Culinary Adventures in Vietnam

While living in Vietnam, I made a promise to myself to become more open with areas in my life that were too guarded.  One of those was my culinary variety.  Being from Chicago, my friends (who are not vegetarian), family and I are used to eating and loving delicious, tender BEEF.  There isn't a lot of great sea food in the Midwest that seems edible, or, I decided that if it smelled like seafood it wasn't edible.  So moving to Asia was a strong introduction to many types of food.  I tried "typical" food like shrimp, crab, muscles and other eats for the first time but in this post, I'll detail a few culinary adventures worth noting...

 To start with seafood, one of the largest shellfish I have ever seen is quite popular in DaNang.  We chose our fresh mussels out of water buckets.  Then, they grilled them up and put sauce and peanuts on the inside.  Not bad!

 One thing I don't think I'll be eating again any time soon is this weird looking squid.  It tasted kind of rubbery and not at all a texture I enjoyed chewing.

 In Hanoi, my couchsurfing hosts took me to a restaurant and ordered this very popular snakehead fish.  This nightmare is plentiful and an invasive species anywhere it goes, so I felt like I was doing the environment a favor eating him.  This was probably the first fish I have ever really enjoyed.

 In a Chinese restaurant in DaNang, two friends and I braved up and ordered cow penis.  Ours was not served like this - oh no.  Ours was served in a broth floating with other unidentifiables and chicken feet.  It was a major mind over matter moment, but the texture was probably the most unpleasant part - it was like cartilage, but soft.  Mmmmm!

 Another first for me was frog.  I ordered it similar to this dish and can't say I was extremely impressed.  The meat didn't taste too dissimilar to other meat that I've had, and it was hard to enjoy because I kept picking out all these tiny bones that were in my mouth.    Not worth the effort!

 What is that, you ask?  Why, it's jellyfish!  For my birthday, a group of friends and I went out for seafood, and I tried a few new things like this raw jellyfish and mango salad.  It had that rubbery texture again and didn't really taste like anything until you dipped it in some sauce.  (Don't tell anyone this, but...  despite my greatest efforts to go to bed and ignore my upset stomach, it all came up later that night.  Bummer!)

A not-so-outrageous dish, my parents and I ordered water buffalo in a traditional Vietnamese restaurant during a trip to Hanoi.  We had also ordered a beef dish, and dare I say - this was on par or better than the beef!  It was lean, cooked with delicious spices, and went well with the salad.

And finally.....THE MAIN EVENT.....

Known in the Philippians as "Balut" and in Vietnam as "trứng vịt lộn" the fetal (or fertilized) duck egg takes the cake for SE Asian food taboos.  Men herald these multi-flavor power boosters as a way to increase protein and fertility!

How to eat
Step one: Try to calm the mental gymnastics occurring in your head and increase hope that you don't get the duck which has already begun to sprout feathers.
Step two: Put egg in egg cup and crack with a spoon.  Peel the first centimeter of shell off of the top and break the membrane separating the fetus and the shell.
Step three:  Bring the egg to your mouth, tip your head back and slurp the liquid that is inside the shell with the fetus.  It tasted like nothing I have ever drunk in my life, but the most similar memory was chicken noodle soup broth.
Step four: Continue to peel the shell from the body and drop it into your bowl.  Inspect fetus.
Step five:  Get some salt, pepper, greens, a fork and dig in!!

Some of the parts tasted like a harder version of a hard boiled egg and some of the parts tasted like chicken.  There was one part that chewed harder than the rest and I'm not really sure what that was...the head?  With mine, you can kind of see where the head is starting to develop, but thankfully I didn't have a beak or feathers.  Another friend at our table wasn't so lucky!
All in all, it was hyped up way more than necessary.  I'd imagine the contestants on fear factor had a harder time eating it than I did because I was surrounded by friends who treated it as they would any other late night snack.  I can't say I'm rushing back to the trứng vịt lộn stand to try another, but I give the thumbs up for anyone daring enough to go for it.  It tasted pretty good!  



As for my "I'll try anything once" attitude, there is one meat that I couldn't bring myself to eat (as far as I know).  It is devastating to know that many pet lovers' dogs (including my friend's) are stolen in Vietnam for this unspeakable purpose.

On a lighter, fruitier note, I made a short video about my favorite Vietnamese fruit which you can access by clicking the large "video" word or clicking on the link below.  I tried as hard as I could to embed the video into the post, but blogger and youtube weren't cooperating.  Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8N98tyz-Rw