Maggots anyone? Around the world on an iron stomach

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After a painstakingly long computerless week waiting for my grandson to come over and fix the problems with the cable hooking-up thingy Eugene and I decided to watch some cable television (which just hasn’t been the same since “The Golden Girls” went off the air) and we caught a glimpse of a fascinating show called “Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern.” That boy looks like he could benefit from a healthy slimming diet, yet he traipses all around the globe sampling the most noxious things each country has to offer. Rather than putting him off his food, things like pork brain soup and such only whets his appetite!

Then Eugene pointed something out: All the foods that Mr. Zimmern sampled, especially in the Indian and Asian countries, were very highly spiced.

“Put Tabasco sauce on it and even fish guts will taste good,” says Eugene.

Certainly that is a good strategy. Adding hot peppers and curry to a dish masks the flavor of the protein well. You are left with dealing with appearance and consistency, either of which can be quite nauseating as I was to discover.

This left me curious. Were there any native delicacies that didn’t involve spicing or pulverizing the questionable meat source into anonymity? I put “safe search” on my browser* and skipped around the interwebs to see. Here is what I found (listed in alphabetical order, rather than order of repulsiveness.)

Beondegi (Korea)

These are silkworm pupas that are boiled up and served on street corners in Korea just like hot dogs are in New York City. They also can be fried and served “beer nuts” style in bars, which seems appropriate since they are reputed to taste like a woodsy foie-gras paste wrapped in a peanut skin. Apparently, the Koreans can’t get enough of them, because they’re also sold canned in the grocery stores.

It is even served to children, who might need the protein, but couldn’t they grind them up and put them in a cracker instead? Then at least one wouldn’t have to look at the nasty roachlike outer carapace. While I suppose this beats the alternative of serving up dog-kebabs, it is just as disgusting!

Casu Marzu (Sardinia)

Who doesn’t love Italian food? Nothing beats delicious bruschetta, savory olives, or a hearty lasagna! The Italians are renowned for their delicious cuisine worldwide, so it came as a huge surprise to me to find this most appalling example of stomach-turning sheep cheese. It is so disgusting that it is illegal, (as well as dangerous as you shall see if you have the stomach to read on!) but the locals have developed a taste for the stuff so there is a large black market that caters to their perverted desires.

This has just about everything nasty going for it. Starting out as harmless and flavorful pecorino cheese, one of the many hard cheeses Italy is famous for, Casu Marzu is distinguished by its aging process. Most cheeses and wines are fermented, which is the same as rotten, to begin with. The process goes a step further by adding maggots to the cheese ON PURPOSE!

As the maggots break down the fats in the cheese, it becomes softer in texture, plus a little oozy as the maggoty byproducts are formed. If the maggots die, the cheese becomes toxic and unfit to eat (as if it was fit before!) So this obviously means a person eats the cheese with living maggots still inside. This is repugnant, but hardly dangerous, right? How could a maggot harm a person other than by stimulating his gag reflex to the point of being unable to hold any food down?

Well it turns out that these maggots are special. The larvae of the piophila casei fly are resistant to stomach acid so you must be certain to not gulp the cheese down, but chew it thoroughly until the maggots are dead. Should any make it into the digestive tract, the maggots, whose mouths are equipped with hooks, can damage the lining of the stomach and intestines as they attempt to bore their way out! Not only that, while you are eating this cheese, you must shield your eyes with one hand, not only to prevent the nauseating sight of maggots in your food, but to keep them from leaping into your face and eyes! Yes they can leap 6 inches!

For a squeamish person who doesn’t want to eat the live maggots in the cheese, a piece may be sealed into a paper bag. The maggots, starved for oxygen, writhe and jump in the bag, creating a “pitter-patter” sound. When the sounds subside, the maggots are dead and the cheese can be eaten. To further shatter my image of the Italians as a sane people, I also discovered that this vile cheese is considered an aphrodisiac! Now rather than Rudy Valentino causing my heart to go “pitter pat”, it is the sound of leaping maggots in a bag of casu marzu that I hear in my imagination when I think of Italy.

Fish Aspic (Boca Raton)

Eugene said it would be remiss of me to include a veritable world tour of putrid cuisine without mentioning my sister Mavis. Truly it is a miracle (or curse, depending on how you look at it) that we are from the same family at all. Her own children, my nieces and nephews, have been tortured by her stomach-turning recipes for decades. In all fairness she is a product of her times, fully embracing all the 1950’s had to offer, eschewing the preferable more simple ways of cooking from the past. Naturally she gravitated to the flashy, yet feculent aspic jellies.

No matter how lovely they appear, there is nothing good lurking within an aspic jelly. It is like a window into a desperate chef’s lonely soul- obviously starved for attention and easily distracted by pomp and flash, forgetting that taste is ultimately what really matters. Mavis’ jellies are legendary for their concatenation of flavors which by no rights ought to go together. But they look “pretty” according to her and thus are justified at the family table.

Grasshoppers (Oaxaca)

“Manna from heaven” would be one of the ways these protein-filled crunchy insects could be described. To a starving desert people, it might have seemed a godsend to find a swarm of locusts blown in on a sandstorm. Many ancient peoples munched on them when other sources of protein could not be found. So it amazes me to find that in this day and age of relative plenty, some people still choose to eat tobacco-spitting tapeworm-infested creatures.

In Mexico, at the very least, one would think that corn chips would be a preferable yet still crunchy snack substitute. They are being punished for their degenerate food preference now though, for children from Oaxaca have lead levels in their blood many times normal. Experts have found this due to the cooking process and seasonings used on grasshoppers. One grasshopper scientists tested had six times the levels of acceptable lead for a child! Of course like most crunchy snacks they can’t eat just one.

Witchetty Grubs (Australia)

What is it about Australia? I have watched enough of the Discovery Channel to notice that the biggest and most poisonous examples of every creature can be found there. I suppose since it is an island that in the past those poor aboriginals must not have a lot of options. These grubs aren’t poisonous or ready to leap out of a waterhole and rip their arms off, so it must have seemed like a good idea at the time.

But now there are supermarkets with real foods! Yet they persist in eating the larvae of cossid moths and some longhorn beetles. These grubs are supposedly the tastiest of the insect-based foods, the “high end” on the flavor palate. I’m sorry, but I will have to take the word of experts on this, because I can’t even bear looking at a grubworm in the garden, let alone imagine eating one of these steroid-enhanced grubs.

No spices or attempts at disguising the obvious nature of this loathsome repast.
Just look at how huge they are! Bursting (literally) with a buttery flavor and velvety texture with a flavor reminiscent of eggs, the grubs are roasted in hot campfire ashes first. But only for the women and children.

“Real” men eat theirs live, headfirst! They bite the heads off so they don’t get revolted by the sensation of the grubs squirming around in their mouths. As if putting one of these in your mouth alive or dead in the first place isn’t revolting enough already!

Just like American beetle grubs they can do a lot of damage to the roots of trees. If you are wanting to perform a public service to Australia’s fauna, you could do worse than dig up a few of these to give away to the local kids. In fact here is a nice video I found that shows you just how to do this:

* If you ever search for things like “eat” be sure your safe search is on. I found out the hard way and now I’m afraid my opinion of Asian girls will never be the same again.

Special thank you’s for technical help with this article go to my grandson Thomas. Without his efforts you would not be able to shiver in revulsion at the pictures he has graciously helped me load in! It is a pity we could not find any actual photographs of my sister’s jellies, but I am pretty sure Eugene destroyed them in the interest of hiding this culinary shame from future generations.

Thanks go to the Mother Hen whose suggestions helped me to achieve a style more appropriate to the subject matter. I doubt if I had been using safe search to begin with that I would have discovered her writings. She is also responsible for bringing the dangers to children from lead in grasshoppers to my attention.

Unedited version originally published by + on July 19, 2010.

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About Post Author

Morgan Williams

Gardener, designer, mother, and activist, Morgan has taught many subjects from art to history; from religion to yoga. Life would be better for everyone if people had a better sense of humor and would just learn to share.
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10 years ago

I once took care of a homeless patient in Florida who had been living on the beach. He was a paraplegic in a wheel chair who had a bad open sore on his bottom. Needless to say, this was the worst experience of my nursing career as I (and another nurse) fought to keep him alive from the sepsis that overtook him from the maggots throughout the lower half of his body. This was 30 years ago, and to this day I feel pity and disgust for what this poor man had been “living” with.

Reply to  Carol Maietta views
10 years ago

Gosh Carol. Thanks for sharing that with us. I can’t imagine such an existence as that poor man.

Reply to  Carol Maietta views
10 years ago

You are a STAR of the highest order and you are also a very very brave lady.

If only humanity would learn from you we would be in a whole lot better place.

Serious love n hugs from England xx

10 years ago

If it’s ‘curried’ I’ll eat it – but don’t necessarily tell me what I’m eating!

greenlight
10 years ago

Mr. Mad, I love, love, love this site, but wish you hadn’t published Morgan’s article with this picture, as it will be at least a day before I’ll be able to eat cupcakes without thinking of maggots.

Morgan, thanks for the article, and the confirmation that my stomach is not made of iron!

Reply to  greenlight
10 years ago

Maggots anyone? Thanks for the kind words 🙂

Rachael
10 years ago

Delightful. I do love the articles over here. You can pretty much find anything. Did you ever try any of these dishes Morgan?

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