Fujita decides that a true ace of the Jr. division needs to not just prove himself in the field of combat, but in...other pursuits as well. (AKA, Fooj takes his first steps in sleeping with the whole Junior Heavyweight roster)
Tell us about some unusual foods that you've eaten!
It's...controversial, some of them. Also, I'm glad you said "some" because there are not merely a few. ...and I have things I'm supposed to be doing (I should drop them all and let them shatter it would make such a lovely sound)
Right. I'll start with Horse this time. Maybe I'll come back and respond again later. Feel free to prompt for specific details or with additional questions.
Horse meat is--as an older Japanese woman described it to me--'crunchy', and you can buy it in many Japanese grocery stores as a carpaccio/sashimi though it may be labeled "basashi" (ba for horse and sashi for sashimi) or "sakura" because it's ostensibly ... pink? It's not pink. It IS crunchy; there's a dentition there that beef just doesn't have. I don't have much to compare it to because there aren't many mammal meats we ever taste raw. But the way it's served depends on a specific dipping sauce (IIRC it also comes with a bit of lemon?) and the sauce is really the thing that makes the thin slices of horse meat wonderful.
Given how mammal protein is pretty expensive in Japan, I think it's a pretty good deal to them even though few of them seem to want to make a regular habit of eating horse. (An American-style steak is, in my limited experience and explorations, impossible unless you find someone who has access to an American military base supply system or unless you find a butcher who can cut you bespoke pieces; what I would consider a serving of steak could feed a family of three in Japan. ...as I understand it.)
I've also encountered Horsemeat as an ingredient in hotpot, and particularly in "chanko nabe" which...I don't know the characters or the etymology, but everyone in Japan knows that "chanko nabe" is a protein-and-calorie-rich hotpot that sumo wrestlers eat because they gotta bulk up those muscles and that takes some doing.
I'll be honest; horsemeat isn't particularly flavorful to my not-very-talented palate. I think there are good reasons we don't treat them as meat when we don't have to (Japan has wild horses and horse farms in northern Tohoku and also in Hokkaido, per my limited reading. ..so maybe that's why they do have the meat in those areas.) It's a very satisfying *texture* though. ...and in my humble opinion, texture is a big part of what makes some elite foods so sought-after.
Like blowfish, abalone, certain other clams, and even caviars. But those are a different subject.
There was a children's book I bumped into once, with lovely yellowed pages and a library binding and if I were ever to have kids of my own I'd move heaven and earth to find it and provide it to those kids.
But I won't.
But in this book, the spunky tomboyish freethinking young gal heroine made the male protagonist and herself hamburgers using the ground meat in the bottom drawer of the 'fridge, and only later found out it was horsemeat their accidentally-absent parents had somehow acquired (it's not common in the US and I've never ever EVER seen it for sale) for purposes of making into dogfood. ...and the gal ran around whinnying gleefully later. This gal is one of my fictional role models.
I have ZERO problems with eating horse. Even though I've cared for and ridden them in my youth.
Nor dogs, even though I love them. A story for another time.
I'm a little conflicted about whale, but that chapter in Moby Dick makes me really want to try it as steak. ...but I've only had it as sashimi, and only very small amounts. ...and by all the goddesses and Poseidon himself? It was amazingly delicious.
Bugs? Are a struggle. I did not find (or look very hard) witchety grubs to try. I find bundaegi unobjectionable and can chatter about them later. Crickets, mealworms, and grasshoppers? I can eat them if I have to, but they gross me out a bit. Especially crickets and grasshoppers. I watched a woman in a youtube clip from an old late-night comedy show (Letterman, IIRC; he once had Grace Hopper on his show) show off a hissing cockroach and then eat it on camera and...that's a line I would cross if I had to.
My rule about strange food? If there is a culture that sincerely eats it? I'll try it if I can. At least twice.
Natto? I did not enjoy it at all the first time. Someone said "try it ten times; you'll like it then." ...and by the fourth time I tried it I liked it. I have four tubs in my fridge right now and will eat them with mustard and a soft boiled egg.
Stinky tofu? I'm probably not doing that one right. ...but I've only tried it once and although I hated it, I'll try again.
Durian? Child's play. I low-key have contempt for people who flinch from it. Medium-key. Cowards.
Bear meat is very good IMHO, though I've only had it twice and once was in hot pot and another was a spiced mince in a can (IMHO you're not really tasting it unless you have it unseasoned. ...and preferably both raw and cooked, but at least one of those two ways.
Seal meat tastes rancid even when it hasn't gone off? I think. I haven't got much experience with it. I'd try it again.
I'm trying to make arrangements with some of the deep-south country hunters that know a friend-of-a-friend to save me a bunch of "dove meat" because the two times I've had pigeon meat it's been AMAZING. Tiny bones are a PITA sure, but...there's an ancient children's book called Caddie Woodlawn (all my childhood reading came from library sales and thrift shops and the internet) where they sing about "pigeon pie" and having tasted it? It sounds so good. Pigeon meat is just super tasty and not in a way I can describe (I can attempt to describe most other meats. Dog meat is like a cross between mutton and beef, IMHO.)
I have in my freezer right now some dressed corpses of rattlesnakes and some frozen fillets of ostrich. ...and I'm excited. I've had rattlesnake from a can before but it was already seasoned and also there were a billion tiny rib bones in it so you couldn't really nail down an identifiable taste. ...and ostrich is always sold ground, and usually mixed with something else. Cowards.
I don't have much left on my bucket list, and I hope that maybe if I get the right medical care and medications I'll be of a mind to add more things, but the one thing that's still on there is going to have hakarl / fermented shark in Iceland. ...though since reading Moyashimon I've learned there are other even more challenging "fermented animal meats" I don't know I'll ever have the courage to try.
But as a friend of mine put it, once? "what's the worst that could happen? I could die? That was gonna happen anyway."
Oh, there's a place where you kill a sheep and let it sit for a week and then eat the raw flesh and it tastes like cheese, or so I learned from a Scandinavia And The World comic. ...and I've actually tasted that on accident and it was delicious and I will try it again.
I'm sure there's a lot more, and I've rambled, but there are chores that want doing and tonight I've had nothing more exciting than some twice-baked turkey on sourdough with Russian chokeberry jam and mustard. (I'd hoped the chokeberry jam would remind me of cranberry, but it doesn't. My original purpose in buying the stuff was hoping that chokeberry would be similar in flavor to chokecherries from the Rocky Mountain region. They're not. I miss that flavor.)
I need to start getting more exercise. Not to diminish my plushness, but because I miss having more of an appetite. (I understand that people who compete to eat the most in a hurry are often skinny because if they had fat it would restrict their stomach's ability to expand.)
Alas; chairs, beds, and bathtubs are comfortable, and food and drink are pleasant. Exercise is seldom any of those things, and never as low-hanging-fruit of a pleasure. But maybe eventually.
Cheers at you. If you have good food stories or advice I'm eager to learn.
I owned a book--twice (I don't know why I keep giving it away and haven't had it on hand for years)--called "Unmentionable Cuisine".
Because food is good. And there were some recipes in it that sounded amazing.
Two that especially spring to mind:
1: You catch the mice in your winery that have been eating the musty grapes and lapping up spilled wine and chewing on fragments of claret-soaked wood, and you carefully clean them and roast them over a small fire made of smashed well-used wine barrel staves, and serve them with a wine reduction sauce maybe? Sounds fiddly and not super likely to work well, but the recipe is itself pretty.
2: You remove a few bricks from your kitchen's cinderblock floor and put a wire grate over it, and you put any veggie trimmings down there that you don't want and also some water and you keep a guinea pig or two down there. Eventually, when it's grown, you add the shredded meat to a dish; a full-size specimen is a meal for two, properly stretched.
I know intellectually that people would recoil from these dishes like I might recoil from a wichetty grub, a seagull, or an otter. (And I would eat those things, I'd just have to overcome an illogical resistance) (for all I know, they're super delicious. I think pigeon is delicious.)
I know intellectually that I shouldn't be surprised when I encounter someone who recoils at the idea of eating sheep.
But mostly it's a WTF moment for me, that anyone who is as a general rule okay with eating animal flesh would decide that somehow dogs and cats are specialler than cows and pigs? Horses are sacred in a way that sheep aren't? Bird flesh may be eaten only if it is chicken or turkey?
People pretend to believe absurd things all the time--even to themselves--and that's just a fact of modern life we have to cope with when pussyfooting around folk who are scared--say--of having their receipt have three sixes on it in a row, or of acknowledging any validity in the evolutionary record.
I can only assume it's the same sort of thing. The disgust at not-our-culture notional or actual dietary differences is real.
But it's not because of the food.
Its just bog standard picky eating and willful insularity.
I will try to have charity towards people who have illogical taboos,
but only to the extent they have charity toward those who don't share them.
