Around the World in 50 Years by Albert Podell

Author:Albert Podell [Podell, Albert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466852938
Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

You Are What You Eat

I had few menu options on these journeys and little time to be picky about food. As a lifelong omnivore, I ate whatever was available—except endangered species, raw sea urchin, and tortured veal.

An essential part of the discovery and adventure (and sometimes the delight) of travel comes from sampling the unusual foods the locals eat, foods they’ve been eating for hundreds of years without noticeable harm. Dining on the indigenous fare also helped me better understand the local culture and economy and the way they lived.

In the course of my travels I’ve eaten: armadillo (in the hills of Grenada); zebra (Kenya); fish lips, fish eyes, fungus soup, duck’s feet (all in China); kangaroo, ostrich, emu, and Moreton Bay bugs (Australia); fugu sushi (carefully prepared in Japan from poisonous puffer fish); guinea pig (Peru, Bolivia); snake (all over); spotted dick and blue-teat pie (England); horse (Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, and CAR); possum pie, callaloo, dasheen, sapodillas, pawpaws, and cush-cush (various Caribbean islands); gnu, antelope, eland, gazelle, springbok, steenbok, klipspringer, kudu, nyala, and oryx (sub-Saharan and southern Africa); pigeon (France and Morocco); iguana (Central America); blood sausage (Colombia and Germany); smashed chicken infused with sugar and covered with ice cream (Turkey); crocodile (Africa and Australia); roasted duck gizzard, braised jellyfish, spicy soup of shredded intestines and organ meats boiled in blood, (all in China); pig’s blood porridge, caramelized fish hatchlings, lotus root salad, steamed blood cockles, caramelized pork belly and Mekong rat (Vietnam); toasted leafcutter ants, oven-baked tarantulas, waxworm potato fritters, bees, beetles, crickets, worms, caterpillars, scorpions, wax moth larvae, and grubs (in many places, and not always intentionally); and just about every fruit and vegetable under the sun.

Among the more memorable culinary experiments was an anteater Steve and I found recently run over on a road in Panama. Not wanting to waste a good source of protein, we chopped it up, added salt and pepper, wished we had a box of Roadkill Helper, roasted it over a campfire, and it tasted … awful, like a burger marinated in formic acid.

And a platter of sea cucumber—a cold, black, warty little creature served as a gelatinous, forbidding-looking dark lump—which, once ingested, tasted like a mix of Jell-O, lard, and library paste.

Rats are, in contrast—and after you overcome any squeamish cultural bias—rather tasty, especially the big ones eaten in Africa, where they’re called “grasscutters,” an appealing appellation doubtless bestowed by the branding consultant who renamed the Patagonian toothfish as “Chilean sea bass” and the slimefish as “orange roughy.” The locals skin the rodents, split them down the middle, spread them out flat, and roast or grill them. Each tastes exactly like what it ate. If it lived in a cane field, it tastes like sugar; if it lived in a pineapple patch, just Dole it out.

Unfortunately, the elephant dung beetle I ate in Kenya smelled exactly like what it ate, but I overcame this olfactory impediment with a liberal application of OFF! insect repellant under my nose. (Better to use perfume or aftershave if you try this experiment at home.

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