animal lover II
When it comes to food, I can say that I’m both adventurous and finicky. Adventurous because I dare to try anything that I haven’t tried before, and finicky because I’m very particular on the taste of the things I put in my mouth.
Today, I achieved another milestone in my life venturing food. Scorpions and grasshoppers. Yep, the cool looking crustacean with hard carapace, and the green coloured insect. May sound icky to most people, but for some asian countries, both scorpions and grasshoppers are delicacies.
Anyway, back to the topic. Had my lunch at a local Thai restaurant today that served both of these odd food. I first tried the grasshopper. Deep fried style … dark brown in colour. Initially, felt really reluctant to put that damn thing into my mouth, because I really do not like the way it’s abdomen looked.
When my buddies all ate one each, I felt compelled to eat at least one as well — else those guys would fucking laugh at me for being a coward. Damn, it was a point of no return for me … my eyes gazing at the crispy insect. Then, as if I’m doing somekind of Fear Factor stunt to impress some girls, I ate the grasshopper’s leg first. Tasted like nothing - albeit a bit crunchy. Then I ate the other leg … until it finally became a limbless grasshopper. Finally, I popped the whole thing into my mouth … chewing and trying to visualize myself eating a prawn. Surprisingly, the motherfucker tasted quite good. Just like a mantis prawn. Then I took another. And another. The damn thing is delicious !
Alright, this kinda give me some faith and guts to try out the next challenge. Deepfried SCORPION (i don’t know why the Thais loved to deep fry their food) ! I hope The Rock won’t mind me eating his distant cousin here. The size of the scorpion is approximately the size of a nokia 8250 mobile phone, quite big. If the bugger isn’t dead, the size of this thing would have sent me catapulting out from the restaurant running for my life. Serious.
Because it’s such a dangerous creature, I ate it’s stinger first — to disarm the bastard. In case it suddenly got resurrected and became alive … at least it won’t have a stinger to cause any trouble. The stinger tasted nothing special other than crunchy. I then bit the scorpion into half (coz it’s too big, choking hazard) … and attempt to capture it’s taste by chewing. It tasted like somekind of synthetic rubber … crossed with the taste of a type of shampoo that I accidentally swallowed when I was a kid. Don’t like the taste at all. But the pair of pinchers tasted quite ok though.
So, what do I think of them ? Well, the grasshopper was a surprise, but kinda disappointed with the scorpion. Grasshopper = looks bad outside, taste good inside. Scorpion = looks good outside, taste bad inside. Period. Here’s the update list of exotic creatures that I’ve eaten before :
dog, flying fox, squirrel, python, wild cat, turtle, lamb, goat, iguana, ostrich, pigeon, wild boar, aardvark, canary, frog, clear water eel, arowana, fox, crawfish, rabbit, black panther, scorpion, grasshopper