Unusual foods

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
The maggot cheese from Sardinia does sound like a delicacy. When I attended SERE training in the military, learning to forage was a big component - little black forest ants were part of the menu. One would just crush the head of the ant so to avoid a sharp bite on the tongue - those ants tasted like cashews.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
Hi Krummhorn,
I am sorry to have ruined your appetite.
I am sure whatever you eat will taste and look much better.
One thing I will say McDonald's make some of the worst coffee I have ever tasted. Margaret

It's okay - I'll recover, eventually. McD's coffee here isn't that bad ... too blasted hot though, for sure - takes nearly 20 minutes to cool down enough so as not to have "lib flambe'!"

The maggot cheese from Sardinia does sound like a delicacy. When I attended SERE training in the military, learning to forage was a big component - little black forest ants were part of the menu. One would just crush the head of the ant so to avoid a sharp bite on the tongue - those ants tasted like cashews.


CD,
I'll never ever eat another cashew as long as I live ... :crazy:
 

Muza

New member
Here's another cool one:Jaboticaba

Produces a purple-black, grape-like fruit which grows directly on the trunk. Has a very sweet, slightly aromatic, translucent pulp with a pleasant grape flavour. Comes from Southern Brazil.
 

Muza

New member
[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif][/FONT]
Miracle Fruit [FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]
(Synsepalum dulcificum)[/FONT]
miraclefruit.jpg
Fruit are very small red berries which act on the sour taste buds
to make sour tasting food taste sweet. Comes from West Africa.
Enjoy a lemon as if it was an orange ;)

Its quite hard, practically impossible to get this unusual fruit, as
studies show that the fruit should be eaten right after picking.
If you store it in a fridge for even a day, it may loose its
magical powers ;)

Who's up for trying miracle fruit, huh?
 

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Hi Muza,

I'm game for trying those berries.

Cheers,

CD :tiphat::tiphat::tiphat::tiphat:
 

Muza

New member
thats a very interesting fruit! rereading the description of its functionality though made me remember another thing.

It mentions enjoying a sweet lemon. Funny story about that ... My mom was once cooking fish for guests, a perfect piece of grilled salmon, which she served with a lemon wedge. Well, after squeezing a whole bunch of lemon on my fish, I didnt see any difference, so I tried the lemon - and it was sweet!!!:eek:. It didnt just happen to be sweet, there is actually a whole new breed of lemon, called sweet lemons.

Of course thats no exotic superfruit, but a sweet lemon is something that tops my list of weird and unusual food! :crazy: And it was sweeter than any other citrus I've had, like oranges (which have a little tartness or sourness to them). It was a weird experience!
 

marval

New member
The berries look interesting, I would not mind trying them.

Krummhorn, McDonalds and Starbucks both got sued for too hot coffee.


Margaret
 

Muza

New member
gooseberries.jpg
Gooseberries: The gooseberry is a large, tart berries in season in June and July. American gooseberries are round and about 1/2 inch to 1 inch in diameter, while European gooseberries are oblong, and about twice the size of American gooseberries. They're very acidic. They can be green, yellow or reddish. They also come in various degrees of sweetness or tartness; from cooking gooseberries to sweet dessert gooseberries.

Here's another one. Its one of my personal favorites. My grandmother, who lives in Ukraine, had a bush of gooseberries by her house, and I would pich them and eat them all the time, yummo ;).

I have only came across them once in America, in Berkeley Bowl - a very interesting produce store, which has really funky stuff (like red cauliflower, and purple bell peppers).
 

Muza

New member
Those look delicios. Are they a common thing where you live or do you have to work hard at finding them?
 

methodistgirl

New member
There is one thing here in Kentucky that I can be sure of to be an
unusual food and that's poke salad. This is a weed that taste like
heaven when you stir fry the leaves of it with some vinegerand
bacon drippings.
judy tooley
 

marval

New member
Hi Judy

I looked up poke salad as I hadn't heard of it, and found this article.


Margaret

Poke SaladThere is a delicacy here in the Deep South that is free and available to anyone. This vegetable cannot be purchased from a grocery store, but it can be picked from most any back yard or bartered from a friend or neighbor. This plant is called poke salad, or poke salit, as my family says it. I always thought it was called poke salad because it has the appearance of salad greens and when you pick the leaves, you put them in a poke (that is a paper sack for you non-southerners).This perennial plant, Phytolacca Americana, or pokeweed plant, grows wild in the eastern United States, and may reach a height of eight to 10 feet. It is strong smelling and has a poisonous root, and you can see poke salad growing out by the highway if you know what to look for. Poke salad bears small white flowers (which lack petals) in a grape-like cluster that later becomes shiny dark purple berries. These berries are believed to be toxic to humans, but are eaten by birds. (Bird poop tainted with these berries can be quite hard on your car's finish, by the way.) These berries have also been used for dye production. In addition, many a southern child has made poke berry mud pies to the feigned amazement of their parents. Older children take great pride in poke berry sling shot fights.The plant is generally poisonous, and a seasoned poke salad expert must train one in the proper usage of poke salad before one enjoys a big savory heap of this delicacy. Some rural folks claim poke salad is poisonous unless it is cooked with lots of fatback, but this has not been documented scientifically.The fresh and very young leaves of poke salad are best to harvest for Granny to cook. The leaves are carefully and thoroughly washed then boiled until they are tender. The liquid (which is also believed to be poisonous) is drained and the leaves are rinsed again. When poke salad is cooked, it resembles spinach and tastes like asparagus. It is a very nutritious greens dish.My Momma used to put the boiled and rinsed leaves in her cast iron skillet, add in hot pepper sauce, fat back or bacon grease and fry it until it was "done." It's best served with a heap of pinto beans, a big pone of cornbread, three or four slices of a Vidalia onion, and a huge Mason jar topped off with sweet iced tea. As my Daddy says, "I eat a big old bait of poke salit yestiddy and it shore wuz good!"Another way to cook poke salad is to put the boiled and rinsed leaves in a big skillet with some bacon drippings, an egg or two, a half cup (or more) of chopped onion, and then scramble it all together. Poke salad has the potential to be very versatile; a person from California might want to make a poke salad quiche (but don't tell Aunt Ruth, she'd have a fit). Poke salad would be tasty on a pizza or baked in a calzone. Anything's possible.I have searched in vain throughout Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee for a restaurant that serves poke salad. The reason that poke salad isn't on the menu is probably the liability of serving apotentially toxic dish. That or the fact that most Southerners don't feel it would be right to charge a neighbor for something that was free and made out of pure love. Sure we can charge fifty cents for an order of pinto beans, but not poke salad. It just wouldn't be right.I have often wondered how this delicacy was discovered. Through the years, hard luck has chased my family like a pack of hungry beagles after an egg truck. Perhaps the discovery of poke salad wasmade out of survival instead of want. Several generations ago, my foremommas probably had about six to eight hungry kids to feed, and my foredaddies were out in the fields picking cotton or tobacco. Out of sheer desperation, my foremommas thought, "Lookit this here weed,it's so purty and green -- I bet it'd eat real good. All I have to do is cook it to pieces and smother it with lard." And then, history was made and passed down from generation to generation.In addition to poke salad's economy and taste, it is being studied by researchers for use in treatments of autoimmune diseases including AIDS and rheumatoid arthritis. The chemicals in poke salad promote cell division in white blood cells that normally would not divide. Poke salad is also being studied as an agent to combat fungal infections.
pokesalad2.JPG
pokesalad1.JPG
 
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methodistgirl

New member
Poke Salad is picked when the plant is very young and very small. If you
wait until it reaches maturity it's very toxic. A very young plant isn't so
poisonus very little at all. Even very young and small it's like taking a
very mild laxitive. But the stuff is to die for when cooked it taste a little
like kale or turnup greens.
judy tooley
 

Muza

New member
Judy,That sounds really good ;) I'd love me some poke salit right about now :cool:

Corno, that is one really really funky looking fruit!:rolleyes: I bet it tastes good.
I now see how US is really limited in what it has to offer in its grocery stores ;(
 

Corno Dolce

Admiral Honkenwheezenpooferspieler
Hi Muza,

Oh yes, its tastes just heavenly. Unless a grocery store or chain of stores in the States specializes in bringing in more "exotics", many people will have no idea of whats out there. Of course, in major metropolitain areas there will usually be stores where you can purchase the interesting foodstuffs.

Cheers,

CD :tiphat::tiphat::tiphat::tiphat:
 

Muza

New member
I know. One of them was Berkeley Bowl, the one I mentioned earlier. That one had some really funky stuff. One of the fruits they had was really weird, and shaped kinda like a ram head with horns. I still havent found out what that was.
 

methodistgirl

New member
I know of another delicicy here and that's pork rines if you have the
teeth for them. They can be hard as a rock but tasty.
judy tooley
 
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