286564 Thu Sep 14 14:04:35 -0700 2000 32 27 General Chowhounding Topics 0 1537413 I have horrified people by eating extremely soft soft boiled eggs, lambs head including brain and eyes, tripe soup, urchin with raw quail egg, rare chicken and raw shrimp (I get yelled at when I'm shelling shrimp and pop a couple in my mouth). Have you ever been in the midst of enjoying eating something when someone nearby goes, "Ugh!!!"? Thu Sep 14 14:04:35 -0700 2000 0 christina z 1 1537416 Of course, and as you carefully leave out in your post, it is such fun! Even if it wasn't *that* good, you have to have another. I have friends who cannot see the beauty in a bit of refrigerated bacon fat on toast. Can you imagine? Thu Sep 14 14:12:34 -0700 2000 1537413 0 Fred Vinson 1 1537417 Haven't had them in ages, but my grandmother used to get freshly butchered chickens and find unborn eggs in them. What a treat they were, fried up with chicken cracklings and onions! You can still get them at Sammy's Roumanian on Essex Street. With schmaltz. Also, I remember once ordering a sardine plate at a diner and having the waitress wrinkle her nose and ask in disgust, "Ugh! You really like those?!" Thu Sep 14 14:36:19 -0700 2000 1537413 0 Dena 2 1537420 My dad and his brother had a turkey ranch for a while in Maine (the turkey is one incredibly stupid bird, BTW). As the holidays approached the butchering, plucking, and singeing would begin. I helped "gut" these big birds, reaching my small hand into the cavity, to pull out whatever wasn't too slippery to grasp. Often I'd get unborn eggs, which my grandma would save to drop into broth, sort of like dumplings. I haven't seen them commercially in years but I'm glad they're still available. I loved opening the gizzard or craw too, to see what the bird had eaten. Sort of gross but fun. pat Thu Sep 14 15:48:41 -0700 2000 1537417 0 pat hammond 3 1537424 I don't undertand. Just what are unborn eggs? Aren't all eggs "unborn"? Thu Sep 14 17:52:56 -0700 2000 1537420 0 Bilmo 4 1537428 > Aren't all eggs "unborn"? Depends on what you mean by "born". Eggs are normally laid but unhatched; sounds like they are referring to eggs unlaid. I.e. YANKED out of the (hopefully dead) mother. Do any of you have a taste for BALUT? Filipino eggs which have been allowed to mature to the embryo stage (I have no idea how). Steamed (soft-boiled?) and eaten with a sweet sauce...you can hear the bones CRUNCH as you bite into it. If you're not convinced, you can hold one up to a light and see the horrifying little foetal skeleton...before CRUNCHING into it.... Roadside food stands for balut are common in the Philippines, and I suspect maybe in a few other countries as well (Honolulu 7-11 carries it, btw). I tried "hanjuku tamago" [half-ripe eggs] in Japan, but they were definitely something different. Similar SAUCE, though. CRUNCHY EMBRYOS takes my vote for horrendous food!! ---------- On a similar note, some yakitoriyas in Japan have SPARROW on a stick. Whole dang bird. Bit o' BBQ sauce, and you chomp away. Bones, wings, head. Come to think of it, that BALUT isn't sounding so bad anymore.... Thu Sep 14 18:46:55 -0700 2000 1537424 0 Jim Wong 5 1537429 Balut! I work with three Filipinos in Delaware. They told me of balut, and one friend brought one in for me to try. Unfortunately, I couldn't bring myself to do it. They were cracking up! They described the crunching of the beak and bones, the sensation of the small feathers, and how one drinks the liquid the fetus is sitting in. It is supposedly considered a Viagra-like food. Speaking of Filipino snacks, I love the names they have for street food: Walkman: ears (of what, I don't remember) Adidas: chicken feet IUD: chicken entrails wrapped around a stick and grilled Betamax: a block of congealed blood, which I understand is sliced and cooked with other foods, I forget exactly how Filipinos evidentally have a great sense of humor. Thu Sep 14 19:00:45 -0700 2000 1537428 0 Bilmo 6 1537437 Another delicacy I was told about (but have never eaten) are ox penis. I'm not kidding. I saw them lined up at an open meat market in Chongqing. The Chinese (in English) call them "whippies" and they really do like whips. Thu Sep 14 23:03:10 -0700 2000 1537429 0 kit 5 1537436 Ah yes, sparrows on a stick..the first time I went to China there was a huge banquet for our group and one of the "delicasies" were 3 sparrows on a stick. I was one of two who would even try it..very little meat, many, many bones. Nothing I would care to repeat. Thu Sep 14 22:57:27 -0700 2000 1537428 0 Kit 6 1537447 The crunchy fried whole sparrows can be found in Cambodia, too. I ate the body in one bite--kind of livery, which I don't like, and crunchy from the little bones--but none of us could quite swallow the little heads. So we absentmindedly stuck the heads on toothpicks and stood them up in lettuce. Until the waiter came by, pointed at the little heads on sticks, and nervously laughed, "like Pol Pot." Ah, dining in Cambodia... Fri Sep 15 09:59:58 -0700 2000 1537436 0 Mary 7 1537466 I would have given money to see that.... Almost like a sick Mad Magazine cartoon. Food imitates life? Fri Sep 15 13:24:59 -0700 2000 1537447 0 Jason Perlow 7 1537472 Anyone know where I can get the monkey brains from Indiana Jones and the Temple of doom? Chilled would be ok, but I hear its so much better when the monkeys are alive and shreiking for their lives. And you know you gotta get a side of eyeballs with that. Fri Sep 15 13:52:26 -0700 2000 1537447 0 Jason Perlow 8 1537479 As you undoubtedly know, the monkey-brain thing was an urban legend concocted for the movie Mondo Cane. Sparrows on the other hand--the ones I ate in Phnom Penh were roasted, not fried--are pretty delicious, supposedly caught in the rice fields plump from purloined produce. Edible pest control. Fri Sep 15 15:17:48 -0700 2000 1537472 0 Pepper 9 1537481 Woo hoo! Mondo Cane! That's one thats up there with Faces of Death .. I, II, III... and IV! Jason Fri Sep 15 15:30:55 -0700 2000 1537479 0 jason perlow 9 1537482 > As you undoubtedly know, the monkey-brain thing was an urban legend concocted for the movie Mondo Cane. Huh? Perhaps the DEAD version seen in Indiana Jones, but the LIVE, SHRIEKING and KICKING version is alive and well in the PRC. Being an animal rights campaigner, it galls me to encourage anyone, but -- The table has a hole in the center, with a vice-like clamp around it. A live, head-shaved, monkey is suspended from the clamp, and the waiter graciously CRACKS OPEN the skull. Actually, the monkey does not kick or shriek -- I am told the he/she is anaesthetized before this. God should only hope so. I also believe the skull was "scored" or somehow pre-cut before arriving at the table; the waiter did not struggle too much with removing the cap. Purists will eat it "straight". For the rest of us, some sort of sauce was drizzled over it. Actually, I could not bring myself to even try it. On a plate, in a bowl, from a can...maybe...but not with the animal hanging limp beneath. This is *NOT* by any means a COMMON dish, btw. There are a couple of specialty houses -- perhaps only in the capital -- and they are tremendously expensive. Like the US$ 2000 bowls of urine soup found elsewhere in the city. I'm not even sure if you could get in on your own. The whole thing reeked of private club/back room casino/cigar-chompin' dimly-lit den of who-knows-what. I was taken by some party politico types, putting to good use the sweat of the masses. Long live socialism!! Fri Sep 15 15:47:57 -0700 2000 1537479 0 Jim Wong 10 1537488 Gee. Thanks. I needed that. Me and my big mouth! Jason Fri Sep 15 17:38:32 -0700 2000 1537482 0 Jason "Maybe I'll stick with Dim Sum" Perlow 11 1537491 now if we could only get you to share that poor monkeys fate.... Fri Sep 15 19:51:20 -0700 2000 1537488 0 howler 12 1537493 Now thats mature. Fri Sep 15 20:47:06 -0700 2000 1537491 0 Jason "up yours" Perlow 13 1537497 A fitting capper to a really remarkable day of posting, dude. Loving those quotes in your handle. Fri Sep 15 21:06:28 -0700 2000 1537493 0 Al Pastor 14 1537501 I can take it as much as I can dish it. But I've never told anyone on this board that I wished someone would open my skull and scoop my brains out. One thing is to be opinionated and the other is to tell someone to drop dead. It may not make a lot of difference to people on this board but it sure makes a difference to me. And so it begins... Fri Sep 15 21:16:22 -0700 2000 1537497 0 Jason "What comes around..." Perlow 15 1537502 "And so it begins..." No, it looks like it began a long time ago (see link). Apparently you've been spreading your particular brand of sunshine around the 'net for quite some time. Link: http://www.os2ezine.com/v1n9/perlow.htm Fri Sep 15 21:23:28 -0700 2000 1537501 0 Al Pastor 16 1537505 Yeah, you can find some pretty interesting stuff by searching on my name on the net. What can I say, I thrive on conflict. Sorta like the Shadows in Babylon 5. The OS/2 versus Windows war was a pretty serious one for the computer industry, one that I was very commited to but I and many others lost. I was the first of the major OS/2 proponents to go and embrace NT, and that really pissed a lot of people off. Microsoft kicked our asses and IBM dropped the ball. Big time. One of these days I'm going to write a book about it. Its now the year 2000 and history repeats itself -- except that this time, MS is on the short end of the stick -- and Linux is achieving what OS/2 never could. Its a lot more fun to fight about food, though. Jason Link: http://www.argonautsystems.com Fri Sep 15 21:35:44 -0700 2000 1537502 0 Jason "No! Dont remind me!" Perlow 17 1537508 "Its a lot more fun to fight about food, though" Fight somewhere else. That's not what this site is about (nor is it about the nastygrams you've received, and I thank you for not flaming them back). This is it, everyone. Any more non-food postings, non-informative postings, and/or recriminative postings on this board will be nuked. It is reading like a chat room, and that's not ok. It wastes the limited time of our busy users who seek intelligent food information here. In our three years of existence, we've wasted people's time less than any other site on the Internet, and that's a tradition we aim to continue. ciao Fri Sep 15 21:53:20 -0700 2000 1537505 0 Jim Leff 7 1537475 Had fried sparrows in Spain, served as tapas, though I believe they are illegal and hard to find. Crunchy but surprisingly enjoyable. Can be eaten whole in one bite, they are that small. I was told that they are caught with large nets placed over the trees in which they rest at night. The tree branches are then beaten with poles and the sparrows fly into the net. Fri Sep 15 14:33:59 -0700 2000 1537447 0 Barry 4 1537438 They are eggs that have not fully formed -- no albumen, no shell, or just enough of a "skin" around the yolk to keep it formed. My grandmother would boil them in salted water, drain and salt them, and serve them on the side when we had chopped chicken livers with onions and rendered. It's typical of the Eastern European Jewish food I was raised on. Thu Sep 14 23:27:19 -0700 2000 1537424 0 Dena 5 1537439 What you describe sounds like those "hanjuku tamago" I mentioned in my other post. Except that they came with a sweet sauce instead of a salty one. What is "rendered" though? I fail to find it in a quickie word search. Melted something-or-other? Thu Sep 14 23:44:15 -0700 2000 1537438 0 Jim Wong 6 1537446 Rendered chicken fat is made by taking the solid fat from the chicken, along with some strips of the skin and some sliced onions, and placing them in a pot with some water. You let the water simmer away slowly and you're left with the rendered (melted) golden fat and the delicious little crisps of skin and onion known as gribenes (pronounced grib-en-iss). Remove the gribenes and salt them. The rendered fat will last a long time under refrigeration. Fri Sep 15 08:17:11 -0700 2000 1537439 0 Dena 7 1537499 This reminds me of the time I had chicken skin leftover from some cooking operation. I cut it into pieces and cooked them in a nonstick pan until crispy. I drained and salted them (yum!), and then, in a hurry, put them in a cereal bowl. The next day when I looked at the bowl it was empty. I asked my daughter if the cat had eaten it. She had thought it was bacon bits! She was soo grossed out by what she had eaten. LOL Fri Sep 15 21:09:31 -0700 2000 1537446 0 Katherine 5 1537449 Is the texture of the boiled unborn egg like a hard-boiled egg? Fri Sep 15 10:08:31 -0700 2000 1537438 0 Bilmo 1 1537425 I had a Christian friend who would never try my fried calamari on the grounds that squid isn't mentioned in scripture. But her reaction as I ate it told me that those clumps of tentacles might have been more of a problem for her than the missing biblical validation. Thu Sep 14 17:59:05 -0700 2000 1537413 0 Bilmo 2 1537434 This brings up a memory from my childhood. We'd go to an Italian place where we'd get the antipasto platter, which included calamari. I'd eat the rings, but not the tentacles (I grew past that problem), and my brother and stepmother wouldn't have any of it. My dad loved to spear the tentacles with his fork and sort of wave them at us just to freak us out (and especially the squid-phobics). A tangent: there's a restauarant in Santa Cruz called India Joze that has an annual calamari festival. They sell t-shirts with an illustration of a tool rack, on which hangs a hammer, pliers, etc....and a squid. The caption reads "the right tool for the job." Both my dad and uncle (handyman/builder types) *had* to have the t-shirt when we went there. Thu Sep 14 21:41:24 -0700 2000 1537425 0 Caitlin 2 1537445 Did you remind her that Jesus was a fisherman? Fri Sep 15 04:19:41 -0700 2000 1537425 0 bryan 1 1537430 Spinach. Kale. Seaweed. Tofu. :-) Thu Sep 14 19:35:56 -0700 2000 1537413 0 Sharon A