What “specialities” did I eat in China?
Aug 13th, 2007 by Peter
If you already live in China, or have been, you’d probably not find it extraordinary, but some of the “delicacies” may not fall well in a non-adventurous western stomach.
Anyway, here’s the list:
- Cow stomach (I think it was raw, or at least only boiled a very short time)
Chicken stomach (according to C I ate this with delight. She told me about it a few days later)
Chicken feet (both with and without nails)
Rabbit (C was furious with me for that one, but it tasted so good and was propably the best meat I had there)
Chicken hearts (barbecued and didn’t taste much like heart)
Deep-fried tiny fish (whole)
Fried silk worm cocoons (the most disgusting dish I tried)
I am pretty sure I ate other yucky stuff that the ones mentioned above, since C deliberately had fun avoiding to inform me when I ate something disgusting.
Most of the time some dishes were disguised in sauce, vegetables and chilli, so it was hard to know if you didn’t ask. I did ask, but normally I didn’t get any useful response, so it was eat and guess.
Denmark also has some pretty weird food stuffs like the pickled herring in curry sauce and lever postej! Mackarel in tomato sauce with mayonaise is also rather off putting as well.
Anyway, each to their own!!
Agreed. Danes eat weird stuff too. We just don’t think much about it ourselves.
You forgot Rugbröd. That’s off putting to many foreigners too. My wife still doesn’t like it much, but can eat it. She just camouflages it with a lot of cucumber, tomato and remulade (remulade being pretty disgusting to most foreigners too, now I think about it).
Hi Peter,
Yes, I know what you mean about food here… I’ve eaten everything you just listed and more. Some of my weirdest include:
Live lobster (bastard snapped at me while I was eating him)
Drunk shrimp (swimming in Baijiu… rip of their heads and eat em wriggling
Fried scorpions (taste like potato crisps)
Pig Lung (tasty)
Sheep feet (not tasty)
Giant Moth Chrysalis (ok, I didn’t eat it and neither did many of the Chinese I was with)
Auch… Live lobster? Sounds pretty strange. So you ate him raw?
I saw the fried scorpions when I was in Beijing, but didn’t much feel like tasting. The darn buggers was still wriggling on a stick for many minutes before they were thrown on the grill.
Pig lung I haven’t tasted, but my brother has. He ate it in soup and told me it was the most disgusting he ever tried (and he is not picky at all).
Oh, I had pork feet too now that you mention “feet”. Think I had cow or sheep too, but not sure.
I tried some of those in China, too.
Is it just me, or did anybody else notice that the Chinese 1) Use little meat in their dishes and, 2) Of what meat there is, it’s always in tiny pieces.
Eating with chopsticks was kinda messy sometimes because I’d be trying to get at the meat to eat it, but it’s so small that even the most hardcore chopstick users couldn’t get at it.
… providing you actually order your food properly and get what you asked for. :)
He he… You’re absolutely correct. My wife rarely use a lot of meat in her dishes. Scarely enough her food is still better than mine. She can use half a porkchop for an entire dish, while I would use 2 or 4 to make a danish dish.
Sometimes I do miss a good huge steak and some red wine, so I have to take over once in a while (i.e.: force my way into the kitchen).
Hey – fried silk worm cocoons is one of my favorite dishes here in China – I just love it. And live fish still breathing while you cut it is something I have tried many times.
Eeeeewww…. Live fish :-)
You get used to it! And the Chinese thinks it’s funny. I my favorite is still the silk worms – once I even while climing some mountains found some cocoons and had them for dinner – delicious