A matter of taste

Why is balut so gen-erally abhorred in the west? That it was used in the reality show Fear Factor is evidence of this aversion. And I remember an episode of Lonely Planet where one of the hosts purchased balut in Malate, then talked herself into taking a bite only to spit it out almost immediately and retch over it. Yet this same host downed a glass of wine in Vietnam to which the raw gallbladder of a snake had been added. Not only did she manage to hold it down, she even made a complimentary remark about it.

I guess that one man’s comfort food can be another man’s reason for a bellyache. The food specialty of a specific culture or region will not always be appetizing to everyone and may even repel some, especially if a basic ingredient is this side of unappealing or forbidden.

Take another Filipino favorite — dinuguan. Eaten at face value, it usually passes most westerners’ epicurean standards. But tell those same people that pig’s blood is the base for this stew and chances are they’ll make a beeline for the nearest sink or toilet bowl. Unless they’re from Sweden or Poland. Svartsoppa or black soup is made from the blood drippings of the geese the Swedes roast for St. Martin’s Eve. And the Poles have czernina, a sweet-sour soup made from duck or pig’s blood, broth, sugar and vinegar.

Culture and habit have a lot to do with our biases particularly the hard to explain ones.

Some folks balk at eating sashimi on the grounds that it is raw fish but won’t bat an eyelash at dining on carpaccio, oysters on the half-shell or sea urchin roe, which is seldom if ever cooked. The French and their escargot may have given snails a better reputation but I’ve seen people screw up their faces at the seafood version of kare-kare when snails are part of the mix. And it’s one thing to eat frog’s legs, which resemble small chicken legs after all, but quite another to eat it whole sans head but with limbs still intact and splayed, reminding you that you are about to pop a frog into your mouth. Stuffed relleno-style and deep-fried to a crisp, these tiny frogs are a popular dish in some parts of Pampanga.

And then there’s caviar. The ultimate luxury to some, to others it is just salty fish eggs, no more, no less, with only its cachet to recommend it. One of my uncles declared he would take bagoong over caviar any time after getting a taste of the costly roe at a diplomatic function. Clearly even the yen for the world’s gourmet delicacies can be an acquired taste.

Beware prairie oysters, Montana tendergroins, cowboy caviar, swinging beef, Rocky Mountain oysters and calf-fries. These are deceptive euphemisms for bull testicles. There’s even a famous Testicle Festival in the western US state of Montana where the favorite way to eat the stuff is battered and fried and served with ketchup or barbecue sauce. American wranglers are by no means the first or only folk to feast on these "nuts." Ram testicles were a popular item on fashionable 18th century French menus. And the ancient Romans dined on gonads to increase their sexual vigor. Ditto for the Chinese who have created a hearty bull testicle soup.

Come to think of it, animal testicles are not the oddest ingredients ever to make their way into a soup, stew or stir-fry.

How about whole boiled lizard in broth and soup starring sheep’s eyeballs? Deep-fried white rat that could pass for amber-hued Peking duck? Or insects, grubs and worms for lunch or dinner? We have the local camaru or crisply fried crickets. And those little critters are also staples in many South American locales where they are often the cheapest source of protein. They are sautéed, stewed, fried, roasted and wrapped in tortillas to make a very different kind of taco. They are even eaten raw. I will never look at another garden slug or earthworm the same way after watching one of the indigenous tribesmen on Discovery Channel happily take a bite of a big, fat white grub and show off the gooey, still twitching uneaten half before popping it into his mouth. For some, apparently fresh does not mean raw but alive.

Why else do sashimi restaurants that specialize in cutting their fillets from live fish do such brisk business in Japan? Another version of sashimi is a live shrimp that is quickly beheaded and shelled and handed over to the diner while still wriggling. The object is to swallow the poor thing in one bite so you can feel it "dance" in your throat as it goes down. The Koreans go one step further. Imagine fishing a small live octopus out of a bowl of water, dipping it in sauce then eating it whole while its tentacles frantically cling every which way to your lips, chin and cheeks.

And lest you believe only uncommon foodstuffs lend themselves to the strange and exotic, well, think again.

The common egg becomes a specialty gourmet item when salted or aged. Hence, our local itlog na maalat (especially delectable when teamed with chopped tomatoes, diced green mangoes and a dollop of bagoong) and the rather exaggeratedly named century eggs with their slightly ammoniac flavor and brownish whites and green yolks.

Or how about rich, dark chocolate? Traditionally a dessert ingredient or a sweet in its own right, it is a main ingredient in the spicy Mexican poblano mole. Dried chili peppers, ground nuts and spices and charred avocado leaves also go into this very popular savory sauce.

And then there’s coffee. The customary way of taking it is either black or with cream or milk. Sweetness depends on where you are in the world though diabetics would be advised to keep in mind that in some countries a close to half a cup of sugar is not deemed too much of a good thing. For the more adventurous, Starbucks and other coffee bars have come up with a plethora of concoctions to satisfy the universal hankering for beverages based on this aromatic bean. But I very much doubt they will ever do as the Laplanders do and dunk butter in their cups of steaming coffee for a fortifying hot drink.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but our aesthetic proclivities are shaped by the various cultural forces at work on us at any given time and place. The same goes for food and our taste buds. Frankly, I think we are all discriminating diners, our ingrained loves and hates in the gustatory arena dictate what we consider simply to die for, not bad at all, just barely palatable or fit to toss into the garbage bin with nary a second thought or an experimental bite.