The question is, where do you draw the line between what constitutes food and something you would not put in your mouth in a million years? The Chinese predilection for chicken feet is well known and we have had our share since we have been here. But in Beijing, we decided to take it to another level and visited a market well known for its interesting food. Some things we could recognize, but others were a mystery. But then we were fortunate in finding one of the stall owners who spoke a little English and was very happy to proudly show us all he had available. So we started at his stall and asked for silkworm larvae, scorpion, dog meat and sheep penis. Does that sound like a tasty meal or what! The sheep penis was the surprise on the menu, but there they were, anatomically unmistakable, butterflied and threaded onto a stick. Actually, everything was threaded onto a stick, so that we would never have known the dog was dog if we had not been told. Tasted like chicken, of course, but looked more like little pieces of pork. We wondered about the scorpion tail and whether the venom would survive the cooking process. We ended up breaking off the very tip, just in case.
The method of cooking at this stall was the same in all cases - throw them in the deep fryer, which I appreciated from a food safety point of view. It rendered everything small crunchy. So, if you want to know what a scorpion tastes like, I could tell you its similar to silk worm larvae and both are very crunchy, without having a lot of other flavor. The sheep penis was perhaps a little tougher than other cuts of lamb.
So what could we find to top that? Not much, it turned out. Next we tried a starfish. Surprisingly, that was only shallow fried and it was the only disappointment of the day. The outside was fairly tough and fibrous and only a little crunchy. Inside it was softer, definitely nautical tasting, but not particularly appetizing. It was the only thing that we didn't actually finish. We, in this case, primarily meant Jacob and I. Duncan was the official photographer, although he has a taste of most things, even bending his vegetarian principles for the experience. Elizabeth came along for the ride, but her role was mostly restricted to providing sound effects and expressions of disgust.
We moved on to grasshopper and centipede. The grasshopper would definitely get my vote out of those two. Once the centipede had been deep fried, it was kind of difficult to get it off its stick - or even to tell it apart from its stick. The grasshoppers, on the other hand, better maintained their integrity and provided one of the most pleasant crunches of the meal.
If food and/or protein is in limited supply then the definition of what constitutes food tends tends to get expanded. You can introduce whole new species, as in the Beijing market, but more commonly for meat it means using all parts of the animal. Why just eat the muscle when you have all the organs available? When I was in the market in Mai Chau in Vietnam, I saw very little of the kind of meat that Westerners are accustomed to, and a whole lot more liver, intestines, lungs, skin and feet. We had lunch at HK University of Science and Technology this week and were presented with a dish of fish bladder. I tried it and was wondering if I could still taste any urine, until it was pointed out that this was a gas bladder, used for flotation purposes. That made it taste a whole lot better. It was off white, with a pleasant spongy texture and relatively subtle fishy taste. Chinese people really like it and consider it to be good for the skin. I realized that I have seen it in the fish market all the time without understanding what it was.