Bizarre Foods
 

From an email I received at work this morning comes this bit of TV info:

Traveling to foreign countries sometimes means trying different foods. The Travel Channel's latest series will showcase this on Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern premiering February 26 at 9p. Andrew's itinerary will take him to Morocco, Spain, Scotland, China, Tibet and more to experience various cultures through their food such as goat's head, tongue salad and pigeon pie (yum!). The series is produced by Tremendous! Entertainment for the Travel Channel.

What will they stoop to next? By pigeon pie I assume they are referring to bistella which is one of the world's great dishes and certainly not "Bizarre" in any way. Tongue is on the menu of every good Kosher-style deli...bizarre? Lamb's tongue salad is one of the most popular dishes at a good Italian restaurant here in NYC. Travel Channel is not batting a thousand these days, what with this and with that awful blonde woman doing those Europe programs.

Come to think of it, maybe they will film an episode in my kitchen. They can film this weird American woman who cooked slices of the liver of a calf last night! And served it with onions and balsamic vinegar. Not that IS bizarre!

NOW that is bizarre.

Whether the foods are truly "bizarre" or not, I cannot comment.

But I do like Andrew Zimmern-- he is a Minneapolis local, and I used to listen to his restaurant radio show on Saturdays. I find him much more likable than Samantha Brown.

Liz

Well, I tried Fried Coke at the State Fair of Texas. Does that count?

Intrigued that Scotland is on the list-apart from puttng salt on porridge instead of sugar, I can't think what the Scots do "foodwise" that could possibly be seen as "bizzarre". I mean we all got over the shock of knowing the ingredients of haggis a long time ago, didn't we... Could it be the deep-fried Mars Bars?

Scotland has haggis, white pudding, square sausage, deep fried mars bars and pizza. Not to mention Irn Bru, dandelion and burdock and purple tin

OK, I was with you right up until the "purple tin"?

purple tin = tenants super. It's what the discerning al fresco imbiber chooses. That or Buckfast.

Aah, "blue plate" special in my parlance...

People who watch that type of show aren't that traveled or sophisticated, probably, so I'm sure haggis would fit the definition of bizarre. I think it's bizarre and I have had it and knew about it before. Well, bizarre is probably not the right word for some of these dishes to me, I just don't like them. The Travel Channel has a lot of junk on it, it's just another production idea, at least it's better than some of their stuff.

Buckfast - made by monks, drunk by alkies

I haven't seen the program, but I've seen a couple of previews, and much of the food they've shown him eating is in fact genuinely bizarre: ant larva, eyes, live beating hearts, deep-fried tarantulas, bats, those disgusting almost-hatched duck eggs ("eggs with legs"), fermented meat, and so forth.

Obviously there's a large element of shock value in this, but it looks like a serious effort at traveling to places that are interesting and unusual and exploring what people eat there. It's in the vein of Anthony Bourdain, who is in the previews. It doesn't look bad.

Of course, to a Bushman in Namibia, bizarre would mean a McDonald's hamburger.

The Travel Channel is making an effort to move at least partly away from endless thinly-disguised infomercials about Fabulous Las Vegas.

ekscrunchy: the liver sounds wonderful to me as that is what I ordered last wk at L'Absinthe.
fnarr999; couldn't agree more re
the Travel Channel constant
pushing LV.

Why should haggis, goat's head, tongue salad and pigeon pie be "bizarre"? These a re perfectly normal, tasty dishes. We eat such things daily.
"Bizarre" means for me lamb roast with mint jelly (yes, I have really seen this on an American cruise ship).

As an ex-New zealander there is nothing less bizzare and more wonderful than Roast lamb with mint jelly or mint sauce. Now marsmallows for breakfast that is bizarre.

We eat lamb with garlic, rosmary and thyme. Doesn't mint kill all the taste?

I've eaten haggis and liked it, but I have to admit the list finarf provided would gross me out. I don't have a lot of room to talk, though, as we grew up eating pig souse, which is made from boiling pigs feet, adding pork, vinegar and spices to the mixture and letting the mass solidify. I really like it but my husband can't even stand to look at it, plus he says vinegar-flavored jello would make him sick.... Each to his own!

Many foods are quite tasty as long as you don't dwell on the ingredients - like scrapple.

Keep in mind too that this show is American, and so most of its viewers will not be directly familiar (as opposed to by reputation) with haggis, which I understand he's going to watch being made. That might be tough going even for a sophisticated Scotsman!

The duck egg thingie is called "balut" and I don't know if I could even watch someone eat it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut .

I ate a guinea pig in Peru. Yum-O!

Bizarre? I'm south-east asian asian, we put the 'arr' in Bizzare. Pig ear, Pig tounge, chicken feet (which tastes surprisingly good), pork intestine and stomach (if cleaned well- tastes really great too), cicadas, milipede, centipedes, coagulated snake blood, snake meat, monitor lizard, bats... the list goes on and on...

I love it.."put the arr in bizarre!!" Don't forget the jellyfish!

At a street stand in Sumatra I ordered a few satay skewers and ate them before thinking to ask what kind of meat. It was dog! Eww..

You know what though? You'd be surprised at some of the delicacies here. I was maybe... 12 when I had my first stir-fried bats with soy sauce and chilli. It didn't occur to me (as to any teenager) to ask what it really was I was eating, but I was hooked!

Toads are great, too, fried with chopped onion, ginger and soy sauce.

I must admit- some delicacies may potentially be hurting. I believe once the police raided a restaurant- for the restaurant served tiger meat. Luckily they managed to save a few cubs. Also some species of animals are now on the verge on extinction- like some types of anteaters and seat turtles. With locals alike hunting them down for their hides, eggs, etc.

Have you heard about Durians? The King of all fruits? They are around the size of a bowling ball, and the shell are full of spikes (yikes!). But when you crack the shell, you get fruits which have a really pungent smell. I still remembered the documentary I watched over some travel channel, how some westerners were asked to taste the fruit. One positively regurgitated what seems to be his lunch, the rest pinched their nose before they tried, and the host chewed at it a little before spitting it out. Surprisingly, I (and plenty of people) really enjoy it!

Also, Durian is a curse to all hotel and flight management, as their smell linger up to hours in a conditioned room.

Just a fun fact- Durians grow on trees. Once the season arrives- people avoid the plantation like a plague- lest you want tonnes of spiked bowling balls raining down on you.

I remember that my hotel in Singapore had signs posted that prohibited guests from entering with durian. And one rolled around on the floor of a car once and the spikes stabbed me in the toe! We can even get durian in New York now..and durian ice cream! I like mangosteen better, though.

Durian is very strange and fantastic. It's hard to explain how something that smells of rotting flesh can be so delicious, but it just seems to draw you in; you want to fill yourself with it. Mmmm. But really weird.

Mileaday...

Just wanted you to know that you've given me a yen for scrapple ! I love the stuff, but have to make my own (lotta work), so I haven't had any in ages.

Never had bats, but have enjoyed alligator, snake and fried grasshoppers.
Didn't like Durians though.
Pigeon pie is called Pastilla in Morocco - and is absolutely delicious.

Gee, now I'm hungry and it's after midnight here in Provence....

Patricia

Honestly? Durians in New York? And someone here actually enjoyed it??? Oh my...

It really is a unique fruit. How I miss my durians... (There's no way in Hell Russians will ever import something as threatening as that- that's where I am 10 months in a year).

Well, my parents also mentioned another delicacy they encountered in China. In fact, it's pretty popular, called 'chou tou fu'. Or literally meaning smelly tofu. They just let tofu ferment in a room for weeks, by then you can see all types of mold and fungi all over the place. My father described the thing smelling like a garbage containing rotten carcasses. But the smell drew a huge crowd. And people who did accept the challenge to take a taste- were amazed at how wonderful it was. One picture my mother took was of my dad, eyes squinched, nose pinched, shivering in anticipation of what he expected to be disgusting- the next, his eyes popped, eyebrow raised, obviously surprised at the taste.

I also would never imagine how anyone would ever take blue cheese. They obviously are cheese left out too long they started to grow mold bluish in colour. But my friend made us pork chop one night with gravy made from the blue cheese- and I know now never again will I judge a book by its cover!

Well Aleckii I wish I could see the photos of your Dad witt that stinky tofu!
I still cannot get used to the idea of the bats, though.
I would guess you are not getting too many of those on the plate in Russia! It is is interesting how our conditioning affects our reaction to food. I read a travel book recently in which the writer described eating whale blubber in Japan. I am not sure I could convince myself to try that. But even some of the foods we ate in my own house must sound bizarre to some people. My father loved calves foot jelly, for example. Don't even ask me what that is..must have been the collagen of a cow's foot that had been cooked and chilled. And the liver, of course! We did not eat balut, of course, not being Filipino, but we did love the unfertilized "unborn" eggs from the chicken. And what do you know? These are all of a sudden an "in" thing among chefs in the US!

I just read someone's post on Italy describing how delicious baby veal bowels are! I am adventurous, so maybe I'll try it. My sister eats nothing out of the ordinary and we are traveling to Italy soon. Hmmm, maybe I'll get her to try it, by calling it something else. That's worse than when we were kids and I said "close your eyes and bite this candy"(it was an onion). I wonder why she doesn't trust me!
I once let a waiter convince me to eat pigeon in Provence. I'm a former New yorker and kept thinking of all those damn birds back there! It didn't help that he kept running his fingers across the table and cooing! They served the breast first, and it was grey and chewy. Then they served the rest and it had a sort of teriyaki type glaze. That was tasty. I guess it's mind over matter. I do however, love Bastilla!