Adventurous food in Taipei, Taiwan

The scariest things I've tried to date are snake blood, snake bile, and snake venom cocktails on my trip to Taipei, Taiwan.

All of these liquids were diluted with plum juice to make palatable, but I definitely was waiting for something bad to happen to me (like death) for about a week after I had these adventurous cocktails.



Snake cocktails and snake soup can be found in Snake Alley, in Hwashi covered night market in Taipei. Establishments in this part of town also sell turtle meat, and deer penis wine. All of these delicacies are said to have virility benefits. The turtles looked way too cute to eat so I didn't get those. Pig snouts and grilled insects looked interesting as well.




Taipei scores big points on the adventurous food scale, and even more so for one of their biggest modern food innovations: the toast dessert at Dazzling Cafe. It's a giant half-loaf of white bread scooped out and filled with ice cream, fruits, macarons, condensed milk, chocolate and syrups! This brilliant invention needs to be exported to the US immediately.

We also visited the Modern Toilet restaurant, where meals are served in mini toilets and look like poop and/or pee. I hope they open one in New York! Continue...

If you’re looking for bizarre food, don’t look much further than your fridge!

If you ever look in your fridge and see nothing but anchovies, peanut butter and toast – you’ve hit the jackpot! At least, so claims Steve Wiley, who recently sent me his book “Are You Gonna Eat That?!” – a compilation of the weirdest culinary concoctions made out of the most common ingredients found in American kitchens.

I loved some of these crazy food combos that could only have been invented by starving (and/or bored) children: chips & whipped cream, uncooked pasta dipped in chunky peanut butter or cereal and orange juice.

Accompanied by juicy photos, some of these combos might actually be good:
• Cantaloupe with cayenne pepper
• Cream cheese on toast with orange marmalade and cocoa puffs
• Corn flakes with beer – a potential hangover cure that Zane Lamprey might enjoy??

Whereas others are truly bloodcurdling:
• Tuna salad and nutella on toast
• Cola with peanuts inside the bottle
• Bananas and fried egg yolk - YUCK! :)

If ever in need of entertainment, flip through this book, and point randomly to find your next snack. Or better yet, make your own crazy concoction! Continue...

Next WFC Event: "Eating Locally, Thinking Globally"

You are invited to a monumental event I've been planning for the past couple of months. I'm very passionate about sustainable food (part of eating "weird food" is using all parts of the animal and minimizing waste) and have long wanted to do something educational on a bigger scale.

Collaborating with my alma mater we have brought to you "Eating Locally, Thinking Globally".

Enjoy an afternoon of locally-sourced food and wine while learning more about the movements for local and sustainable food.

Experience the delicious side of the food movement while hearing how New Yorkers are working to highlight local and sustainable food production, both here in New York and across the globe. We’ll draw on the expertise of including Ellen Gustafson, co-founder and director of FEED Projects and the 30 Project, who will provide insights about how our eating in New York can affect food systems internationally.

A certified sommelier will guide us through a tasting of 4 regional wines paired with creations from the chefs of Great Performances Catering, using seasonal ingredients from Katchkie Farm in Columbia County, NY. Great Performances’ CEO, Liz Neumark, will give us the story behind the food.

Event Name: Eating Locally Thinking Globally
Date: Sunday Sept 19 1-3pm
Location: Mae Mae Cafe, 68 Vandam Street, between Varick and Hudson Streets, New York, NY
The event is open to the general public. Continue...

Blood dishes fantastic and real

As I was watching the latest True Blood episode (S3:26) this Sunday I was impressed by the creativity behind the sumptuous vampire meal made out of human blood: carbonated blood wine willingly donated by a human that ate tangerines all week, blood bisque with rose petals, and blood gelato.

I'm no vampire, but a meal out of willingly donated human blood would definitely pique my interest, and I wouldn't be surprised to find a chef who has experimented with the idea, especially with this trend of making dishes out of human bodily fluids (see post on human milk) Next thing you know, we'll be seeing human shirako (a.k.a. cod milt a.k.a. fish sperm), the difference of course being that there would be no shortage of supply no matter the season.

Back to thinking about blood. There are plenty of dishes that can be made out of it. We've documented a couple on this blog that we tried at Congee Village (100 Allen Street): congealed duck blood and the various pig's blood porridges.

However, much more can be done with blood than we could ever imagine! Cate Newton of phlebotomist.net documents recipes for 6 unique dishes from around the world in her post: blood milk (Kenya, Tanzania), blood pudding (Western Europe, Korea), blood tofu (China), blood soup (Sweden, Poland, Vietnam) - this is beginning to sound a bit like the vampire blood bisque, blood pancakes (Finland), and blood bread (Finland). Those Finns sure love their blood...

Blood pudding (a.k.a. blood sausage/boudin noir/Blutwurst/Morcilla/Soondae) is actually one of my favorite dishes. You can have some at Casimir (103 Avenue B) and plenty other French restaurants in New York.

The most creative and palatable of the 6 recipes Cate listed is probably blood pancakes (Veriohukaiset). Finally, a Finnish dish that's NOT boring! Moreover, if you want to have it the real authentic way, this one requires reindeer blood, which makes it ever more exciting than pig or duck. That's what I call a proper and delicious cure for anemia! If you're ever low on iron, you know what to get.

Unfortunately, the few Finnish restaurants that exist in New York don't serve this incredible delicacy, but you can always make it yourself. You can procure blood at butcher shops, most likely in Chinatown somewhere, and blood labs.
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Human breast milk worth trying again in your lifetime

Someone commented on my last post that jackfruit wasn't weird enough to write about on this blog, so I decided to step it up a bit: I tried human breast milk!

I've been meaning to try some ever since I read about 2(!) restaurants that served food made out of human breast milk: Storchen in Winterthur, Switzerland and Klee Brasserie in New York.

Storchen was banned from serving breast milk dishes in 2008, and Klee chef Daniel Angerer didn't even attempt to serve it to the public, he merely documented his attempts at making cheese on his blog.

In hopes of trying his amazing maple caramelized pumpkin encrusted "mommy's milk" cheese with texturized concord grapes, I emailed Angerer about a month ago to have a private tasting. Alas I did not receive a response. So I gave up on the idea until this weekend, when a friend of mine who recently had a baby offered a taste of her breast milk, which turned into a spontaneous tasting party.



Neither the other tasters nor I had any problem with tasting our friend's milk, and the parents were cool with it. The baby seemed fine with it too (she's already been fed and was happily sleeping beside us).

The milk tasted like 1% cow milk but a little sweeter. Interestingly, the consistency (i.e. fat content) of breast milk can vary depending on the length of time since last feeding. Unlike sheep's milk or horse milk, it was quite pleasant and mild. If you've ever tried baby formula, it tastes a lot like the real deal.

While I can't recommend a source of human breast milk in New York other than your own network of recent moms, I do want to mention that if you do try this out on your own, be aware that certain infections can be passed with breast milk.

If you know anyone with excess breast milk, (which tends to happen, unless you have twins, triplets or octuplets!) you can encourage them to:
1. experiment with making spectacular dishes out of it
2. donate it to a milk bank.

Yes, I agree that I've reached a new level of depravity, however the benefits are undeniable:
1. satisfying curiosity
2. supporting local and sustainable eating.

Something else to chew on: Since no animals were harmed, would PETA approve?

Answer: yes! In fact, in 2008 PETA sent a letter to Ben & Jerry urging them to use human breast milk. Unfortunately, B&J did not see this as a viable business opportunity, even though 17% of consumers (including me) voted that they'd like that. So... who wants to start a new ice cream company with me? ;-)


EDIT: a new ice cream parlor called "Baby Gaga" in London serves breast milk ice cream! If you've tried it, comment! Continue...

Man, I wish I was in China...

...to try this bacteria dictyophore wu chicken soup.


Click on the image to see other funny Chinglish signs in Shanghai. Continue...

Jackfruit, Durian, Taro and Okra Chips

I've been searching for jackfruit products in NYC after trying it fresh in Thailand. Yesterday I stumbled upon Danielle Sweet Jackfruit Chips by New England Herbal Foods. I found these at a random deli in Williamsburg, but they're also available at Whole Foods.



Jackfruit is the largest fruit that grows on trees. The fruit is about the size of a watermelon and is covered in hard cone-like points. Some describe the smell of the unopened fruit as rotten onion, but not as strong as that of durian.

It is worth noting that jackfruit and durian look similar with their green hard pointy shells and people often confuse the two. Unlike durian (soft wet texture with sweaty sock/rotten onion smell), the flesh inside jackfruit has a much more appealing bubble-gum taste and rubbery texture.

Danielle Sweet Jackfruit Chips (9/10) have a mix of banana and pineapple flavor; they are crunchy, naturally sweet and totally addictive. Plus, you don't need to feel guilty eating them since Danielle's vacuum frying approach using no ingredients other than the fruit or vegetable and non-hydrogenated palm oil makes these healthier than most other chip snacks.

To our pleasant surprise, this line of chips includes other Weird Food Club-worthy flavors: durian, okra, whose texture reminds me of snot, and wild taro, a root vegetable that is toxic raw. I might stop by a Whole Foods to check out these other flavors as well. See list of all flavors here. Continue...

I guess we won't be eating monkey any time soon...

Researchers found a strain of a virus related to HIV in the flesh of primates illegally imported into New York City for human consumption.



Apparently, there's a whole underground market for bushmeat in the US. Bushmeat is a general term that used to refer to terrestrial wild animals (think "game") but now usually means endangered species hunted unsustainably, especially in Central and West Africa. Meat from some of these animals (monkey, cane rat, Malayan fruit bat) is considered a delicacy by West African communities and are consumed cured or smoked. The meat is smuggled into the US via parcels and personal suitcases, sometimes uncooked (blood and all).

Due to the virus, I'll pass on monkey meat at this point, but I wouldn't mind trying cane rat and/or the fruit bat. Those don't sound like endangered animals to me - any NYC-based West Africans want to volunteer to cook me one?

Read more about this here. Continue...

Dim Sum at Jing Fong

Last Saturday we ate to our heart's desire at Jing Fong (20 Elizabeth Street, 2nd fl), a dim sum house. Dim Sum is an ideal way to sample a large number of small dishes in one sitting, and it works out even better in large groups of friends. It is recommended to arrive at Jing Fong before noon, and Saturdays tend to be less crowded than Sundays. We arrived a few minutes after 12, and the place was already packed. We got a table at the elevated portion of the gigantic over-decorated ball room, and felt like we were part of a wedding party.


Duck feet: 3/10
My most anticipated dish was the chicken feet, however, duck feet looked much more interesting. While chicken feet were covered in sweet and sour sauce, duck feet were steamed and doused in soy sauce. Becauase of this, duck feet looked much like they should naturally, with webbing between toes and all! Despite WFC member Josh's pleads that duck feet were terrible compared to the chicken feet, I had to get them anyway.

The duck feet didn't taste bad per se, but neither did they taste good. There wasn't much to eat on them and the skin was a bit tough. We only got them so we could pose with them for photos - they are very photogenic. (I can't say the same about myself though)


Tripe: 4/10
I loved the look of this tripe dish, because you could see the honeycomb texture of the reticulum (the second chamber of a cow's stomach). The dish came with a stew of cabbage and cassava. The peculiar cow smell of the tripe was too overbearing for me so I didn't eat much of this dish, but WFC member Anastassia loved it!


Sesame seed balls with durian paste: 4/10
These looked promising until you bit into them and tasted the durian. I've had fresh durian before and it actually was significantly less horrid than I had anticipated, having heard that the smell of durian was so offensive that it was illegal to eat it in public places in Southeast Asia.

The durian paste in the sesame seed balls had a sweet rotten onion taste, but it developed only a few seconds after you bit into it. To Josh, the durian paste literally tasted like garbage. Food critic Richard Sterling's description of durian is much more colorful: "its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock." This sounds a little bit like my description of huitlacoche. To me, durian seemed better tasting than huitlacoche, especially concealed in sweet dough and covered in sesame seeds.



Our Dim Sum experience was not all bad. We also had some palatable food, my favorite of which were pork (7/10), fried tofu (6/10), and pastry dough with honey(7/10). The best part, of course, was snatching up dishes we liked from the moving carts and the buffet, and the bill at the end (~$13 per person)! Continue...

A grocery store that has everything

Being Russian, I occasionally go to Net Cost Market @ 8671 18th Avenue, Brooklyn. People refer to it as "the Baza" (base) because it contains absolutely everything. They have another location at 608 Sheepshead Bay Rd.

Here is a sample of disturbing things you can find in the meat section.


"Pig Baby by pc $65.39"

"Pork Pig Feets $3.24"



"Beef Tongue $9.45"

"Beef Liver $2.46"

"Beef Cow Feet Frozen $2.24"

"Turkey Neck $3.30"

"Turkey Gizzards $4.40"

"Veal Brain $3.67"

"Veal Heart $4.82"

"Veal Kidneys $1.91"

"Veal Tail $5.69"

Interestingly, the veal tail and the baby pig are the most expensive items per pound ($4.99 per pound).

Disclaimer: I did not purchase any of these items.
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