While you are most comfortable with your cuisines there is a point where you would feel the urge to taste another cuisine. However all your adventures might not be equally pleasant. To prevent such harsh experiences we expose you to some of the darndest foods that you might come across. Hope this prevents you from puking on your first encounter, as a mark of respect to others' cuisines.
Escamoles
Sound like gaucamole? You are close. This is a Mexican product of the Liometopum ant that usually calls the roots of magueys and agaves its home. The eggs of this insect are collected with great discomfort as the ant is venomous and tends to attack the orifices of the attackers. Ouch!
The eggs which feel like cottage cheese are eaten along with guacamole generally.
Casu Marzu
If the name doesn't send an unsettling feeling in your stomach initially it will sure send your stomach on a hell ride soon. Sheep milk is turned to cheese. All good until here but then it is infested with Piophila casei, the cheese fly, which lays eggs in the cheese and they develop into maggots as the cheese rinks of decomposed cheese.
Worse still, the larvae can jump out upto 6 inches in the air. Make sure to put your glasses on if you want to have a slice of this fattening dairy product. Some maggots manage to escape your digestive system's harsh environment and grow parasitic on your body. End result: Vomiting, and bloody diarrhea. This dish from Sardinia sounds more deadly than the Italian mafia.
Lutefisk
Tired of the dirty unhygenic food being so disgusting? Ok here is something Scandinavian and neat. Extremely so. How do you like your food washed in Lye. Yes that industrial chemical that you use for cleaning your drain pipes or for the trained minds Potassium Hydroxide/ Sodium Hydroxide.
This traditional Norwegian dish has cod fish that has been allowed to steep in lye for several days until the flesh turns caustic enough that you would dissolve your silver spoons and forks.
Baby Mice Wine
Probably you are tired of your food that has been exceedingly dry and you want some wine to go along. Why not exotic.
Lets take you to Korea. If you think live octopus has not been just enough to trouble your guts, we bring Baby Mice Wine. This health tonic popular in China and Korea has hairless mice bathing in rice wine until they die and ferment. To your health!
Pacha:
Sheep head boiled and placed on your plates, super simple stuff. The dish seems to mimic a terrorist beheading and the trophy, the head is presented and dedicated to you.Yes that's the right description, considering this is a delicacy from Iraq. Though the initial sight is not as disgusting as others, the horror strikes you when you are mid way through your meal and the hollow insides of the skull view right through you into your soul. Spooky right!
Balut:
The final contender on the sheet is from Philippines. This is just a duck egg but the thing is you have it after the duck is half born. Not very clear? OK since you have asked for it. The eggs are incubated, the baby duck is allowed to grow feathers and the beak but then you take the egg and boil it as it is open the shell and eat it with a few sauces to go with it. Since the bones are also half done, the crunchy texture adds to the taste.
Eating an egg will never be the same again.
Though it is frightening to look at the first time, it is surpisingly delicious and is available in several countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, Indinesia too
Have you picked your exotic food for the holiday?
(AW- Anil)
