Shocking culinary tastes
 

For a couple of weeks now, there's been a middle aged Chinese woman filling in for the owner at our local Chinese take away. When she was serving me for the first time, I asked for my usual - Large chips and egg fried rice, no sauce. Apparently, the sauce is what qualifies this otherwise rather nondescript meal as being Chinese, and it was therefore quite inconceivable that I'd be in there ordering it plain. They make good chips. Sue me.

Anyway, the Chinese woman, a traditionalist, was so taken aback by my queer preferences that she temporarily lost her mathematical faculties, and was unable to calculate the cost of what I had ordered. There she stood over the till for a few moments in complete shock, until she collected her thoughts and could resume normal service.


Do you have any quirky tastes in food? So quirky that when people hear of them they react with exclamation marks?

In Mexico, we routinely save pork skin, pickle it in white vinegar with vegetables for a few days and eat them. Like seriously eat them. Now, to us, this isn't really something to be of concern but apparently outside of our culture this seems to be some kind of taboo! If only you saw the looks on people's faces when I explain to them exactly what "cueritos" are, you'd probably laugh.

I've had the idea to make a picture book called "Culinary Shocks" for a while that would basically be a series of photos of people's faces when they're told exactly what some foods are. Balut, "huevos de toro" and fried crickets would be among these.

I'm kinda shocked that they sell chips at a Chinese restaurant in the first place...

I should totally turn the tables and walk in there, take a look at the menu and open my mouth agape, then just leave shaking my head.

I'm sure that some of my preferences are indeed shocking but I suspect that preferences tend to be regional; what is typical in my location is possibly outlandish in another region or climate. Some regional preferences may be based upon availability of ingredients or ethnic backgrounds. In an area with very little Polish influence, kluski and pierogies might seem quite alien. Here around Buffalo, these foods are as common as Wonder bread and Heinz ketchup.

A good example would be British cuisine. I'm no fan of blood sausage but it's regularly eaten in England. I find them rather disgusting even though I'm descended from the Brits. Likewise, I've also got German blood and I detest sauerkraut. I cannot fathom people who put sauerkraut on other foods such as hotdogs or sandwiches.

I guess some may be shocked by my fondness for Tabasco sauce. I look for excuses to put it on as many foods as possible - eggs, chicken, Italian sausage, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, clam chowder - whatever doesn't completely clash with the heat. Some people have weak stomachs.

Says the part-German dude who hates SAUERKRAUT... WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU, MAN?

I can keep it down just fine. It's the taste that makes me cringe. Take everything that is good about cabbage, which isn't much, take those parts away and steep the remains in a horrid brine until it barely resembles its original form.

Oh yeah, delish.

I have a bold taste for imari...

Seriously, I enjoy pretty much every food that I come across. My friends usually are kind of grossed out when we get sushi and I am eating eel skin, though that's pretty mild on the gross factor in my mind.

I also like to eat really spicy peppers (such as habanero) and cloves of garlic whole. Other than that, I think my palette is pretty standard.

Chips as in ... potato chips...?

Sauce as in soy sauce or something?

The strangest food in the world has got to be CHEESE! Yes, there I said it. How can white people just eat blocks of cheese and like not throw up??? It's disgusting, the smell, the texture, the taste.

The strangest thing is the volume of cheese you white people eat, it's on EVERYTHING! Meat, bread, grain, i can't think of a single thing you white people don't put cheese on.

Haha, I'm not quite that extreme (I rather like mozzarella <3), but it seems like Americans really love their cheese.

I shared a room with two girls my sophomore year in high school, and was rather surprised at how much cheese was in the fridge. Not just the quantity, but the type! There was American cheese, swiss cheese, string cheese, spicy pepperjack cheese, etc.

In terms of slightly odd tastes in food, I LOVE mint. If I could, I would put it in everything (I try my damnest though). I also don't mind when things are bland; in Italy, a lot of restaurants give you this bread that has no flavor, but I LOVE eating it~

Actually, a few days ago, my current room-mates were talking about cereal, and they really dislike soggy cereal. Dunno if it's just them or a relatively common preference, but I like it when the little cereal bits are SOAKED in milk <3 (they're good crunchy too, I suppose)

I personally love cheese. I wouldn't call myself a connoisseur by any means, but I'm pretty fond of it. Cheddar, American, colby-jack, that stuff's all great. Pepper jack is nasty, though.

Marmite (or Vegemite) and honey sandwiches.

People won't believe that it's what I'm eating unless they watch me make one, and even then their reaction's usually somewhere between "oh my god" and "what the fuck".

A lot of the older Chinese takeaways in England are just glorified chip-shops. In other words, they have a kitchen out back where they make Chinese food, but out front they have a deep-fryer where they can serve more bland take-away staples.

My dad's from Georgia and growing up we've always had grits for breakfast. I remember the first time I asked my girlfriend to make me some grits and she looked at me like I was one of the craziest motherfuckers alive.

Needless to say, a Californian girl trying to make grits was a horrendous disaster. I could've cut that shit with a knife.

Microwaved Kool-Aid. Ahhh nice and warm on frosty winter day. Bliss.

Spam. Any other member from HI (CHz, Kairyu, DarthSavior) will agree here. Spam is fucking delicious, especially when used in a Spam Musubi.

http://mt.laweekly.com/sea/reverb/spam-musubi-thumb.jpg

Oh so yummy.

Oh god, spam is awful. ;_;

We've always had this meal here at home..its Corned Beef mix with Pork and Beans eaten together with dried fish (dipped in vinegar). I love the face my friends give when I say that :D. Also I have this quirk when eating. I have to be chewing my food when I drink. I cannot finish my meal then drink. My family eats a lot of international dishes... I love sauerkraut (we have a big jar of it). Love having a raclette grill lunch. (with all the sauseges, pickles and of course sauerkraut). I also like umeboshi on rice....takuan is also good on rice.

As disgusting as that sounds, that's actually pretty tempting based on the photo.

I've been getting a lotta comments lately from my Starbucks coffee preference of late.

Venti iced coffee, 3 shots of peppermint, room for cream.

Wait, peppermint? You mean peppermint mocha?

Nope, just peppermint. I dunno, I like that refreshing cool kick of peppermint with my caffiene in the morning. A lot of folks hear that when they call my order and go "Peppermint?". Some even ask me how that is, and just tell em it's an odd preference, and I like it, no explanation for it really.

The first thing that comes to mind is that unlike most of the people I know, I don't put soy sauce on everything. I don't like food that's too salty, so they usually find it odd that I'm Asian, but I don't use soy sauce a lot. Another one is that I never eat fried rice alone. Even if the fried rice has vegetables and chopped pieces of meat already, I still need to have something else with it like chicken.

Ya'll are some crazy fuckers, honestly.
Sauerkraut is awesome, especially with olive oil. In fact, I made some from raw cabbage about two months ago and I ate some for dinner a while ago. It's just salt and cabbage, nothing horrid about it.
Now, odd taste? Don't know, but I do know I love cheese (any kind, really) and I only eat it with proper dried bread (not toast or this North American shit you call bread, real fuckin' home made bread), so, cheese dipped in 1/2 olive oil, 1/2 salt, and bread. So good.
Also good with that is dried, salted fish -- I could live on that alone for YEARS.
My grandfather used to make it (he was a fisherman) and that stuff is absolutely ridiculous.

Also figs. Dried figs are good, really good.

I guess none of those are really weird. I like pig brains. Hey, fried pig brains are really delicious.
What else ... hmm. Can't remember much, honestly.
Tofu maybe? Aye, that stuff is good with tons of salt.

Mild stuff. I do want to try raw fish, though I'm not sure how that's going to work with the bacteria present inside of it.

Diet Pepsi is my absolute favorite beverage. :(

I don't eat anything I consider shocking. I like eel sushi, I guess that could be shocking to some people. I remember seeing chicken feet at a Chinese buffet for the first time not too long ago and so onto my plate they went, they were ok tasting just not much meat on them. I guess that might have shocked some bystanders.

I don't think it's shocking for people to eat crickets either, I'll try some as long as it's done in a restaurant.

I bet it is. Do you know how much cholesterol is in pig brains? (Being totally serious btw)

No idea, but I remember going to the village butcher as a kid and he'd give us the brains for free if we bought other stuff (like liver. My father used to eat liver, we could go nuts with the brains.)
Speaking of that, whatever happened to butchers here in Canada/USA? I'm vegetarian nowadays so I don't buy much meat but when I walk down grocery isles, all I see is perfect cuts of meat. What happens to the innards? Like the organs and other things?

Ramoth already said it, just about every one of us in Hawaii can't get enough SPAM in our meals. Sure it's salty but that's what water is for :3. Oh and if you want to help kill that flavor I suggest marinating it with something sweet (or spicy depending on your taste.)

The thing about SPAM that annoys me is the greasiness. I don't mind the saltiness since I usually put it in fried rice so that diminishes the saltiness.

So, how do you deal with the greasiness?

They're in Chinatown now. Guess it's cheaper to just cut up the meat without asking you what you want, and how much you want. I really miss the sort of community I had in Chinatown, but i really don't miss the smell -_-

I really like squid. We have a place called Huhot where they have everything frozen and you put in in a bowl with some sauce and they grill it on front of you and I'd always get the squid. It was purple and very much still squid looking and so delicious.

I like dark coffee with mint cream liquor, we call that kind of coffee "grama cortada" or "chopped grass" around here.

I also adore tequeños with guava (Mozzarella or white cheese sticks with guava jam inside bread dough, forming a finger like shape), I know that doesn't sound odd enough, but I love to dip them in garlic sauce... it's a guilty pleasure *____*;;;

http://www.apuntesdecocina.com/media...F1os_small.jpg

I don't know if my particular culinary tastes are shocking as such. They're not exactly based on contemporary ways of eating. For instance, I don't eat crisps, I lick the flavouring off them. Or mixing balsamic vinegar with soy sauce and lemon juice and drinking it, or many of the other things I could mention.

I dunno; that's pretty... Bizarre. To say the least.

Seriously, isn't that like tongue death?

Not if you scrub your tongue with your toothbrush...

Gonna have to use two that have already been mentioned in this thread: SPAM and Vegemite. But to puta little spin on it, I like them together in toasted sandwiches. It's a salt overload, but I dunno I really like it.

There's this Italian store in the stripmall over from where I work that I went into once. All I wanted was basically a cheese sandwich with marinara sauce and mayo. Firstly, the woman couldn't understand that I didn't want any sort of meat on it. After I finally convinced her, she couldn't understand having both mayo AND marinara sauce on the meatless sandwich. Hardest day of her life.

When Quiznos first came out with their flatbread pizzas I decided to give it a try. There wasn't a vegetarian option, and the girl was dumbfounded when I asked for one, so I asked her to make me a pepperoni, minus the pepperoni. Honestly stood there for ten minutes trying to explain that to her.

One of my favourite sandwiches is peanut butter, cheez wiz and strawberry jam. Together. And that's just the beginning.

I consume inhealthy amounts of cheese. It must be because I'm white.

I like Ranch Dressing on my pasta, pizza, chicken, steak, pork chops, turkey, and probably more that I can't think of right now.

I like French Dressing on my spaghetti, with my salad mixed into the spaghetti.

I like sugar on my rice.

I remember my Uncle, who will eat anything, offered me a peanut-butter and cheese sandwich. It was a dubliner cheese, if I'm not mistaken, which I'm not entirely fond of, although lately my now budding pallete is beginning to appreciate even stranger cheeses. Anyway, I'm not big on the peanut butter-cheese combo and he was very shocked by my refusal to eat an entire sandwich (I gave it a try and was sure I didn't want one).

I do get a bit of my food-adventuring trait from him, but he really is out there sometimes. I still don't know how anyone can eat Natto, let alone eat Natto for breakfast. What a way to start the day :tpg:

I knew someone who put it on cheesecake. I kid you not. That to me drew the line. As for your other foods, sounds perfectly reasonable to me!

As for me, I rarely use salt and prefer to use pepper to season everything after it's been cooked. I also have a thing for combining strange flavors. I tried a green apple and wasabi sorbet once and it was delicious. Since then, I boldly try things I think could be feasible interesting.

DUrian?!
 

I don't eat this anymore but when I was young there's this fruit called Durian (a fruit from Thailand and other Asian countries). The fruit is encased by a spiky exterior and can weigh up to 20 pounds. Anyways, to MANY people they describe the smell of the fruit to be like burning human flesh or rotting meat. But get this, to the native people that eat this stuff like no bodies business, the smell is sweet and so as a result it taste sweet to them.

Today I don't eat it anymore, but to me, since I grew up with it, the fruit smells very sweet to me. I stop eating it because the fruit is really high in fat and is REALLY hard to digest (it warms your body up quick because your body is working so hard to digest the dang thing).

I like cheese and Ragu sauce mixed together. I grate the cheese (usually cheddar or parmesan) and then I mix it with Ragu sauce and I eat it.

I like putting ice in everything too; apple juice, orange juice, water, whatever. I just like it cold.

Wow, I wouldn't eat half the stuff in this thread, but that cheesecake idea actually sounds pretty good to me.

Personally, I don't like crisp lettuce. I prefer dark green, leafy, lettuce instead, and when I was younger, I'd have no lettuce in my salad at all before I'd deal with crispy lettuce (try telling your waiter that!). Now I can tolerate it, but don't particularly care for it either.

Also, in opposition to LaMenina's post, I hate ice. I like drinks cold, but would rather drink it lukewarm or even hot than have it with ice. Like lettuce, I'm more tolerant now that I was when younger, but I still hate ice in general.

My dad and I were talking earlier and he reminded me of another great little treat we would prepare in Mexico when we still lived there; we called it "Coctel Bronco". (Wild Cocktail)

We would take some chocolate Nesquik mix, pour 2 tablespoons into a glass and then, since we usually did this at the ranch with the cows around, we would milk the cow... RIGHT INTO THE GLASS. Add a shot of tequila to the glass, mix and enjoy.

I wish we could do that here but with all the hormones that get put into cows to make them milk out the white stuff, I'm sure that would be tantamount to suicide.

People look funny at me for eating plain white rice. My friends usually say "put some soy sauce on it to give it some flavor," and I ask them "why would I want to ruin the flavor?"

Of course, I was dumbfounded when I saw my Jewish roommate prepare dinner, and put a slab of butter in a bowl of white rice. I didn't hold it against her, but I didn't want to touch that rice either.

I like to put hummus on my sandwiches; tastes so much better than mayo, or mustard, or whatever else you might consider putting in its place.

Here in Malaysia we eat a kind of fruit called Durian which happens to smell like rotting meat to caucasians. As a matter of fact, it's banned in all hotels and airplanes. Durian - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Personally I enjoy the smell.

Yeah, I used to put cinnamon in everything--rice, pasta, etc. I don't do it quite often now, but I still love my cinnamon. <3

Also, cheese. Back when we could get an 8oz block of cheese for 99 cents, I would stock up and then dump some into a bowl, microwave it, and just eat the melted cheese. American and pepperjack most definitely do not count. I can't even tolerate a melted cheese sandwich--basically American cheese on already-terrible sandwich bread.

Also, Italian dressing in rice. I think the general consensus on this mixture is pretty negative, but I personally love the flavor. Plus, I don't like soy sauce on my rice.

I think there was one point in time when I put plums, peaches, apples, and orange juice in a chicken dish. The fruit was cooked with the chicken on a skillet, mind you. It wasn't too bad, actually. Now that I think of it, I think plum chicken already exists, but I don't think I know of anyone who's tried it.

Eeeggghh. When I was younger, I wasn't particularly fond of the smell, but I could tolerate the fruit if I ate it semi-frozen. Now, I won't even touch it. I still go insane when there's durian in the fridge, which causes everything to stink and taste like durian. :D

it's really good to dip French fries in a chocolate shake.

Cheese is one of the BEST foods! There are few foods that don't benefit from either cheese or whip cream. I also like salsa on all sorts of things--meats, rice, pot pie, perogies.....