Unusual
Chinese Food
.......................-Exotic
Chinese food for the culinary adventurer
In
every culture, at least one food requires courage from those who try
it for the first time. Take French cuisine, for example. You have to
wonder who decided that only the common garden snail could do proper
justice to a garlic and butter sauce. Yet escargot tastes delicious
- once you forget that your appetizer spent many happy days spreading
mucus trails and feeding off decayed plants.
And
what about the Japanese penchant for seaweed? Many people view seaweed
solely as a slippery nuisance that causes beaches to smell strange.
But the Japanese count upon the marine algae to lend flavor to soups,
salads and even sushi.
I
can’t imagine eating anything that generates its own electrical
defense system, but many cultures have a favorite eel dish. The next
time you’re visiting Britain, watch for an East End street vendor
hawking fresh jellied eels, a popular treat made by boiling fresh eel
with seasonings and adding gelatin to the stock. Sound icky? Scandinavians
might agree – they prefer their eel baked and served cold on bread.
As
for Chinese cuisine, a famous Cantonese saying states that “Anything
that walks, wims, crawls, or flies with its back to heaven is edible.”
So it’s not surprising that the Chinese eat several unusual foods.
Here are a few examples:
“Stinky Tofu”
Take a brine made with shrimp, vegetables and salt, ferment for months,
soak a block of tofu in it for several hours, and you have a dish renowned
for its pungent odor. Stinky tofu (also known by its Chinese name, Chou
Dofu) is one of those foods that it’s impossible to feel neutral
about - people either love or hate it. Asian tourists who follow their
nose will have no trouble locating a stinky tofu stand – street
hawkers who sell it have been fined for breaking air pollution laws.
For those who want to enjoy their stinky tofu in a more formal atmosphere,
several restaurants devoted to the smelly curd have sprung up in recent
years, including Dai’s House of Stinky Tofu in Taipei, rumored
to be a favorite haunt of film director Lee Ang.
Sea Cucumber
Wander into any Chinese medicine shop and you’ll spot what appears
to be a chunk of cement in one of the display cases. This is the dried
form of sea cucumber, also known as beche de mer and sea ginseng. This
strange looking ocean creature looks exactly like a cucumber with the
addition of tubed feet and a ring of tentacles around its mouth.
Unfortunately,
sea cucumber’s taste doesn’t live up to its appearance –
it’s rather bland. Nonetheless, it’s reputed medicinal value
and reputation as an aphrodisiac make sea cucumber a popular dish at
Chinese New Years banquets and other festive celebrations.
Thousand-Year Old Eggs
If the thought of eating food that could have been served to an Emperor
during the Song dynasty offends your culinary sensibilities, relax.
Thousand-year-old eggs aren’t really that old. A more accurate
name for this pungent hors d’oeuvre would be salted or preserved
eggs. Thousand-year old eggs (also called century eggs or hundred-year
old eggs), are made by preserving duck eggs in ash and salt for one-hundred
days. This turns the white of the egg a darkish gray color, giving the
eggs an ancient appearance. Definitely an acquired taste, thousand-year
old eggs have a strong salty flavor.
Bird’s
Nest Soup
The chief ingredient in Bird’s nest soup is the nest of the swiftlet,
a tiny bird that lives in caves in Southeast Asia. Instead of twigs
and straw, the swiftlet makes a nest from its own saliva – the
only bird in the world to do so. Harvesting these nests requires great
skill - men must balance on tall bamboo poles to grab the nests from
inside the dark caves. Like sea cucumber, bird’s nest actually
tastes rather bland. Its recent rise in popularity comes from its growing
reputation both as a health tonic and an aphrodisiac .
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