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Food that looks alive on your plate?

Gaztopian said:
Puffer Fish..dear God.

I actually consider my stomach quite adventurous if it's about how exotic a food is. If, however, it pertains to its safety, I'm a wimp. For instance, not that I'm planning on visiting India anytime soon anyway, but if I ever found myself there, I'll steer clear from meats and restaurant food in general, which means I'd stick to nonperishables.
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Indian would be a tough one, because that would mean passing on some pretty good & interesting stuff!

But I'm with you on this: If I have doubts or am uncomfortable, that in itself takes away enough of the enjoyment of a dish that I'll just pass as well. That being said though, it takes a pretty lot for me to get concerned.

BTW - my understanding is Indian curries came about for the reasons we're discussing here: They were a way of preparing leftovers in a pre-refrigeration era hot climate, that imparts both flavor and safety.
 
Chomsky said:
Indian would be a tough one, because that would mean passing on some pretty good & interesting stuff!

But I'm with you on this: If I have doubts or am uncomfortable, that in itself takes away enough of the enjoyment of a dish that I'll just pass as well. That being said though, it takes a pretty lot for me to get concerned.

BTW - my understanding is Indian curries came about for the reasons we're discussing here: They were a way of preparing leftovers in a pre-refrigeration era hot climate, that imparts both flavor and safety.
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I don't have much experience with Indian cuisine, but being the meat lover that I am, I deeply respect what they can do with nothing but vegetables and spices. Still, I remember watching a documentary about food safety in India for tourists; needless to say, I was traumatized. The gist of it was: avoid meats and restaurants, especially street food.

As for the origins of curry, that's a first for me - the more you know, though allow me to be a pedant and ask: wouldn't the inclusion of milk defeat the purpose?
 
Gaztopian said:
I don't have much experience with Indian cuisine, but being the meat lover that I am, I deeply respect what they can do with nothing but vegetables and spices. Still, I remember watching a documentary about food safety in India for tourists; needless to say, I was traumatized. The gist of it was: avoid meats and restaurants, especially street food.

As for the origins of curry, that's a first for me - the more you know, though allow me to be a pedant and ask: wouldn't the inclusion of milk defeat the purpose?
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You know that's an interesting question! Coconut milk is not dairy milk, so perhaps it has different properties. But my born-in-Asia wife uses coconut & coconut milk a fair amount in her cooking, and she's always cautious of it spoiling - so I really don't know.

But I do know this: Much of our food flavoring has been from attempts at preservation (smoking, drying, salting, spicing, pickling), and I definitely recall curry being stated as originally being a way to use-up leftovers. Unless that's urban legend? I can unequivocally say that high spicing otherwise preserves food.
 
Chomsky said:
You know that's an interesting question! Coconut milk is not dairy milk, so perhaps it has different properties. But my born-in-Asia wife uses coconut & coconut milk a fair amount in her cooking, and she's always cautious of it spoiling - so I really don't know.

But I do know this: Much of our food flavoring has been from attempts at preservation (smoking, drying, salting, spicing, pickling), and I definitely recall curry being stated as originally being a way to use-up leftovers. Unless that's urban legend? I can unequivocally say that high spicing otherwise preserves food.
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I agree with you that attempts at preservation lingered as flavors. As for high spicing being a preservation method, I'm on the fence about it. On the one hand, that seems to apply generally speaking, but on the other hand, I've seen excessive spicing being used to mask the bad taste of stale food or food that's in that grey zone where, technically, it hasn't spoiled yet, but it's getting there.

I have to say though, this has been educating so far!
 
Infinite Chaos said:
No idea, the focus so far has been on how she has taken her interest in robotics and synthetics into the area of food.

There are some foods we eat alive - oysters for example and the octopus of the video on the 2nd page - I think however this experiment is a step too far.
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A step too far? But it's not alive... it's just weird and ugly looking.

I eat sushi - like crazy... sooo.... that should be disgusting to me right now.

I have to go and watch Galaxy Quest, now. Excuse me...
 
beerftw said:
Never had cooked octopus but had octopus jerkey when I was in the army. A hawaiian soldier offered it to everyone, It was extremely chewy even dried but he did not tell anyone what it was till after. Well after he said what it was people started vomniting, I was like meh tastes good who who cares.
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So the kind of soldiers my grandpa should called a candy-ass?
 
Honestly, I would be less concerned about the idea of it as I would be contracting a potentially serious bacterial or parasitic infection. I don't care what special technique cultures claim they know, it's always risky to eat raw, living things.
 
Chomsky said:
Have you ever eaten steak tartar or carpaccio? I've had carpaccio multiples times to no ill effect; I think of it as Italian beef sushi.
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I love steak and tuna tartar, that's one of my go to dishes when I go to Europe- for some reason they make them better over there than anywhere else that Ive tried.
 
Jesse Booth said:
If that's the worst tentacle-related thing you've seen come out of Japan, count yourself lucky.
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I hear some of the food bites back....

oodaku_beach.jpg


More seriously though - I think the guy in the octopus video a page back mentions Korea several times.
 
PoS said:
I love steak and tuna tartar, that's one of my go to dishes when I go to Europe- for some reason they make them better over there than anywhere else that Ive tried.
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It might have to do with dishes often tasting better in their native habitat (for a variety of reasons).
 
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