Weird or disgusting food series: liver sashimi

In Japan, "sashimi" (刺身) is very common delicacy. Sashimi means thinly sliced raw meat. The most common type of meat is fish, but there are many other kinds too, for instance horse sashimi.

Liver sashimi (レバ刺し) is quite popular in Japan and you can find it in many restaurants all over the country. This is of course thinly sliced raw liver (usually beef, but deer is also quite common here in Hokkaido). The liver is often more or less frozen when served, and when it melts (if you let it melt instead of eating it) the plate turns into a sea of blood.

I am not fond of liver sashimi. The taste is fine, better than cooked liver, but the texture is disgusting. It tends to just melt in your mouth. Of course, this seems to be fairly popular in Japan, with a previous blog post on shirako (fish sperm) that is similar in texture and also popular. Liver sashimi also looks a bit disgusting once it starts melting.

Summary:
Taste: OK
Texture: disgusting (melts in your mouth)
Looks: a bit disgusting once melting

Weird or disgusting food series: goat testicles

About a year ago we went on a business trip to Heraklion in Greece. Since we have a guy from Heraklion in our lab, I asked him if there was any interesting local food he could recommend. He recommended three things: snails, entrails stuffed with hearts/kidneys/whatnot, and goat testicles.

Some of these he said would be a little bit difficult to find in a touristy restaurant, but in restaurants serving traditional food they might have it if we asked (even if it was not on the menu). Snails were easy to find, and very good. The stuffed entrails we did not manage to find. As for the goat testicles, I asked at our hotel if they knew any place that served it. They said most places nearby did not but one might have it if we were lucky.

I took my Swedish colleague (my Japanese professor and my British colleague strongly objected to eating testicles and did not go with us) and a random Polish guy with me and set off towards the recommended place. I asked the guy outside the restaurant if they had "ameletita" and he laughed and asked me if I knew what that was. I said sure. He seemed impressed that we had not been tricked into asking for something disgusting but were actually there to willingly eat that disgusting thing. He went off to the kitchen and asked if they had any testicles today (it was not on the menu). They said they did have some, so we sat down and ordered a plate of testicles. The staff thought this was hilarious. We also ordered normal food. The staff were kind enough to tell us about goat brains and other dishes we might want to try in Greece too (though we did not have time to try any of those, if they even exist).

Fried goat testicles, and slightly more of them than we really needed...

When our goat testicles arrived, it turned out to be a small mountain of testicles. They must have castrate a small herd for our sake. We were thinking that something like one pair of testicles would be enough, despite my Greek colleague assuring me it is "delicious" and "one of his favorite foods".

The Polish guy had one testicle, which was one more than expected since he is not the adventurous type. My Swedish colleague had two. Then they said that since I had been the one trying to find this food, I would have to finish the remaining 20 or so myself... Which I did.

The inside of a fried goat testicle. Soft and squishy.

Goat testicle is not actually bad, though. It tastes pretty good. The texture is close to disgusting, but not really. It is a little too soft for comfort, but still fairly OK. The main problem is your mind going "OK, so now I have this huge testicle in my mouth and I need to chew it", which is a bit uncomfortable. After having 20 goat testicles, you kind of get fed up with the taste though. Five would have been enough.

The rest of the food we had at the restaurant was good, and the staff were very friendly to the crazy people ordering testicles. The restaurant also happened to be just across the street from the hotel my professor was staying in. Why he, who is Japanese, refused to eat goat testicles remains a mystery. In Japan people consider fish testicles a delicacy (and completely normal food), and though some people in Japan do not like that my professor claims to like fish testicles.

My Japanese friends back in Sapporo evidently thought it was hysterical when I twittered: "I just ate goat testicles" in Japanese.

Summary:
Taste: good.
Texture: almost bad
Look: a little disgusting
Overall impression: surprisingly OK, might eat again

Weird or disgusting food series: sparrow on a stick

In Japan it is quite common to eat yakitori, literally grilled chicken. Yakitori are skewers with grilled something, with the basic option being chicken meat. There are many many more variants though, for example: chicken skin, chicken guts, chicken cartilage, and non-chicken options like bacon rolled around asparagus, banana, sausage, mochi (rice cakes) covered in bacon, small eggs, etc.

Something that is not that common is sparrows. When in a nice yakitori resataurant in Asahikawa with two young Japanese girls, I saw "sparrow" on the menu and we ordered that. The staff asked how many we wanted, and since there were only two birds per plate the girls said maybe we should order two plates? I suggested that since it was quite likely disgusting, perhaps two birds would be enough and we could share. A good suggestion as it turned out.

One plate, two sparrows

A side view, which shows of the neck and head better.

Sparrow on a stick is just that. Someone had removed the feathers, but the rest of the bird was all there, claws, beak, eyes, etc. I asked the waitress what parts you are supposed to eat and was told "all of it". "The beak too?" "Yes, all of it." She did mention that I might want to be a bit careful with the feet, since the claws can be sharp and I might cut myself...

I took one sparrow, and ate all of it. The sauce tasted fine. The legs, being pretty much only bone, were very dry. The only part with any meat to speak of is the body, and the taste of the meat there was bad. The beak was fine, but the head was the worst. The skull is a bit crunchy and then you have the soft brain inside, and the combined texture of these were quite disgusting. As was the taste, and the general idea of chewing on skull/brains. The people at the table next to ours also ordered sparrows and exclaimed things like: "Ah, it is so delicious!", so I guess some people like it.

The girls I was there with did not like sparrow. They thought it was horribly disgusting just to look at (true). One of them ate the beak of one sparrow and then gave up. The other ate one leg. So indeed we got by just fine with only one plate of sparrows.

I did however learn some Japanese nuance by eating sparrow. Japanese has lots of onomatopoeia, and these are often hard to understand the nuances of as a foreigner. The dictionary only tells you the general meaning, if they are even present at all. So "pari-pari", "kari-kari", "saku-saku" are all expressions for crunchy food. I learned that the beak of a sparrow is "pari-pari".

Summary:
Taste: bad (especially the meat and brains, bones were OK)
Texture: bad (at least the skull/brain/head, the rest was OK)
Look: disgusting
Overall impression: best avoided

Weird or disgusting food series: inago and hachi-no-ko

 In my previous lab at the university we had a student from Asahikawa, the second largest city on the Hokkaido island (Sapporo being the largest). One day I bought a ticket to Asahikawa for half the price from a friend who for some reason had bought a ticket months before but never gotten around to using it and the day I bought it was the last day it could be used. I asked our student from Asahikawa for a good restaurant to go to in Asahikawa and he recommended a yakitori (grilled chicken on skewers) place that had both good chicken and weird food on the menu.

Inago (front) and hachi-no-ko (back)

I also managed to get hold of two aquaintances that lived in Asahikawa; two young (around 20) Japanese girls. They picked me up at the station and we went looking for the weird food. We ordered "inago" (grasshoppers) and "hachi-no-ko" (bee larvae, literally children of bees). This is actually Japanese food and not considered weird food at all in some parts of Japan. My Hokkaido friends consider it weird and not at all Japanese food, though. Perhaps because Hokkaido is too cold to house much in the way of insects? Anyway, friends from Gunma (further south in Japan) confirm that this is completely normal, and popular, Japanese food.

Hachi. Not all the "hachi" (bees) were "ko" (children/larvae), we got some grown-ups too.

In Sweden we do not eat insects, so this food seemed strange to me. The two young girls that were with me also thought the idea of eating insects was disgusting, but we all dug in anyway. The girls managed to eat insects fairly well. I just figured "when in Japan..." and ate all I could find.

The inago grasshoppers were prepared in something sweet and tasted very much like raisins. A little bit dry, but otherwise quite good.

The hachi-no-ko bee larvae came in some kind of sauce that was also a bit sweet. They did not taste much except for the sauce taste, so the taste was good. Since these are larvae/egg like things, they do however explode in your mouth when you bite down on them. Thinking: "Ah, the inside of mouth just got covered in bee intestines" does feel a bit disgusting. Other than that, this too was quite fine.

Summary:
Taste: good
Texture: fine (crunchy) for the grasshoppers, a bit disgusting for the bee larvae
Look: a bit disgusting if you are not used to eating insects
Overall impression: surprsingly good, would eat again

P.S. While inago are quite good, I have also tried kourogi grasshoppers (a larger breed of grasshoppers) and these taste horrible. Do not mistakenly eat kourogi.

Weird or disgusting food series: tachi/shirako (fish sperm)

In Japan people eat a lot of weird things. Some of the weird stuff I have eaten here would be considered strange by most Japanese people too (for instance many insects), and some would be considered perfectly normal (for instance whale meat).

The topic of today's blog entry, tachi (or shirako) belongs in the later category, completely normal food. It can be served raw (common) or cooked in various ways. I have tried it lightly grilled (first time I had it), raw (also that same night), tempura fried, and raw in soy sauce together with raw oysters (a New Years feast delicacy). It is also common in miso soup and on sushi.

Raw fish sperm. Apparently delicious.

Tachi does not taste very much at all, and the taste is not bad, unless you really dislike raw fish taste, but then a lot of Japanese food will be tough for you. When you eat it, it is very soft and it kind of just melts in your mouth. This is apparently one of the good things about tachi from the perspective of most of my Japanese friends, but to me it is quite disgusting and one of the reasons I dislike this food...

Another reason to dislike tachi is the look of it. It looks as if someone handed you a raw brain from a small animal. Even Japanese people admit that it looks like a brain, but they helpfully tell you: "No, no, it just looks like a brain. It is actually sperm." I am not entirely convinced that this is so much more appetizing though...

This used to be cheap food I am told, and many people have fond memories of eating lots of this when they were kids. Nowadays it is considered more of a delicacy and is usually a bit expensive. It is not hard to find, though. Most izakaya (Japanese bars) have it on the menu in different forms, and many kaiten-zushi ("conveyor belt" sushi bars, sushi moves by you and you grab anything that looks good) serve it at least during the tachi season of the year.


Summary
Taste: not that bad (but not really good)
Texture: disgusting (melts in your mouth in a disgusting way)
Look: disgusting (looks like the raw brain of a small animal)
Misc: is actually raw sperm, and thinking of this may be unappetizing to some