Delicacies

WEIRD WORLD DELICACIES!!!!!

1. Chicken’s Feet – East Asia, Caribbean, South America and South Africa

Photo: Yi Chen

Considering how many places it’s eaten, perhaps it’s unfair to deem this weird. Still, it’s made mostly of skin making it a little gelatinous in texture. They’re pretty tasty when flavoured properly, but the bones get on your nerves after a while.

2. Haggis – Scotland

Photo: David Blaikie

A sheep’s heart, liver and lungs minced and mixed with onions, oatmeal, suet and seasoned with salt and spices cooked inside the animal’s stomach. If that doesn’t sound appealing, I just don’t know what will.

3. Tripe – All Over the World

Photo: Ernesto Andrade

The stomach lining of various animals with a sponge-like honeycomb texture. Looks like some weird kind of sea plant life and has a peculiar and not entirely appetising rubbery texture. Served up with various sauces to add flavour or simply with an accompaniment like onions.

4. Khash – Middle East, East Europe and Turkey

Photo: Kamyar Adl

A pretty gruesome little dish made up of stewed cows feet and head. It was once a winter comfort food but is now considered a delicacy. I’m sure it’s fine, so long as you don’t mind that grinning skull staring at you through its cold dead eyes.

5. Tuna Eyeballs – Japan

Although it sounds nasty, apparently it’s rather tame, tasting pretty similar to squid or octopus. None of the gunk you’d normally associate withslicing up eyeballs then?

6. Black Pudding (Blood Sausage) – Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe

Photo: Alpha

Pretty widely available, really. Still, there are a large number of people who find the idea revolting. And silly people they are as the finished product is tasty. Congealed blood cooked up with various natural flavourings, thickening agents like suet and breadcrumbs and stuffed into a sausage skin – lush!

7. Spam – United States

Photo: Mike Mozart

The famous mystery meat. It’s said that Spam is made from chopped pork shoulder meat, ham and potato starch, but who knows what ends up in there.

8. Hákarl – Iceland

Photo: Richard Toller

The rotting carcass of a Greenland or basking (Somniosidae) shark. It’s buried underground in a shallow pit and pressed with stones so the poisonous internal fluids that allow it to live in such cold waters can be drained out making the meat safe to eat. After this it’s hung out to dry before being cut into strips and served. With a smell that’s described as ammonia-rich and a strong ‘fishy-flavour’, it was described by Anthony Bourdain as “the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing” he’d tried.

9. Surstromming – Sweden

Baltic Sea herring fermented with just enough salt used to prevent it from rotting. Mainly found tinned in brine these days, when opened it releases such a pungent aroma that it usually needs to be eaten outside. Sounds delightful.

10. Century Egg / 100 Year Old Egg / 1000 Year Old Egg –China

Photo: surtr

Yeah, OK, it’s neither a century nor a millennium old, but this egg is pretty rotten. After being preserved in a mixture of clay, ash and quicklime for a few months, the yolk turns a dark green or even black and slimy while the white has turns to a dark brown translucent jelly. Apparently it smells of strongly of sulphur and ammonia, but tastes like a hardboiled egg… until you breathe out that is.