I am an extraordinarily consumer of weird food. Roast whole fieldmice? Check. Crayfish eggs? Check. Rock Hyrax? Check. That was a slightly drunken choice though. Dove eggs, fried? Check. Crocodile, Warthog, Sable, Wilderbeast, Lamb brains, raw quail eggs, Mopani worms… lots of Checks.
But here is something even I am a little squeamish to attempt: peacock neck sausage stuffed with peacock offal (recipe below)
What weird and wonderful things have the culinary dopers consumed?
The most adventuresome thing I’ve tried was in Japan: roasted or fried grasshoppers. Actually my friends and I consumed it regularly as it was the appetizer served at our favorite dive restaurant near our base.
Perhaps this next bit is a contender. You wouldn’t happen to remember this '80s Wendy’s commercial (youtube, 30"), would you? Well, it was very late 1980s. My ship had a port call in Hong Kong. I decided to go check out some of the truly local pubs and the place in which I found myself relaxing had chicken Chicken à la King on the menu. I ordered it. The dish was brought to me. And at that very moment, I completely understood what “parts is parts” truly means.
It had been dead and buried, and he did have to travel from London to Surrey, which in those days took a while. It’s only around 35 km, but that is a full day on horseback. Plus the time for the news to get to the gentleman.
I imagine the cat in question was well into the rotting phase.
Nothing too weird, but I’ve had fried silkworm pupae (not bad, but I definitely didn’t need a whole heaping plateful of them) and balut (duck egg with embryo in it, very gristly, would not eat again).
I’ve not eaten giraffe or elephant (yet) but there is a place in Johannesburg where you can get pretty much anything from Zebra to Lion.
I don’t eat much meat but I would go there. There are plenty of weird foods that do not involve killing animals. A bunch of edible seaweed. Some area-specific fruit (I love mangosteens). Baobab fruit. Marula fruit. Snot-apples (there is a charming name!). Prickly Pear fruit ( we even see these in supermarkets occasionally, it is a fruit of a cactus, covered with tiny spikes ). Mazhanje, which made me a bunch of money as my family had a large tree and I would sell them to my school mates
It is really one of the joys of travel to discover new foods, both carnivore or vegetarian.
