Burns Night celebratory question no. 2...
Asked by
harple (
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January 25th, 2011
Once again, in celebration of Robbie Burns, today is a special day for Scots everywhere. As @zenvelo mentioned in a different question, a traditional dish for the evening is Haggis. A much maligned dish!
So question no. 2 is—(again, it has been asked before, but it’s Burns night so lets go with it!):
What unusual foods have you eaten, and what wierd and wonderful dishes would you like to share with your fellow Jellies? (Actually, has anyone eaten Jellyfish?)
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I couldn’t begin to name all the weird things I’ve eaten living and traveling all over Asia, so I’ll tell you the thing I found the most disgusting thing that I actually ate: sea urchin roe. It tastes like chalk. Bleghch!
Hmmm… no I haven’t eaten jellyfish (would do though!) and the weirdest thing I can think of at the moment is escargot… that’s if we don’t count the cat food that I used to eat as a kid pretending to be one… I know! disgusting! :-/
Eating Gefilte Fish is absolutely an acquired taste and why anyone does is beyond me!
The French call Gefilte fish “quenelles,” the German “knödels” and consider it a delicacy. Well made Gefilte fish is a treat. Store-bought not so much.
Lutevisk
I’ve had haggis, too. Not very keen on it.
One of my most unusual foods was haggis made of ground up sirloin steak served by the Scottish Society of Mobile at their annual Burns Supper. It was delicious but not regular haggis which is made on a shoestring and sometimes even of shoestring.
I’ve eaten & thoroughly enjoyed a plate full of Irish tea bags…...yummy.
@harple Oh very well if I must. Ravioli, it’s my little pet name for it…...I can hear you sighing from here, unless of course you just put the kettle on :¬)
@ucme you’ll give us Brits a bad name! We’re already known for liking tea far too much! Thank goodness it was only ravioli… Must say I’m disappointed that that’s the wildest thing you’ve eaten!! prod prod….
@harple Oh i’m a fussy eater, parkie my mum used to say. About the wildest thing i’ve eaten is the wife’s Sunday roast…..shit, I hope she never reads this :¬(
Calamari and scungilli. Both are actually quite good, even when not served fried.
I have eaten poi in Hawaii (not very good, weird color).
And I have eaten all sorts of very good (but probably weird to most people) vegetarian food. Including some of the raw foods on this menu from Au Lac vegetarian/vegan restaurant in Fountain Valley, CA.
I have eaten tofu in almost every incarnation from raw to boiled to fried to baked and made into pudding, turned into fake meat and made up to taste like egg salad.
I’ve eaten (and loved) Raw Kale Salad like this.
And I’ve eaten (and created my own recipes) for vegetable enchiladas with everything inside from kale, to sweet potatoes, to orange colored cauliflower.
And I’ve eaten lots of different mushrooms from white button to portobello to woodear to bunashameji to enoki to shiitake to maitake to hiratake. And I’ve enjoyed them all!
I think the strangest things I’ve eaten are squid, shark and alligator.
@harple I know! gross!!! :-p I’m officially disgusting lol x
I have eaten haggis more than once, and I have indeed also eaten jellyfish as part of a Chinese banquet. It was the tentacle part and I though they were noodles at first, except fishy ones. When we were told it was jellyfish all my companions pulled a face and refused any more, so I finished the plate off.
In the same meal I also had octopus, which is like squid only rubberier and tougher. I didn’t like that.
I have also eaten ostrich and water-buffalo (both farmed in the UK). Shark and swordfish (very similar to each other – I’m not sure I could tell the difference). Oh and winkles, which are properly eaten out of the shell, with a pin.
I ate a bit of wolf steak not so long ago. I did feel a little ill afterwards, but i’m alright noooooooooowwww!! :¬)
@downtide You say you’ve eaten winkles. What exactly are they? And can you tell me why they call pointy shoes in England “winklepickers”? I’ve always loved that word winklepickers.
I have eaten Haggis, and don’t have much to say about it, other than it was quite filling.
When I was in China, I ate a number of disgusting things, from rat to water fungus, from monkey head to baby sparrow (the sparrow was served head intact, wings to the side, and feet in the air).
However, it wasn’t until I had lunch at a place in Alameda, California, that I ate dog.
@filmfann Ok, so far your “meals” have been the most disgusting. I just threw up a little in my mouth.
A spoonful of Marmite. That was years ago, and I can still taste it… and not in a good way!
I also ate Peking duck cooked from scratch in a Beijing restaurant. Tasted completely different from the same dish I’ve eaten in the States. ... and not in a good way!
In Beijing, Peking Duck is made using ONLY the skin of the duck. No meat.
I’d probably have to name haggis with neeps and tatties. I loved it from the first taste. I got acquainted with it at Burns Night dinners, and while visiting Edinburgh I ordered it at dinner at the Abbotsford. The waitress cocked an eyebrow at me and thought she’d better try to dissuade me, but I knew what it was doing. It was heavenly. I also had the best bread pudding there that I’ve ever had anywhere.
Apart from that, I am a great lover of dulse, a snack food that I learned to enjoy among members of my father’s family in the Maritime provinces of Canada.
@Kardamom winkles are shellfish; from the sea, and tiny, with shells like snails. They’re so small the only way to eat them is to pull the meat out of the shell with a pin. The shoes were called winklepickers because they were very narrow and pointed, the suggestion being that you can use them to pick winkles out of the shells.
I recently discovered artichoke spread and artichoke salsa; I love them both.
I wouldn’t say that they’re weird, but I don’t think that many people have had either one.
Crocodile was fairly unpleasant, but at least I finished it. I couldn’t say the same for the London ‘delicacy’ of Jellied Eels. When the first piece went in my mouth my entire being was gripped with horror and I spat it out instinctively. Both the taste and texture are vile beyond belief.
@Austinlad I think you’ll like this advert for Marmite
I have eaten Kangaroo steak before. It actually just tasted like very rare (which is how I have my steaks anyway) normal steak.
@downtide Thanks for the info on the winkles and the pickers. Here’s a picture of winkle shell and here’s a picture of a winklepicker shoe and here’s a picture of winkles having been picked
@Brian1946 Your 2 dishes are the only ones on this thread that actually sound delicious!
@Kardamom: Do you need winklepicker shaped feet to wear those shoes?
@gailcalled One of my cousins has a similar pair of shoes and I noticed that they are about 4 inches or so longer than regular shoes, so the end of your toes actually sit way back and then the pointy part of the shoe starts to narrow and stretches out beyond. My cousin also wears them with the most ridiculously tight pants giving a bit of an Ichabod Crane appearance.
But keeping with the original question, another cousin who is in the Peace Corps said that the national food of Peru is this little creature that is related to hamsters and she’s eaten them.
@downtide I’d forgotten about winkles. We used to collect them from the beach near our home bring them back and boil them up in a large pot of water. A disgusting scum would appear on the surface of the boiling water. Once they were cooked we used a pin to ‘winkle’ them out of their shells. There was always a little round cap that sealed them in. They looked absolutely horrible but, taken with a little vinegar, were delicious.
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