Re: Weird Food - Care to share?
Why the controversial Shark's Fin Soup taste so good
I am going to let the cat out of the bag about this dish which has made such a ruckus worldwide by the conservationists.
The shark's fin is basically a cartilage or the way I look at it, an edible plastic thread. It hardly has any taste on its own. So what is the big deal about it?
The soup! Actually the soup stock. The chefs were using the python meat as the soup base. The meat is thrown away after it is made. Up till today this has not been revealed.
I came to know about this when I was visiting the python skinners looking for the odd colored snake. The meat was a useless thing in the past after they remove the skin. However, some smart aleck came up with the idea of using it for soup stock and in the trade it is known as Superior Soup never as python! They fillet the meat in strips of 10in x 4 in x 1/2in and export it as scrap meat to Hong Kong for this purpose. Locally, they also turn the python meat into meat floss but marketed as Pork meat floss! If you don't know what it is, it's very good tasting.
I use to buy python meat for feeding my big monitor lizards and it is an extremely tough meat and has a high uric acid base. It looks like chicken but is much sweeter and has to be stewed for a long time to be softened and you need lots of herbs to knock off the smell.
Python meat on its own is extremely tough and the main way to cook it is by shredding it into strips and made with a starchy soup like the shark's fin soup. In Chinese, it is known as Sae Karng. Supposedly great for health. I once had the soup of the python in a hill resort which was like 60F and I felt I had a fever after drinking 2 bowls of it.
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Tog Tan has sadly suddenly passed away 6/16/09. We will miss you Tog Tan.
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