Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a film supposedly set in India features a scene where our hero, Harrison Ford is offered a ‘feast’ consisting of beetles, eyeball soup and monkey brains. Hollywood may have an extremely dim understanding of what we eat in India, but it is a fact that some exceedingly strange items are consumed by human beings around the world. While meat is disgusting for vegetarians; insects and reptiles may be so to non vegetarians. Here are some of the some weird and down downright puke worthy items that are considered delicacies: and may I suggest you should under no circumstances read this post while you’re eating or drinking?
Snake Wine
We’ll start gently. This is wine made with, you guessed it, snakes. This traditional Vietnamese beverage has a 2700 year history. It is made by preserving snakes in rice wine or drowning them in alcohol. Some people it believe it has restorative properties.
Fruit bat soup
You read the word ‘fruit’ and thought this one was not going to be puke worthy? Sorry for misleading you. Apparently this creature was a fruitarian before it became soup… ugly fangs and all.
Escamole
To Indians this may look like a slightly exotic khichdi or poha dish, but this is in fact ant larvae. The Mexicans call it ant caviar and this ‘delicacy’ is obtained from the roots of plant that gives us tequila.
Fugu
Many of us have probably heard about Fugu, arguably the most dangerous dish on earth. This is a dish made from the highly poisonous puffer fish. If you think this is a hideous creature, think of the poor chaps who have to train for years to become quailed to make this dish and then to actually make it… one little slip up and you have criminal negligence if not manslaughter on your hands!
Haggis
This is a traditional Scottish dish (the national dish no less!) that has been banned in the United States. This contains minced sheep’s heart, lungs and liver and other fillers. These are then cooked inside the animal’s stomach and then served. So that bag like thing you see… that’s the stomach; hope the contents of yours are not spattered across your screen.
Sannakji
Now I know it’s a good thing to eat fresh food, but this takes it too far! This is a dish made of live octopus; apparently its good fun to eat this revolting looking creature while its tentacles are still squirming. Oh! And one may just choke as one tries to eat this wriggly, sucking beast from the deep.
Balut
This dish consists of eggs with a living, still developing embryo; this is an ‘almost’ duck that is boiled in its shell and eaten. And believe it or not, this is a popular street food that is commonly sold in the Philippines.
Fried tarantula
Yes I said tarantula, that enormous, poisonous spider. This is apparently edible too. In Cambodia, these creatures, the size of a human palm have been a happy snack for hundreds of years!
Here’s wishing you Bon Appetit for any food that you’re courageous enough to consume after reading this!
