Dodgiest Chinese dishes

[Ah-Bin]

Wehn I was young and gullible my brother told me that Chinese ate fresh monkey brainand had a special table with a hole in it to stick the monkey's head through then give it a good bash to crack it open. I think he got this from an Indiana Jones film, though.

Just recently I was reading a book about Chinese customs of the Tang dynasty and there was a piece about something southern called a "honey squeak" which was a live rat embryo dipped in honey and eaten. Has anyone else heard of this? I've forgotten the second character but the first one was 蜜 (honey).

There was another one where they roasted a donkey alive in a cage and gave it a whole lot of sauces to drink while it was hot, so it would marinate itself...

Has anyone else heard about these or any other weird and wonderful delicacies?

[Quest]

Weird things happen everyday around the world, the fact that some of them happen in China doesn't make them "Chinese" or "Chinese dishes".

[Ah-Bin]

That's right, and Maybe "dodgy" and "weird" were bad choices of vocabulary (although I used weird in the sense of "weird and wonderful"). But the author of the book (which was in Chinese and was written by a Chinese) certainly thought that "honeysqueaks" were strange enough to deserve a mention. And I realise that raw horse meat (Japan) black pudding (England) and escargot could just as well be included in the list. "Exotic" would perhaps be a better term.

I mentioned the monkey-brains as an example of something that I had been told was "Chinese" but turned out to be a product of hollywood.

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[Gary Soup]

The best examination I have seen about the truth vs. untruth of the "live monkey brains" story is at this link.

I think it's likely that someone, somewhere, ate live monkey brains at least once, but so what?

Raw horse meat, BTW, is easy to find in Montreal, served with frites, and quite tasty.

[Jo-Ann]

About the Monkey Brain, and other sadistic tales ------Chinese Gastronomy ( Lin and Lin) has an interesting chapter on "Curiosities".

[cjbaker]

Probably not much of a surprise to most of you who have been to China, but here in Baoji we often eat things like coagulated goat blood (kind of like jello) in 火锅. Right near my house, there's a dog restaurant - here's a picture I took, one of many in 宝鸡. Also, many restaurants randomly serve 狗肉饺子 in the winter. I'll definitely never try dog meat.

[skylee]

coagulated goat blood

Here in HK it is made of blood of pigs or chickens and called 豬紅 / 雞紅.

What is black pudding called in Chinese?

[geraldc]

I don't think I've ever heard anyone call black pudding by a chinese name. It's part of the traditional english fry up breakfast, and I'm the only one in my family who it eats it, so at hotel breakfasts, I get everyone elses portion.

Unlike 豬紅, it's made with dried blood, reconstituted with water, mixed with lumps of fat, onions and wheat rusk, and then put in a sausage casement. It has lumps of white fat in it as large as the lumps of fat in 臘腸. It's generally sliced and fried or grilled. I can only eat it with mustard and baked beans...

ah, I think it's called 血腸

[necroflux]

Unlike 豬紅, it's made with dried blood, reconstituted with water, mixed with lumps of fat, onions and wheat rusk, and then put in a sausage casement. It has lumps of white fat in it as large as the lumps of fat in 臘腸. It's generally sliced and fried or grilled. I can only eat it with mustard and baked beans...

"Blood pudding - a healthy part of this complete breakfast!"

Words you'll never hear spoken on a television commercial...

[Catdiseased]

I don't know if the black pudding is really a British invention, maybe it is, but it's also quiet popular and well-known in Germany.