Hell's kitchen
Source: Irish Independent (Original Article)
Algae. I’m about to eat… algae. I don’t know whether it’s the unusual word, with its doubled vowels, or the definite mental associations with pond scum and dirty shower curtains, but “algae” isn’t really something that immediately sounds appetising. Not like “pork chop”, “peach Melba” or “all-day-breakfast sandwich”. No, “algae” has an unsavoury ring to it - like “fungus”, “amoeba” or “drool”.
But here, in the ancient Laotian capital of Luang Prabang, I am determined
to do the business, to actually get some algae down my neck, no matter what
it sounds like. And this is because I want to test the World Health
Organisation’s latest thinking: that in an age of food shortages, it’s time
to move on from hamburgers and kebabs, from spaghetti and fried chicken, and
that it’s time to think of eating less obvious foods.
But where’s the best place to see if this advice works? Where in the world
do they make a speciality of such fare? Where are the world’s most
experimental and adventurous gourmets? There is only one answer: Indochina.
In this green, wet, sunny, fertile corner of the globe, homo sapiens has
taken to cooking, boiling, steaming, roasting and fricaseeing the very
strangest comestibles known to man.
I’ve learnt this first-hand. A few years ago, when I visited Guangzhou, the
southernmost of China’s great cities, I discovered the Qingping food market
at the throbbing, gristly heart of the metropolis. It was full of way-out
stuff. And I don’t mean pigs’ trotters and curly kale. Owls, crows,
de-quilled porcupines, rats, beavers, miserable-looking squirrels, half-dead
vultures, bears, mice, rays, twitching reptiles, snakes sliced in half from
tongue to tail with their tiny pink hearts still beating and bloody - you
name it, in Guangzhou’s huge, smelly, wet, weird, noisy, thronging Qingping
market, you could buy it, and you could eat it. It was stunning, and it budgettravel was
deeply disconcerting. My travelling companion …continue reading