicky foods - my grandmother was French, and sometimes made frogs' legs. They tasted like delicate, moist little chicken wings. And escargot, too -- icky texture, but once you got the buggers out of there, they mostly those tasted like ... gooey garlic butter.

Susan

[Meoskop]

Susan - I had completely forgotten frog's legs! My grandmother used to take to a place where she ordered them for me - after she died (I was very young) I wanted to go there but my mom told me it was just very tiny chicken, not really frog. We never went there and the place has since closed, but I think it really was frog since my mother was freaked out by the thought of eating such a thing and she couldn't stand her mother in law!

(Hey, I had no idea you can sign in with Twitter. I learned something today. Liz M is now Meoskop, thanks to the wonder of cross platforming....)

[Virginia C]

My grandmother was the greatest cook ever, but she did let me down one time in a quite memorable manner. Chitterlings. AKA "Chittlins". Pork intestines! Well-cleaned, seasoned and boiled. EGAD! EWWWWW! I was just a kid. I left my house and hid. It took the dogs to find me. Chittlins never even mentioned again in my house!!!

[Andrea Penrose]

I have a feeling this could be a long, ongoing conversation! How funny to see we share so many food "allergies"—eyes, wings, bones and other appendages being tops on the list.

Sherrie, I prefer what meat I eat to be boneles too. Ribs and wings just don't interest me. And fishy little fishy like anchovies make me gag. Hate 'em!

[Louis]

In my younger days I ate a variety of foods...

Had squirrel, rabbit,'possom (very greasy),Liver and onions (DW won't cook itnow).

Also had dear, elk, used to get a sandwich meat made of all sorts of miscellaneous parts of the cow...senior moment on the name.

I'm usually ready to try most anything in the way of edibles...at least once.

I like haggtis.

[Jenny]

Black pudding is one of my favourites. My husband turns pale at the thought but my son joins me in eating it. Also frogs legs in garlic sauce are great along with steak and kidney (with the amphasis on the kidney) pie. We kill our own beast and still use as much as possible, including tongue, kidneys and ox tail. However our family are country through and through, and my son laughs at his city bred friends who can't even contemplate eating anything too mysterious.

[Julie]

I am absolutely a food wimp. I eat my meat boneless. On my first date with my husband-to-be he ordered fish and then had to cover the head with his napkin so I wouldn't have to look at it.

Then several years ago we were in Nice and I ordered fish. It came whole. I did manage to eat some of it, and it was actually the tastiest fish I ever had.

[Andrea Penrose]

Black pudding? The mere mention makes me shudder.

[Susan/DC]

Like a number of other posters, I've developed an inability to eat something that is clearly a creature or body part -- no soft shell crabs, whole fish, tongue, or whatever. This did not bother me when I was younger, but I've become far more sensitive now and I don't know why.

However, one of the most disgusting foods I've ever eaten was durian, a fruit popular in Vietnam. I heard the smell compared to a Stilton cheese that's been buried for 2 weeks and then dug up, and that doesn't begin to describe it. As Americans we were told to try durian ice cream, as the cold and the milk dilute the flavor, but I could only manage one bite. My youngest son was far more adventurous and finished his entire durian milk shake, but he managed to burp up the smell the rest of the day, much to everyone else's disgust.

[Susan/DC]

P.S. Forgot to mention that when I was growing up liver and onions was a frequent dinner dish. I didn't like it but didn't hate it. However, I resented it deeply because it smelled so good. I always felt somehow cheated that I'd walk in the door from school and get excited by the wonderful smell, only to be told it was liver and onions and be disappointed.

[Sue]

I am amazed at the number of wenches that are food wimps! I would have thought that the creative instincts would make you all curious and adventurous. I (and my family) will eat anything. At The Fort just outside Denver you can get a sampler platter of unusual foods: elk tongue, buffalo balls (yes the testicles), bison, rattlesnake and Quail eggs. It was all good. I grew up with liver and onions, tripe, pigs trotters, and tongue all of which are hard to get now in the sterile grocery stores. I suspect we are still eating them but well disguised in hamburger meat!
If our family has a favourite meal it's roast lamb and we always do it for Christmas Day and Easter.

[dining tables]

I read the article and it was very funny. I had a great time reading it. Although some of those food are not familiar to me. I love your blog.

[deniz]

What a great discussion! I don't mind trying new stuff, though I'd probably squeal and moan in the face of bugs and worms, but I generally handle meat better than those dubious fruits of the sea. Give me a haggis or blood pudding any day and "keep nasty" rubbery things, as Gollum might say.

[Jana]

I guess I'm in good company with my food wimpiness! I can tolerate my meat with bones... once it is cooked wings and ribs don't bother me at all, however, put anything with eyes in front of me and I'll run the other way! Last year some friends of ours splurged and bought some fresh (read living) lobster and invited us for dinner. I'd never tried lobster before and was interested in doing so as you hear so much about how wonderful it is. When that poor creature ended up on my plate, staring up at me with its ridiculous little beady eyes and I had to find a way to get the darn thing open and then eat it, I realized that I am truly a huge food wimp! Then there were the instructions on what colours to avoid once inside... My husband ended up eating two lobsters and he doesn't even like seafood!

[Pam Rosenthal]

Posting late on this. Gosh, I am surprised by all the food wimpiness here. See I'm Jewish, and there are 2 kinds of Jewish people re food: the ones who take the Kosher stricture on shellfish seriously, and the secular ones who take it as the Eleventh Commandment -- thou MUST eat it, the weirder and more martian the better (a friend says that shrimp in lobster sauce was probably invented for Jewish people eating out in Chinese restaurants on Christmas and wanting a shellfish twofer). I love sushi too -- as one SF Bay Area writer put it, it's a food with a learning curve, so techies especially like it. If I'd stayed a techie long enough to get good at Java programming, maybe I'd be eating sea urchin by now. Everybody has their limit, I guess.

[Ranurgis]

I'm not terribly adventurous as far as foods go. Maybe it's because there seem to be a lot of things that irritate my skin, nauseate me or actually make me ill.

While I was living in France, I came up against a few of them. I managed to at least try a snail with garlic and other herbs and it was quite good. There were somethings which I declined immediately: rabbit brains, live oysters (especially after hearing that the girl that was au pair in the family I was with before me, vomited prolifically when she found out what she had eaten,) and eel (certainly not after I saw it "draining" beside the back door). I don't mind trying new fruits and vegetables, but I'm not at all keen on tasting things that once moved on their own. I've no doubt that in totally meat-eating countries I'd end up starving.

[Ranurgis]

Reading the post brought back some memories--and the recent past. I've never minded liver and onions; in fact, I often used to order them when I ate out. However, I really can't remember when I had them last, probably some time before my mother had to go to a nursing home. She also used to make kidneys when she bought meat from a butcher's instead of a grocery store, and that was definitely over 40 years ago.

I don't mind bones too much really, except that my right hand is very painful most of the time. Then it can be very tedious to get them out.

I have a special aversion to hare and rabbit, also dating back to my time in France. I was shopping in the village with madame when she bought the rabbit. She brought it home carrying the skinned carcase by the legs. That really put me off. A few years later I saw WEEK END (1967) by Jean Luc Godard. If you haven't seen this film, I certainly can't describe it to you. However, in it a skinned rabbit carcase is associated with a murder. That was the last straw for me and rabbit meat. I tried it once more while traveling in France with a friend; it made me ill. Anyway, I'm glad I'm not the only food wimp here.

[Meoskop]

I just finished Bourdain's new book, and I must tell you the first chapter beats anything here by a mile. My toes curled. And yet, I recommend it. Some of our favorite heros/heroines probably ate the rare meal Bourdain details.

My toes may never uncurl, tho.

[piper]

Wow, I'm late, and it's been so long since I was on here but I just had to add to the discussion!

Weirdest foods ever eaten? I was out to dinner with some Chinese friends in celebration of "Grandma's" 90th birthday. Grandma sat beside me (she speaks not a work of English other than "chicken") and she served me soup and dressed it up for me. How can you refuse the guest of honour who is so delighted to have you present? So I ate. What was it? Fish gut soup. Not exactly the best soup I've ever had.... There were some other delightful dishes that I enjoyed more.

I was in a traditional Quebecois restaurant in Old Quebec, and was served pigs feet. Didn't like it at all, in fact was sick in the bathroom - but that wasn't because I was disturbed by the thought of it, but it just didn't agree with me.

I don't like organ meat. Kidneys and livers filter toxins and the thought of consuming that - oil filter doesn't begin to describe them.

I'm a prairie girl, so I don't care for sea foods. I have tasted lobster and don't understand the fuss. I like shrimp but don't care for fish. I hate finding bones in fish, but am fine with bones in meat.

One reason I think we no longer see brain, head cheese etc in the stores is because of Mad Cow disease. No one wants to deal with that issue, so it is easier not to have the tissue in the stores.