Ok, now thanks to the Food Pornographer who sent me the link, I think we now have the winner for the culinary delight I am most unlikely to be able to eat. (Yes, even bull’s penis noodles sound more appealing – who’da thought??)
The winner is… balut. This is a dish from the Philippines, which is basically a duck’s egg that has a little baby duck in it. And yep, you eat it, duck foetus and all.
I have never eaten balut before and must confess I am basing all my fears on the very idea of it. This great description of the experience of eating balut posted by Eddie Lin at Deep End Dining doesn’t help. (Warning: graphic pictures!) Thanks to Eddie’s description, I now know that balut tastes a little like duck liver, but like him, the very idea of eating a foetus just doesn’t work for me.
The fact that I was eating white bread toast with strawberry jam and salt-reduced Flora margarine while reading about balut was strangely comforting…
Wikipedia suggests that “Balut-making is not native to the Philippines. A similar preparation is known in China as maodan (Chinese: 毛蛋; pinyin: máodà n; literally “hairy egg”), and Chinese traders and migrants are said to have brought the idea of eating fertilized duck eggs to the Philippines. However, the knowledge and craft of balut-making has been localized by the balut-makers (mangbabalut). †If this is true, once again, the Chinese have excelled themselves in the world of cuisine…
Once I managed to dispell the images from my mind, I was able to think about the word itself – Malay/Indonesian speakers may also have noticed this before – in Malay the word balut means “to wrap, bundle up, bandageâ€. Ah, and Wikipedia confirms that I am not imagining this – “The word balut roughly translates to mean ‘wrapped’. †I wonder what Philippine language this is from – Tagalog? Anyone?
(Sorry Anna, was this the sort of food post you were hoping for?)
7 Comments
*wretches*
oops, i mean *retches*
although, maybe i was thinking, “wretches! leave the baby birds alone!!”
I must mention that I got the original link to that balut story from haverchuk here: http://haverchuk.blogspot.com/2005/09/omigod.html
Yep, balut is something I would NEVER eat. A guy I worked for (I think he was of Greek heritage) was going out with a Philippino girl, and when he met her family for the first time at a big family do, guess what they served up? I think they did it as a sort of test. He really wanted to get in the family good books, so he tried it. But he did not go back for seconds!
If it tastes like liver then it’s not too bad but I guess it’s more the idea of looking at something that resembles a living creature already, as opposed to neatly cut up pieces of “anonymous” meat that turns ppl off. 😉
Most Westerners cannot handle having the face of the animal on the table but we Chinese love it – piglet, fish, chicken, duck etc. But I guess this is a bit more extreme.
Would I try it? I wouldn’t say never. 😛
errr… I was eating egg whilst reading that… (yes, mooi if you’re reading this, i’ve resumed my old habit).
I always thought that the philipinos were more famous for sardines…this sounds like the duck version of European veal production.
LOL Cherry 🙂
TFP, M’s Dad has given me biltong, rollmops, and chips with mayonnaise (all Dutch faves) to eat, and none of them were at all challenging… but balut? I think I would have had to leave the room.
Mooiness: much more extreme. I have no qualms about whole fish, suckling pigs, etc, but maybe it’s because this is a baby…
Sorry Miss L 😛
Anna, hmm… you make a good point, but it still doesn’t help..