Okay, hear me out. Lists of "weird" or "gross" foods are generally an excuse to mock people in places you’ve never been, on account of them eating bugs or whatever. That’s not how I’m choosing to play this article. I assure you, if I want to mock Uzbekistan, I will straight-up write an article called "Uzbekistan is Very Unpleasant, and Everyone There Has Hairy Knuckles." I do not need to bring their cuisine into it. This isn’t necessarily a gross-out article, either. It is, instead, a list of unconventional but intriguing dishes from around the world.
That said, let’s get started.
Okay, Uzbekistan. This is me being non-judgmental. Qarta is a dish comprised of pan-fried horse rectums. No, I don’t just mean "intestines," and I’m using creative license. It is actually just the section of them that comprises the rectum. To prepare it, one washes the tube of the rectum first—preferably for a good, long while. After it’s washed, it is smoked for a whole day and then dried for another two. It is then very thinly sliced, seasoned, boiled for a bit in bouillon, pan-fried, and seasoned with dill. That’s a lot of work for what is essentially fried buttholes. Would I, personally, eat this? You know, I think I actually would. I’ve eaten SPAM, Bar-S hot dogs, and chorizo, all of which are buttholes or butthole-adjacent, so why not?
The Italian province of Sardinia is a pretty laid-back place. The locals take life as it comes and enjoy good food and drink as often as they can. Casu marzu is a gourmet form of cheese that is "processed" by insects. You see, they will take a large wheel of pecorino cheese and remove some of the rind. They then set the cheese outside and let cheese flies (Piophila casei) lay their eggs on it. Cheese flies, like most flies, lay hundreds of eggs at a time, and the Sardinians soon find their pecorino teeming with maggots. The acids produced by the maggots’ digestive process break down the fats in the cheese, making the cheese incredibly soft. Given that the cheese is considered "unsafe" by the time the maggots die naturally, the logical course of action is to eat it while they’re still alive. Because the larvae can project themselves several inches if molested by, say, a fork, enthusiasts will typically hold their hands over their plate to keep the little buggers from jumping up in their face. And, no, you don’t have to leave the maggots in. You can put the cheese in a bag, and they will extract themselves as they run out of oxygen and leap from the cheese to the bottom of the bag. You may then consume it maggot-less. Would I eat this? This has long been a food I wish to try, honestly. I just gotta KNOW, ya know? Sadly, it is prohibited by the import laws of most countries and is even only quasi-legal in Sardinia. So, to get my hands on some, I’d have to go not only go to Sardinia, but then I would have to try to figure out how to find a forbidden cheese hookup. It’s on the list, though.
Okay, anyone who knows about this stuff probably knew it would make this list. Having made a splash a few years back when every hipster wanted to get their hands on some, this is a specialty coffee, wherein the beans are also naturally processed by an animal. In this case, the palm civet, a small, cat-like mammal. They process the beans by eating them and then shitting them out, fermented. Yeah. That’s it. I want to know who the first guy was to look at a cat turd and say, "those coffee beans I see in there... they gotta still be good." It fetches a pretty penny on the open market, ranging from $100/kg to up to $1,300/kg for "wild-caught" civet shit. Would I try this? No. Even if it weren’t ludicrously expensive, I draw the line at eating shit or drinking it. I don’t care if it tastes like angel pussy; that’s a hard line.
One of the few countries to routinely eat foods in whiz form, the United States is known for its passion for junk food and convenience. Cheez Whiz is both of those things. It is not really cheese, as such, instead being a collection of oils and milk proteins. Invented in 1952 by a team of food scientists who were trying to beat the Soviet Union in the equally intense but lesser-known snack equivalent of the space race, Cheez Whiz quickly cemented itself in American dietary culture. When offered to foreigners who are unaccustomed to radioactive yellow whizzes, it’s often met with reluctance and is considered an acquired taste. Would I eat this? Well, I have before. I’m sure it’s still inside me, somewhere, leaching vital nutrients from my bones.
Huitlacoche (weet-la-coh-che) is also known as corn smut. We love smut of all sorts around here, so let’s begin. Corn smut is a fungus that infects corn and presents as a kind of puffy mold on the kernels. In another instance of someone deciding to eat something that looks (or is at least conceptually) foul, it turns out that this moldy corn is supposedly delicious. Said to taste like truffles and earning its (other) nickname of the "Mexican truffle," you can find the stuff as street food in Mexico or for sale in the produce section of many grocers. Would I eat this? Sure. Shame it never really caught on in the USA.
Hákarl is an Icelandic national dish, and much like every single goddamn thing that has ever or will ever come out of Iceland, it’s very strange. First off, it’s fermented shark. The varieties of shark you catch around Iceland are generally not edible, so this is a hack of sorts. You catch you a shark, gut it, and chop its head off. Then, you put it in a shallow hole in a bed of gravelly sand. The shark is then covered with sand and gravel, and heavy stones are placed atop the mound to squeeze the liquids out of the body. They let it ferment in this way for two to three months, then they cut it into strips and hang them up in an open-air structure. Imagine being downwind of this thing. As it dries, a brown crust forms on the surface of the meat. The brown crust is cut off, and the remaining meat is cut into small chunks for consumption. It has a strong ammonia smell and is traditionally accompanied by aquavit, a very strong liquor. It has been described by the late chef and TV personality Anthony Bourdain as being "the single worst, most disgusting and terrible-tasting thing" he had ever eaten. Would I eat this? I have eaten this. I was able to obtain some from an associate who visited Bjorkland. It’s like eating a pencil eraser dipped in floor cleanser. The liquor is an absolute necessity; otherwise, you’d probably want to hurl.
Native to Southeast Asia, and looking inconspicuously like a boiled egg, balut is a fascinating snack food. You see, it IS an egg, a duck egg to be precise, but much more so. Most of the eggs we eat are unfertilized. Thus, they’re just an inert yolk and white. Not so with balut, for you see, the egg is fertilized, and the embryo is allowed to grow for 21 days, at which point, they are then boiled and served. The duck fetus is eaten directly from the shell, giving you a dead-eyed stare until you gnaw its face off with a little salt, vinegar, or chili sauce. The bones of the formed proto-duck are supposedly firm but tender, and it is an inexpensive source of protein and calcium. Would I eat this? I can honestly say I don’t know. I know I wouldn’t seek it out like with the maggot cheese, though.
That’s my top seven. There is an abundance more curious delicacies out there, and perhaps another time, I’ll chronicle some more of them.
In the meantime, bon appétit!
Wombstretcha the Magnificent is a fermented animal product connoisseur, embryo analyst, ghost agitator, writer, and retired rapper from Portland, OR. He can be found at Wombstretcha.com, on Twitter as @Wombstretcha503 and on Facebook (boo!) and MeWe (yay!) as "Wombstretcha The Magniflcent."
