WARNING: Not to be read during lunch (or any other eating time)Everyone knows sushi and though some may still argue, it is not really considered too inhumane or ‘disgusting’ to eat this dish. For those who do not know what this is, sushi is raw fish served on vinegared rice, dipped in soy sauce and wasabi (spicy plant root). The thought of raw fish, raw squid, or eel may scare some people, but this has grown to become one of the many savored delicacies in America. Did I mention the poisonous blow-fish? After the poison is taken out, a very expensive sashimi (sushi without the rice) can be made with this blow-fish (it took a lot of victims in the early days to figure out which part was really poisonous).
The Japanese have the sushi and a lot more than you think. The Japanese do not just enjoy ‘fresh’ food, they also enjoy fermented food. Soybeans are used in many dishes such as miso soup, tofu, soy sauce, edamame, etc. The fermented soybeans are even used as a breakfast food. Mix this bean up with some scallions, mustard, and soy sauce and pour it on rice, to get a very traditional Japanese dish.
Getting back to fish, in Korea they eat live octopus. Baby octopuses. They let the octopus swim in their mouth, and when you swallow, they stick their tentacles on the inside of your mouth just to cling onto something. Now this is the ultimate ‘fresh’ seafood.
Escargot, an edible snail, especially one prepared as an appetizer or entre, is popular in France and many other countries. Frogs legs are often served with these snails. The frog legs can be fried or sauted. As some may be disgusted by creepy, crawlers, even more may be put-off by the thought of eating bugs!
In the past, Algeria natives would eat desert locusts as food (cooked in salt water and dried in the sun). In Australia natives (known as Aborigines) ate Bogong moths, witchety grub (moth larva) raw and cooked, honeypot ants, and honeybag bees.
Currently in Japan though not common, boiled wasp larvae, aquatic insect larvae, fried rice-field grasshoppers, fried cicada, and even fried silk moth pupae are eaten.
Nigerians are known to eat termites, crickets, grasshoppers, caterpillars, and beetle larvae.
Dragonflies and damselflies are eating in Bali, and water bugs, worms, grasshoppers are eaten in Thailand.
Eggs from chickens are common in America. Many of you may have even had eggs for breakfast…broiled, scrambled, sunny-side up. In the Phillippines, “balut” is one of the native culinary delicacies. What it is? It is duck egg cooked by boiling for about 20 minutes. What makes this so special is that it actually has a half-incubated chick inside it. You can actually see the shape of the baby chick!
What may seem hard to believe is the notion that dogs are eaten in Korea. Korans love dogs, many have dogs for pets and they make it clear they do not eat dogs raised as pets. In Korea, they have dogs specifically raised for eating. It may seem that Korans may enjoy the opportunity to dare foreigners to eat it, and for the taste, you would not even know what it is until they tell you.