The trite saying - "one man's meat is another another man's poison" - was apparently made for these dishes. Everything is relative, of course. Since we're talking about Pinoy foods the fear factor is taken from the point of view of a foreigner (read American). Most Chinese, for whom anything that walks, crawls, flies, or swims is fair game, would find these tame. On top of the list of my must tries is the Cordillera ham called
etag - pork marinated in salt. This may be air dried but I've seen it placed in a musty
baul. The quality of the
baul is important since after a couple of weeks, the
etag would be crawling with maggots. The combination of numerous maggots nibbling and secreting enzymes over time would soften the meat, and I expect the pork to be melt-in-the-mouth tender.
Here's a list of Pinoy Fear Factor dishes I've tried so far:
BalutBalut is the quintessential Pinoy fear factor food. In fact, it was used in the Fear Factor reality show. But really, how bad can it be, eating cooked duck egg? It's not as if you're eating live, creepy crawlies. Ah, yes, by the way, it's not exactly duck egg but partially formed duck embryo. Some avid
balut eaters I know draw the line at eating embryos with well-formed beaks and feathers. For a time I lost my taste for the soup portion of the thing when I realized I was slurping amniotic fluid. Yech!
CamaruSpeaking of creepy crawlies, this one is not a car, but a plump, juicy insect known elsewhere as the mole cricket (
Gryllotalpa orientalis)
. The insect is commonly seen burrowed (or floating during the rainy season) in the ricefields of Pampanga. The abdomen and front legs are prominent - something you would learn rather quickly when you eat it. It is usually served sauteed in garlic, onion and tomatoes. Quite tasty, actually, until you start to discern the body parts and get a quick lesson in insect anatomy. I understand it's becoming more and more difficult to get and during a Pampanga food trip, a serving of
camaru cost us twice as much as a meat dish.
BuroBurong isda (fermented fish) for me is plain nasty. It's spoiled fish, period. Talk about an acquired taste, this has got to top things. Another man's poison? This is it for me.
BagoongPinoy caviar! Well not really. This is fermented salted shrimp (or fish) whose by-product is a clear liquid called
patis. Both bagoong and patis are used extensively for Southeast Asian cooking. There are probably as many versions as there are main regions in the country. But generally there are the shrimp and the fish varieties. Newer versions are more civilized and are usually sauteed, with sugar and spices added for variety.
Fear factor? An american classmate tried this after some prodding and promptly spat it out.
BetuteStuffed frog. Decapitated so that it has a large hole to stuff it through with ground meat. Enough said.
BinubudanEchoes of childhood in an Ilokano household. My mother refers to this as rice wine, which partly describes it. It's basically cooked rice mixed with yeast, and left to ferment for some hours. The rice turns into a wet slop, which you can eat with a spoon. The taste is precisely what you would imagine rice gruel fermented with yeast to be.
Crispy uloSee the picture of an eaten crispy
ulo to fully appreciate how gross this dish is. It's half a pig's head that's deep fried. Complete with hair on the snout, nostril and ear. And teeth unbrushed over a lifetime. The fun part is when the family fights over who gets to eat the eyeball. Not!
Dog meatAgain, a cultural thing. Tastes like beef or pork, just slightly more stringy. Depends on the dog breed I suppose, but most served here is
askal, or the local mongrel. It's nice to be drinking with friends, but in many drinking sessions in these parts, man's best friend is the bar chow. Bow wow!
DurianSmells like hell, tastes like heaven. Personally I don't care very much for the taste, and the texture of ripe fruit is even worse. And the smell! The fruit is banned, as it should be, from public buildings. For the Dabawenyos though, this is heavenly food. As for me, I'll just have the
marang please.
Jumping saladI first heard about this from an Ilokano collegemate, but only got to taste it several years later as I watched my Dad eat this with gusto. No, it's not made of Mexican jumping beans, as you might imagine, but live shrimp - jumping around, obviously - dipped traditionally in vinegar (although soy sauce with
calamansi might work too), and popped straight to the mouth. Once you get over the enormity of the deed (and the scratchy sensation of the shrimp fighting to get back up your esophagus), it's actually not bad. You can't get any fresher than something alive, can you?
PinikpikanI like chicken soup, and
pinikpikan is among the best I've had. Until I found out how they cooked the thing: First get a chicken, then beat it to death. Make it a slow and painful death, specifically, make sure you get blood clots under the skin. While it's still partly alive, burn off the feathers for that exotic flavor. Yummy.
To make it yummier,
pinikpikan is flavored with
etag (see above), and not much else. The "in" place to have it is Cafe at the Ruins in Baguio.
Soup No. 5A Pinoy visits Madrid for the first time and of course goes to a bull fight. After the bull fight he eats at a restaurant outside the bull ring. He was served the restaurant's specialty (Spain's version of Soup No. 5), which he liked so much that he had to call the waiter to ask what it was made of. The waiter replies "Bull's testicles senyor."
The next day, Pinoy goes back to the restaurant to have some more of the soup. But this time, the testicles looked smaller. He calls the waiter to ask why this was so. And the waiter says "Senyor, sometimes the bull wins."
Chicken partsAnd then there are the grilled chicken parts, thrown away a generation or two ago, but now commonly sold as street food. To reduce the gross factor they have been given code names that every street food connoisseur knows. So the chicken head is helmet, intestine is IUD (named after the intrauterine device that looks like it), the feet are Adidas (named obviously by a non-Nike fan), and Rambo (congealed blood).
So, what is your favorite Pinoy Fear Factor food?
