Re: Weird Food - Care to share?
 

Being of 100% Norwegian ancestry, I have to put in my 2¢ about Lutefisk. Dried cod is used (like Italians use for Bacala). It is reconstituted, rehydrated, with water, and "cooked" with lye, instead of heat, I'm not sure if it was soaked in plain water first, and then had the lye added, or if the lye was put in from the beginning. It is not decayed. The cod is preserved by drying, and the lye does the "cooking", not preserving. It takes several days, or a week, or so, not months.

My bother had owned several Scandinavian delis, and made a couple of hundred pounds of it, each Christmas. I was never inclined to try it.

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I have fish sauce in my fridge. It is made w/ anchovies & I LOVE anchovies. It's just more salty & fishy tasting than soy sauce.
I've seen (on TV) dried fish in markets. I believe anchovies are salted & then dried... not fermented (?)
I will try just about anything, but no GRUBS or bugs for me. I find Iris borers when I clean the tubers. I freak when I see them...UGLY - almost 2 inches long & fat. Chinese might eat them.

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I would love to reply as many of the stuff I read but there's just too much!
Bob, I can truly understand the frustration of your friend's Chinese wife. Venison is like gold to the Chinese and the innards, like platinum. The tongue, liver, ears, intestine and the bones(soup stock with herbs) would be the finest of food for them. She will probably go home and say what wasteful people White folks are. :ha:

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This thread is making me queasy. I love raw fish, raw beef, menudo, tounge, many fermented items like fish sauce and kimchi,.......but dog, cat, live monkey brain, grubs of any sort, eye balls, insects no thanks

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Tog, I actually consider the stock to be the best part of the deer. Coincidentally I'm having French onion soup tonight made with venison stock.
I'm lucky here to have every ethnic food known in America within 10-15 mile of me. I have some Fish sauce from Viet Nam. I think it's nuoc nam(?) but not sure. tastes like liquid anchovies. I haven't used it in a recipe yet though. Just as part of a dipping sauce.
Mitchell, you never ate the worm in the tequila?

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Nope, not me! The grub is found in cheap Mezcal and it's a hoax. There is nothing special about the grub except that it helps to mellow the overly smoky flavor that cheap Mezcal tends to have. I have had the liquid from the same bottle, but not the grub!

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I heard that too Mitchel. Used to be that Mexicans would kill for that worm. It was a halucinagenic (spell?). Now they put any ol' grub in there.
A REALLY GOOD dipping sauce is soy sauce (or fish sauce) mixed w/wasabi paste. YUM! Try that Bob.
My fish sauce tastes like liquid anchovy. I LOVE anchovies on pizza.

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Bob, my brother gave me 2 young deer & helped me dress them. I gotta say the loins were the best part. Made on the grill...we cut it with a fork - so tender.

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Is the stock from the bones? Makes me want to have your soup now.
Bob, it's a very popular thing to have snakes, preferably venomous ones in Chinese herbal wine. Seems to have 1,000 good uses.( not RedBull but BigBullSht) The snake in it is a novelty really, this is according to a friend who does snake blood/gall bladder. It's the good herbs which makes it of value.

Hey Mitchel, please don't be offended by some of the descriptions here as we just want to share the insights of what we eat in the different places.
just to let you know there are only a few dickhds who go for monkey brain thingy. Most of the Chinese are against it.

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Lutefisk, what a God-awful food. Tastes like cardboard soaked in pee. Yikes!

I think they also served fresh monkey brains in an Indiana Jones movie, and eyeball soup. That was my first exposure and I remember thinking "No freaking way!" My Laotian fishing buddy, Lith, introduced me to many of their delicacies. Like quail eggs and fish sauce. That stuff is horrible smelling. I think they cut the aroma with lemon grass, but use it in quite a few Lao recipes.
I have to confess to eating some things for which he could not tell me the ingredients due to his limited English vocabulary. This might have been a blessing.

When faced with eating some of this bizarre food, I will try it if I watch someone else eat it first. It seems to take away the ewww factor. hahahaha

That reminds me of a bit by comedian David Brenner. When he was in school, the teacher asked the class who they felt was the bravest person in the world. Some said "Astronaut", the "President", "Policeman or Fireman" - but David said "the first person to drink milk." The teacher asked him why he thought that, to which he replied, "Well, think about it. Two cavemen were eying some cows one day, and one of the cavemen says to the other - You see those things hanging under that animal? I am going to run down there an squeeze them - and I will drink whatever comes out."

Back near where I lived in Illinois, there is an annual Turkey Testicle Festival. They cook-up a huge amount of turkey testes and drink lots of beer. They are quite delicious, especially when you're drinking heavily.

Venison back straps are the best part for me.

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The anchovies are sun dried (not fermented) and there are many grades and sizes. When we were kids we eat them uncooked by the handful like cornflakes. Here many people deep fry it with a coating of sugar as an alcohol drinking accompaniment. I love the 1in long Blue colored ones when I go eat Malay food.

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I think that's same as loin isn't it? There were 2 - on each side of the backbone.

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Bacalao!! I totally forgot all of the weird salt-cod preparations we do down here. We just got through the Fanesca season. Fanesca, for the uninitiated, is a very thick soup made of liquified milk-reconstituted Bacalao, squash, pumpkin, and something like 10 grains (peas, 3 kinds of bean, corn, lentils, rice, barley, quinoa, etc etc etc.), with garlic and onion and achiote and butter and cream. It's served with bits of deep-fried Bacalao that has been reconstituted in beer, and slices of fried banana. Kind of like a big, steamy yellow bowl of coronary malfunction. I love it.

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I always thought loin was inside of the thighs. But, I am not a butcher, so I am uncertain. Either way, they are delicious.

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Tenderloins are inside the cavity attached to the spine behind the stomach. They are generally consumed the day the deer was dispatched because they dry out so quickly. Backstrap is the muscles along the spine and would be "filet"if you were talking about a cow. Both are the best cuts.

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lorax, is Ecuador a Portuguese speaking country? The guy who makes me the blood sausage also makes this many ways and is Portugese. (as opposed to Bacala which is popular in Jersey) I'm going to have to see if I can duplicate these recipes but doubt I can find an "achiote". I'll have to look it up.....

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Ecuador speaks Spanish, Kichua, and Shuara (and a host of other smaller languages), the best salt cod comes from Chile, but all of South America uses the Portuguese word for it. Go fig.

I can send you the full recipe for Fanesca if you like. It makes 50 bowls.

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Aww, venison backstrap...
I'm looking forward to hunting season. Totally agree that the stock is one of the best parts, too. Cabrito, or young goat, also makes fantastic stock - it's almost jelly-like when cold, but heats to one of the most warming, filling broths I've ever had.

On the matter of bull testicles, we call them Rocky Mountain Oysters and devein, slice, bread and deepfry them. Less frequently, we eat crawdads with them for "redneck surf 'n turf!" Boil them just like lobsters, or throw them in with sausage, any vegetables you have around, and sausage for a Crawdad Boil.

Chocolate-covered mealworms and crickets, too - some day I'd like to try the Chinese stir-fried variety, but that's impossible to find here. Chocolate-covered crickets taste like... well, crickets. Once you've had one, there's no other way to describe it. Chocolate-covered mealworms forcibly remind me of Kit Kat bars, and I might just prefer the mealworms.

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Gesundheit! :ha:

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Must be cold season!