FOOD!!A word that comes with many emotions such as fear, anxiety, sadness, and joy. For some, the mere thought of food makes them break out in a sweat, or miraculously gain 10 pounds!!! For others, it is a means of nutrition or survival, while some see it as comfort food, joyous, and sometimes addictive. If you’re like me then you simply enjoy eating and are always searching for something new to try while still enjoying those foods that have already found a way to your heart…..rather stomach! My time in the Air Force has allowed me to travel and experience many different cultures around the world, and of course, trying the local food was always on the menu! I have put together a list of some of the strangest foods that I have either come across and tried or just said:“Hell No”!!!The question is: Would you try it????
Because I love to start the day off with a good cup of coffee, let the first one be about coffee, or rather the bean! This is just not any coffee bean, but the world’s most expensive coffee bean! A pound of this coffee can run you around $600, or up to $100 a cup, and I am talking the small Espresso type cups! The coffee is known asKopi Luwak, and it stems from Indonesia. What makes this coffee so special is that the process of getting the coffee involves an animal known as aPalm Civet.Most think that the civet is cat-like in appearance but in actuality, they are more closely related to themongoose. The creature roams the forests at night, eating ripe coffee cherries and thenexcreting the partially digested coffee beans.The excreted matter (Mostly beans) is then gathered by the locals, cleaned with water, and then roasted. Thus, Kopi Luwak coffee is born. It is also known ascivet cat coffee or cat poop coffee.To answer your question, Yes, I have had a cup (Once, before I knew the truth). A group of us were out site seeing when one of them (Bob) suggested a coffee, said he is buying. We of course said yes. The first shocker was the size of the cup and then the second was the taste. It wasn’t that it was bad but it wasn’t what I expected. When Bob asked me what I thought of the coffee I told him it tasted like shit and was weak! He busted a gut laughing and told us that’s what we were drinking! Shit Coffee!!!Kopi Luwak Coffee - World's Most Expensive Coffee Beans from Civet Poop or an Urban Myth?$21.18 USD
Cheese! What can I say, I love, love, love cheese and I have tried many types of cheeses, including that nasty-smelling Belgian cheese known as Limburger. Once you get past the smell it’s quite pleasant. However, the cheese I want to tell you about today is considered to be the deadliest cheese in the world and is banned from being produced and sold!!! (by the way, this is definitely a HELL NO!) If you haven’t already guessed (or googled it)I am talking aboutCasu Martzu!It translates to rotten or putrid cheese and is made exclusively in Sardinia. Like other cheeses in the Pecorino family, it starts off with Sheep’s milk and is allowed to fermentate.(By the way, Did I mention that it contains live maggots!!)Once the fermentation process is complete, the cheese, with the help of a cheese fly that lays its eggs in the cheese, is left to decompose. During this process, the larvae/maggots eat the cheese and then excrete the cheese giving it a soft, gooey, and liquidy texture.
NOTE:Casu Martzu is considered by theSardinian aficionadosto be unsafe to eat when the maggots in the cheese have died.
So that means you have to eat the cheese while the maggots are still alive and wiggling, squirming, and moving.
NOTE:Sardinia people live the longest-there are approximately 10 times more centenarians per capita than in the United States.
NOTE:As of 2019, the illegal production of this cheese was estimated at 100 tons per year, worth 2-3 million Euro on the black market.
When it comes to eggs we have several different options to choose from. The most widely used is chicken eggs, but that is not our only choice. You can also enjoy eggs from turkeys, quail, emu, pheasant, goose, hilsa, ostrich, and let’s not forget duck and caviar eggs. Of course, every culture has there own little twist on how to eat and prepare them. You can have them poached, scrambled, boiled, steamed, microwaved, deep-fried, frozen, air-fried to mention a few, and let’s not forget raw. The egg of this story takes us to the Philippines where theBalutegg originates. It is an egg of much controversy, mainly eaten by men because if you can get past the tiny duck face inside, and stomach it, it could potentially increase your manliness. Balut is a widely consumed street food in the Philippines and is basically a fertilized duck egg. A duck egg that has been incubated at a set temperature for a set period of time. The fertilization process ranges from 14-20 days. The ideal balut is said to be 17 days old. This means that inside this fertilized duck egg is an embryo that is about 7 days short of hatching, meaning that the embryo will have feathers and a beak. Once it is “ready” you boil it like any other egg, except you don’t wait for it to cool down, you eat it while it is warm, adding a little salt, vinegar, or soy sauce if you wish. (I made it as far as cracking open the egg)
NOTE:The Philippines considers Balut as a restorative and curative food for pregnant and delivering women.
Staying with eggs, the next on the list is considered to be a delicacy in China. It is known as aCentury Eggora hundred-year egg, thousand-year egg, skin egg, or black egg.Although the egg is preserved, it is not as the names suggest, preserved for 100+ years. In reality, Century eggs take only about 4-5 weeks to make, and then it only takes a few seconds to peel an egg and forever to get the courage to eat it! During the “preservation” process the egg undergoes a transformation due to the items used in the process. Traditional preservation methods usually involve raw eggs, ash, salt, slaked lime, clay, and rice husks. These methods are still practiced today (Egg of choice are duck, quail, or chicken). The egg white or outer egg will be changed into a translucent dark exterior that has a jelly-like texture, and a greenish-black oozing yolk with a strong hint of ammonia. There are a lot of ways to enjoy this egg, but most people, peel it and eat it with some pickled ginger. This one I have tried and was fairly salty and truly does smell, and taste, like ammonia.
NOTE:A common misconception is that the preservation method originally involved horse urine. (Interestingly, the direct translation of the name for the eggs in Thailand and Laos is “horse urine egg,” most likely due to the associated ammonia smell.)
Most everyone I know loves fruit of one sort or another, some like me even enjoy a variety of different fruits. I once tried a fruit that was utterly repulsive, but my wife love’s it! It is a fruit that claims not one but two titles:“The King Of Fruits” and “The Smelliest Fruit In the World”, and trust me, it is the smelliest!!! It is calledDurian. If you can get past the smell, and then stomach the slimy texture (It tastes just like it smells), then you will be pleased to know that Durian is considered a super fruit as it is very high in nutrients, and contains more than most other fruits. It is a tropical fruit easily identified by its large size, spiky hard outer shell, and its foul smell. The inside contains a smelly, custard-like flesh with large seeds. Some might describe the flavor as tasting like cheese, almonds, garlic, and caramel all at once, I need only one word, sewage!(As Anthony Bourdain once said after eating it: “Your breath will smell as if you’d been French-kissing your dead grandmother”).
NOTE:A single durian can make a room reek for up to a week, even after a deep clean. The pungent aroma lingers long after the fruit is gone, and the slow process of aerating fibrous carpets, linens, and even walls can’t be accelerated. Durian compounds leech into every porous surface they come in contact with including your hands and mouth,wreaking havoc with whatever it comes in contact with.
NOTE:Because of the persistence of its foul odor, which is known to linger for days, many hotels and public transportation services in Asia have banned the fruit.
NOTE:DON’T DRINK & DURIAN-Durian nearly eliminates the human body’s ability to use the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) to combat the toxic byproducts of alcohol metabolism. So, boozing it up while scarfing down durian won’t make you pop like a balloon, but it very well might kill you!
Based on the people I know, I would say thatseafoodisn’t for everyone. Most will eat some form of the standard fried fish or maybe even try some poached or steamed but tend not to venture beyond what they know, their loss. The sea offers hundreds (if not thousands) of different types of sea life that are edible by us humans. Some of the seafood can be deadly if not prepared correctly while others are very simple to prepare and eat. One such famous sea creature is the shrimp! Shrimp is very versatile and can be served in many different ways. It can be served as a side dish, or your main course, but most likely it is incorporated with other foods. As an example, let’s look to Thailand and their Shrimp salad known asGoong Ten or Dancing Shrimp(video clip). It is traditional street food and is very simple to make. The main ingredient of course is shrimp, baby shrimp, and they are eaten alive! To prepare this salad, vendors usually start off by dousing the wiggling shrimp in a self-made marinade of lime juice, fish sauce, and ground chili mixed with fresh mint leaves, lemongrass, and sliced shallots. Some will even throw in some fresh garlic if they happen to have any and depending on how much chili is used it can be somewhat hot & spicey, maybe spicey enough that you will forget about the live baby shrimp. Most customers ask for a bowl of rice to go with it or you can wrap it in abetel leaf, to hide the dancing shrimp as you eat. I have eaten it all 3 ways and from what I can remember it is pretty tasty.(I believe the rice whisky we drank beforehand killed some of our brain cells)Catching Shrimp with Bare Hands: A Boy from the Mekong Delta$30.38 USD
In closing, I want to say that there is such a variety of food on this planet, and not all of it looks, let alone tastes appealing, but with so many different cultures in this world, all having something to offer in the form of food, I believe that variety is the spice of life and its well worth a taste. We can all agree that not everything is for everyone’s liking, but I believe that most of the time you will be surprised that you actually like it.
