Culinary Curiosities and Gastronomic Delights - Concerning Food

A major part of travelling in "strange" places is the opportunity to enjoy local food.  In our modern, globalised world, we are used to eating in "international" restaurants; in Britain we think nothing of eating Chinese, Indian, Thai, Mexican, French or Italian - and those are just the most common ones.  However, more often than not what we think of as foreign cooking is in fact a vastly watered-down version, heavily adapted to our tastes.  The restaurant owners, after all, want to sell food; and selling genuine foreign fare would be a quick way to put themselves out of business.  But out here we can sample the real thing.  Sometimes delicious, sometimes less so - here are a few of the things we have come across.

Our exposure to the bizarre was limited in the first few weeks of travel.  One of our first encounters was in a roudside cafe in Siberia where we stopped for lunch on our way to Lake Baikal (I believe I mentioned it before in a previous article).  I ordered a fish salad expecting maybe some lettuce leaves, cucumber and something like tinned tuna; I was served a bowl of raw fish slices in an oily vinegar sauce.  In fact the meal, which also included Russian dumplings, was quite tasty and the raw fish posed no probem.  It wasn't much different from Japanese sashimi, just much cheaper!

Moving on to Mongolia, odd food was still decidedly scarce.  The fact is, the Mongolian diet is extremely limited, being based mainly on mutton and goat and supplemented with very few vegetables.  Mongolian food is also heavy on fat.  The pieces that we would cut off and throw away are all thrown in with whatever meal is being prepared - and are happily devoured by the locals.  Buuz (Mongolian dumlings), soup or noodles are all filled with gristle drip with grease.  This is the kind of diet that helps the people get through the winter when temperatures regularly drop to minus 40; but the country has a significantly lower life expectancy than ours and nutritional deficiencies must play a part.  My first meal in Mongolia was mutton, of course, I think maybe a first for me as mutton is not a common meat in England; but it was during our week staying with the nomads that I had the chance to try some more unusual treats.

Our diet during the week in the Gobi was exclusively mutton or goat with - something.  Often it was home-made noodles, sometimes noodle soup, once rice.  At the beginning there was no problem with this, but eating it twice a day, every day, it soon became boring.  Then one day we were served our noodles with something different.  The overall noodle and grease flavour was more or less the same but the new meat gave it at least some sense of variation.  I ate my plateful greedily and was starting on Florine's who didn't seem to like it so much.  Then I heard someone mention "sheep lung".  Although not confirmed, once I got this idea into my head my eating slowed.  I didn't finish Florine's plate.

Another curiosity was "Airag".  In the desert it is fascinating to see how the nomads use everything and waste nothing.  Sour milk is not an exception.  The milk is poured into a vat and left to ferment, creating the nomads' alcoholic drink.  One night we were trying to converse with our hosts using the limited Mongolian phrases included in the Lonely Planet guidebook.  We came to the phrase "We would like to try some airag".  At this the boy we had asked nodded his head and simly said "yes!" then disappeared outside.  When he came back, he scooped a bowlful out of the airag vat and gave it to us to pass around.  It is a strange taste to describe.  The airag we tried was apparently made from fermented camel milk.  The consistency was that of thick, lumpy cream but the flavour proved more difficult.  As we passed the bowl around, each person found a different taste, the first claiming it tasted like vinegar, the second, Greek yogurt, the third, cottage cheese - and so on.  In truth it tasted like all of these and more but the only way to truly find out is to make your way to Mongolia and find out for yourselves.  I don't think Tesco's will be stocking it any time soon.

We were glad to leave Mongolia if only to eat some vegetables.  The first thing we did once safely across the Chinese border was to make our way along the train to the newly-attached Chinese restaurant car to order some Chinese food, sweet and sour pork and a spicy chicken dish with green pepper which, I'm happy to say, even on the restaurant car of the train was delicious and far better than the food served in all but the most expensive Chinese restaurants in the West.  However, Chinese cuisine is not all dumplings and Beijing duck and more surprises lay ahead, as can be imagined.

I have a friend in the northern city of Shenyang, Michelle, who spends some of her time working in a restaurant.  At the beginning she was hesitant ordering for us because, as she said, she didn't know what westerners like to eat.  After a while, however, she saw that we ate most of what she ordered and was emboldened.  It was in her resaurant that we tried goose eggs, among other things, but there was one dish that I remember above all.  I was eating something she had ordered and was very much enjoying it.  I told her so and asked what it was - and just too late, I realised my mistake.  She told me.  It was duck intestines. 

After looking after us for a week, we decided to take Michelle out for dinner to repay her hospitality and she chose a seafood restaurant, our first experience of such an establishment.   In these places there is no menu, just a collection of tanks and trays containing various fish and other indescribable creatures.  One simply tells the waiter which ones, how much in weight and how they should be cooked.  Alone and with the limited Chinese I possessed back then at the start of our stay in China I don't think we would have managed alone. 

A highlight of any trip to China has to be the street food.  A roadside barbecue where one can buy skewers of lamb, beef, chicken or small squid is never far away and it is a delight to see them cooked and smothered in delicious sauce and spices before one's eyes.  The things Beijingers put on their skewers are by no means limited to what we would consider normal, though.  On the streets of the Chinese capital one can find, among others, baby birds, scorpions (still alive and wriggling), silk worm larvae, lizards, grasshoppers, starfish and even seahorses.  Why one would want to eat a seahorse on a stick is beyond me but if you want to try, Beijing is the pace to go.  As for the scorpions, a friend of mine from Sichuan province said that people in the north are crazy - and that "normal" Chinese wouldn't think of eating them either.

It was in Qingdao, the town once ceded to the Germans and home to China's first brewery and famous Tsingtao beer (the same name as the town but with the old transliteration) where we stepped up to the next level.  In a street food restaurant, one where the food is chosen outside and cooked on the barbecue but then served inside at the table, we were sharing a meal of tasty chiken hearts and livers on sticks among other things with some staff and guests from our hostel.  We happened to mention the seafood restaurant where we had eaten with Michelle and some particularly hideous-looking creatures we had seen called 海肠 (hai chang, literal translation - "sea intestines") in one of the trays.  There are two ways I can describe them.  The first is to say they looked like giant earthworms - and when the waiter put his hand in to move them about, they started squrming around just like earthworms.  This made even Michelle look away.  The second, and perhaps more accurate way of describing them, would be to say they looked like severed willies.  I remember much later talking to a Korean guy about these animals and trying to describe them to him.  When he finally understood what I was trying to say he said, "Ahh yes, Sea Penises.  Some people call them Sea Penises!".  Either way, I really can't imagine how somebody had the idea to eat them in the first place and I was sure I never wanted to.  As I was talking about these creatures in the restaurant in Qingdao, one of guys from the hostel left the table and went outside.  A few minutes later the waitress appeared at our table with - what else? - a plate of hai chang which we were obviously obliged to eat.  If they looked like penises before they were cooked, afterwards they looked like little boys' penises.  The taste was more or less that of rubber, chewy like overcooked squid.  I can't say I liked them and I wouldn't order them myself.  But they didn't make me sick.

Much Chinese food is not aimed merely at sustenance but is also believed to have various medicinal benefits.  In our hostel in Beijing we spent all week looking at the vat of "special vodka" on display, a clear liquid filled with snakes, lizards, mushrooms, herbs and who knows what else.  At the end of our first week there, after a boozy meal with some Chinese we had met, we finally decided to try it.  Around six of us ordered a glass and knocked it back.  This time, Florine ran straight for the toilet.  She said her body just utterly rejected the whole idea.

As we made our way down the coast and on to Taiwan we continued our culinary adventure.  In Taipei, we were given a "frog's egg" drink.  Happily, it wasn't frog's eggs but actually some kind of jelly.  Another first was "Stinky Tofu", tofu that is left to ferment before being fried up by street vendors.  The smell is absolutely revolting but once it is covered in sauce it tastes pretty good.  Maybe it can be thought of as a kind of Chinese equivalent to our blue cheese.

It was after we took the plane to Tokyo that things started getting really interesting.  We spent a week with Jo and his girlfriend Misa and they helped us discover some of the more (and maybe less) PALATABLE Japanese curiosities.  In the West, sushi, sashimi and maki are now well known and part of our everyday gastonomic vocabulary.  However, when one thinks of sashimi, one thinks of the delicious and colourful slices of raw fish commonly found in Japanese restaurants everywhere.  Further from one's mind, maybe, is raw horse meat, but this was one of the first things we tried.  Served rolled up on a plate with a little wasabi on the side, in fact this dish was actually very enjoyable.  Less enjoyable during the same meal was the plate of chicken ligaments in breadcrumbs ordered by Misa.  These were the parts of the chicken that, in the West we separate and throw away and, if we accidentaly bite a piece off we spit it out.  In Japan, they are specially prepared and savoured.  I think the best way to describe the senstion is crunchy and squeaky.  I had two or three until I chose a particularly large one.  After that I was somewhat put off and didn't eat any more.

Possibly the worst dish we have seen so far was "Live Horse Mackerel".  We were having the traditional sushi breakfast after the obligatory visit to the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo.  At about half past six in the morning, along the bar from where we were sitting, a local had ordered this frankly barbaric dish.  In Japan, the emphasis is very strongly on eating food prepared with the freshest ingredients but this dish took the idea to the cruellest extreme.  Four slices of sashimi had been cut from the horse mackerel's body in such a way that left the fish alive.  The sashimi was arranged on the plate and the poor creature was skewered and arranged alongside the sahimi as garnish so that the diner was able to eat the flesh while the fish slowly expired, gills gasping for air and the tail giving an occasional twitch, in front of him.  When he had eaten the four slices he simply pushed the plate away.  The fish took at lest ten minutes to die.

After Japan we spent two weeks in Korea.  Korean food is relatively uncommon in the West compared to Chinese or Indian but I found it delicious.  It is true, the flavours are particular, and the ubiquitousness of both chillis and kimchi can be a problem for somebody who likes neither (Florine, for example) - but I was more than happy in Korea as I adore both.  Two specialities I will certainly miss are bimbimbap, a hot metal bowl filled with rice, meat, egg, chilli sauce and other ingredients and served with countless small dishes to accompany it, and galbi, best eaten in a a traditional restaurant seated on the floor.  A small barbecue is placed in the centre of the low table and the meat is cooked there, in front of everyone, according to Korean tradition by the youngest female present. 

I am sure, though, that when it comes to a discussion of Korean food, the question everyone will ask me is, "did you eat dog?".  The answer is, yes, of course we did.  On our last night in Korea, the hostel owner asked where we were going for dinner.  He then suggested that we join him for a Korean speciality and we agreed.  In Korea, as in China, food is eaten not just for its flavour but also for its perceived properties; and those of dog are that it brings warmth in winter and increases virility in men.  We ordered three different dog meat dishes, one quite fatty, one with soup and another quite spicy.  I found the flavour, although covered somewhat by the chilli, something akin to turkey.  Not altogether unpleasant but not worth a good steak or a nice lamb shank in mint sauce.  During the meal we talked about different eating habits and our friend told us about hai chang, the Chinese sea intestines.  Apparently, in Korea they are served live on the plate and eaten raw.  He also told us about a fishing trip he had been on with a rather rustic fisherman from one of the Korean islands.  Apparently his companion had hooked a fish, reeled it in, unhooked it and simply taken a bite.  Even for our Korean friend this was a bit too much.  But the most hilarious thing was, he considered Europeans to be complete barbarians - because we eat pigeon!  Crazy Koreans!

Moving back to China and we took a step up to another level.  I'm sure I have now reached the pinnacle of my experiments with food and I think - or at least I hope - that I won't push it any further.  Two dishes I thought I would never eat were served to me in Guangxi province and Sichuan province respectively.  The first, and I cringe to even write it, was cock testicle.  Yes, the balls from a chicken.  Or rather just one, because that was enough.  People ask me how it was and I reply, pretty much as you would imagine.  It's a sack, rather larger than one might think.  You put it in your mouth, you bite and it just explodes.  After that it's tender and tastes of meat.  I just swallowed it as quickly as possible and washed in down with a large gulp of Chinese "Great Wall" red wine.  I didn't go back for seconds, but the Chinese we were eating with couldn't seem to get enough.  Again, no prizes for guessing what eating this part of the bird is supposed to help.

The final and most recent addition to my growing list was something I find abhorrent, but in the situation and feeling adventurous and curious I agreed.  A particular speciality of Sichuan, something now found all over China and a dish the Sichuanese are rightly proud of, is "Hot Pot".  The dish is so simple.  Vaguely similar to Korean barbecue, a large pot of boiling spicy soup is placed in the cenrte of the table and different dishes are ordered.  Normally these include meat, potatoes, mushroom, lotus root and so on, but can also include bull's throat and pig's stomach.  Each person takes their meat or vegetables and places them in the soup until they are cooked and ready to eat.  A convivial and emjoyable eating concept.  But our friend Iris, with whom we were eating, ordered us pig's brain.  As the dishes arrived at the table, the waitress carried over a plate with a big pink, jelly like blob.  There was no mistaking it as a brain looks like nothing else other than a brain.  It was already cut in two and the waitress placed both pieces in the soup for us.  A while later she returned and put a piece on both of our plates.  For some reson, Iris wasn't eating it.  With my chopsticks, I gingerly picked off a tiny morsel and forced myself to put it in my mouth.  If I had been blindfolded and told it was tofu, I probably would have quite enjoyed it.  It had the same squishy texture that gives no resistance to the teeth when you chew; it was heavily flavoured by the strong Sichuan spice so the taste was more or less pleasant.  It was just the fact that I had a very brain-like brain sitting right in front of me and I only managed to eat two or three more pieces before I stopped.

Maybe you can call me squeamish, but I think I've tried more than my fair share of exotic foods in theselast six months.  It wasn't so many years ago that I still took my steak medium (now I prefer rare or even blue) so I think I've made a lot of progress.  It's an old cliche, but valid nonetheless, that when you travel you have to try the local food or you miss a huge part of the local culture you go there to see.  It must be said, though, that two days after eating brain, we went straight to Pizza Hut in Chengdu...

Comments

[Aurore]

Wow, you've gone through quite a few extreme experiences! I'm trying to become vegetarian but still want to go to a few Asian countries one day...it'll be interesting! You don't write very often, but when you do, you write alot!

[Marie]

Waouh !!! What an entry ! Good job ! Really interesting to read it... exotic food: a brand-new world !
Dunno if I would have the guts to eat brain one day ...
Take care.

[CHAMI]

Have you ever eaten lamb brain in France? I really dislike it, but some people love that!!!! Remember you have tried oysters at home (and you enjoyed them!!!) and snails! (can your family imagine such a thing, just in France?)
I've heard about something awful in China and you don't notice it! The head of a monkey (alive) in the middle of the table. They cut the skull out, and everyone eats the raw brain!!!Is it true?
Anyway, BON APPETIT!