The Fearless Foodie

                                                       

By Scott Heiner

Weird Foods I’ve Eaten – Part 2

As I said in my last column, I learned to enjoy weird foods on my mission in Japan.  Emboldened by these unusual--or even weird--foods, when I returned home, I was eager to try ever more adventurous things from around the world.

I’ve eaten new international delicacies such as:

·       Menudo - A red chili soup made of cow’s stomach strips and hominy, seasoned with lime, onions, and oregano.  Known for its ability to cure hangovers, personally I’ve never found a need to eat menudo for that purpose.

·       Vegemite – A thick, black Australian food spread made from leftover brewers' yeast, about the consistency of peanut butter.  In fact, the Australians eat it like peanut butter, spreading it on sandwiches, toast, crumpets and crackers.  With its strong bitter, salty flavor, Vegemite is definitely an acquired taste.

·       Haggis - A savory hash from Scotland consisting of sheep's heart, liver, and lungs; minced with onion, oatmeal, suet and spices.  The mixture is encased in a sheep’s stomach and boiled.  A traditional dish in Scotland, haggis is quite tasty--if you don’t mind the grease.

Several years ago, we adopted a family tradition of eating something weird for Christmas dinner.  The first year we had ostrich steaks.  Surprisingly, ostrich is a very red meat, almost crimson.  We breaded and fried the steaks.  The taste was a cross between beef and chicken; it was good.  One Christmas we had roast goose (really greasy).  Another time we had fried frog legs (these were a bit fishy).

I think the most memorable Christmas feast we’ve had was what my daughter and her husband brought from New York City a few years ago.  They brought a basket of exotic fruits from around the world.

Fruit basket (Clockwise from top left):  Dragon fruit, mangosteen, loquat (dark orange balls), guavas (light green), golden apples (dark green), Asian pear, persimmons, little guavas (light green), eggfruit and rambutan (little fuzzy black balls scattered around the box). They also brought a breadfruit, the size of an ostrich egg (not shown). 

We thought most of the fruits were delicious, only one or two weren’t so popular with some members of my family. 

If the fruit wasn’t interesting enough, my daughter and son-in-law also brought some fish from Guyana called “hassar.”  Instead of regular scales, these fish are covered with two rows of long strips of plate-like armor.  To me, they looked like prehistoric fish from 2 billion years ago.

Besides using gills, hassar fish are capable of gulping in air at the surface of the water and passing it back to the hind gut. The walls of the gut are lined with tiny blood vessels into which the oxygen from the air can pass, similar to the function of true lungs.

I admit that the appearance of these fish and strong sauce they were cooked in made it somewhat hard to eat.  Still, that Christmas dinner was an incredible experience.  You can buy anything in New York.

For me, it’s a real delight to try something new from around the world.  Whether I like it or not, I count eating a meal of something new as time very well spent.  The real benefit of trying ethnic foods is in getting some measure of appreciation of the people who eat it.  That’s why I’m a (mostly) fearless foodie.