Oh, you can get dried anchovies (which is what my Googling tells me ikan bilis is, but maybe it’s some other small fish) at the Mexican grocery story here (as pescaditos seco or charrales) . I’m actually not sure what they use it for, but I’ve bought it and used it as an ingredient for various things.
A post above reminds me – I’ve yet to do balut. I’m not really eager to try, really. So if I ever try it, I suspect it might be up there with surströmming in terms of overall experience (if not taste.) Normally, I don’t get squeamish about eating icky parts, or in regards to texture, but that one, I admit, does give me pause.
I did, too, until I saw the episode in some desert country where camels are consumed for their meat, and part of the show consisted of showing an unlucky and terrified camel being beaten away from the other camels as the one selected to be slaughtered for the cameras. Unfortunately, the killing of this poor camel with a sharp object to it’s chest went awry and it did not die as planned and evidently not in a very halal way, so poor Zimmern had to look at the camera to explain the bloody commotion going on behind him and to remind viewers how important it is to know where our food comes from (but apologizing for what was going on). That was enough and no more Andrew Zimmern viewing for me.
That is probably a good translation for most ikan bilis - but this particular dish I used to eat used only extra tiny fish. I never found out if there was a special name for it. Definitely most ikan bilis in Indonesia looks like what I see when I do a GIS on pescaditos seco. And it was equally yummy whenever I ordered it or cooked with it, though lacking in the peppery effect of tiny eyeball flecks.
That’s mostly what I’ve heard: like a very rich chicken broth. Not sure I can get past it conceptually. I mean, if I were presented it, I would try it, but not something I’d seek out (unlike surströmming, which I mail-ordered from Sweden back in '06-ish.)
I dated a Chinese girl years ago who took me to an authentic Chinese place in Windsor, Canada for dim sum. She dared me to try the chicken feet, and I was all set to try, so I could at least say I did, but unfortunately they were all out that day
Right. I remember him telling how good something was, maybe cow’s tongue. He was waxing eloquently about how it was just like pot roast but with a bit of metallic taste. Well, there you go. That “bit of metallic taste” is exactly what would turn me off instantly.
My favorite Bizarre Foods moment was when he was touring the embassies in Washington DC, eating what each embassy recommended. At the Swedish embassy, it was of course Surströmming. They were on the roof of the embassy, out in the open having a little reception. When they opened the can, people 50 feet away went running for the door back into the building, the smell was that bad.
My personal worst thing was when I ordered Andouillette in Paris. Much like Stanley Tucci, I saw it on the menu and assumed it was going to be like Andouille sausage. It very much was not.
Eggy but also minerally, like blood & organs. Not great but within the realm of ‘food,’ about what you’d expect, needs salt. Those little bones and wet feathers, though, had me literally heaving and struggling to keep it down. Ugh, I’m making a face here at my desk, lol.
My theory is that at the end of winter, the spoiled food was the only food you had left. And since you were starving, anything, no matter how objectively rancid, tasted pretty damn good. So maybe some folks continued to eat it for the nostalgia.
In another thread, there was a discussion about the invention of cooking in prehistoric times.
One poster imagined a group of children playing around, and accidentally dropping a piece of food into the fire, and an exasperated mother saying, “You ruined it, you eat it.”
Another imagined a group of teenage boys dropping something into the fire and one of them saying, “I dare you to eat that.”
I’ve always had the philosophy that I will try anything twice (it may be an acquired taste). Unfortunately, or fortunately in some cases, I’ve never been able to travel to places where I can sample some of the exotic foods mentioned in this thread. Some of them sound like they might be interesting. Others, not so much.
Those pictures don’t really tell me much (looks like oversized parsnips in aspic to me), but looking at cross sections of it, it just looks like head cheese, which is something I grew up with/on (as well as aspic, and I love pork or chicken aspic), so doesn’t really look too bad to me.
