My daughter just returned, with her husband, from a trip to China. And no, she didn’t read my interview last month for Cuisine Noir with the Travel Channel’s Andrew Zimmern. It was sheer coincidence that when in China, she ate scorpions.
“There was a main shopping street near our Beijing hotel with alleyways running off it,” she says. “We went exploring and saw that people were selling seahorses, grasshoppers, starfish and scorpions. You could order any of them deep fried. When someone placed an order for scorpion, they’d stick four onto a skewer, drop it in the oil and — instant scorpion shish kebab.” Jay, her husband, said “come on, we have to try them.”
So they did. And? “They weren’t bad. You put the whole thing in your mouth. It’s a bit like biting into a shrimp with the shell on,” she says. “I can’t tell you that they tasted like anything else I’ve ever eaten, but the small area inside that’s mushy had a nice flavor.”
I must say, I’m impressed that she ate scorpions. When I saw a plastic container writhing with a couple of hundred of them while on a visit to China a few years ago, I snapped a photo — and quickly headed in the opposite direction.
One man’s scorpion — another man’s comfort food?
Amazing as it might seem, I bet there are some Chinese for whom a scorpion is comfort food. I mean, if you’ve had happy times while snacking on the creatures with family or friends and they’re no more exotic to you than apple pie, it makes sense.
Is it my imagination or is it a fact that in the United States, comfort food is often food that does not sit comfortably in the stomach? At the same time, the United States beats the world hands-down when it comes to international diversity and fast-food comfort foods. Look at the pictures below from Oakland’s Art & Soul Festival and you’ll see my point.
On the other end of the spectrum from fast-food comfort foods, Slow Food USA suggests we think about food as “a language” expressing cultural diversity, preserving traditions, celebrating the diverse expressions of the earth’s bounty, and supporting those who grow, produce, market, prepare and serve wholesome food. Bring on the comfort of the farmers markets!
The Oyster as My World
For me, oysters are comfort food. Why? I associate them with happy times spent knocking them open and eating them out of their shells directly off the rocks on the Transkei Wild Coast of South Africa. (For a decadent holiday breakfast, washed down with chilled white wine.)
I asked a few friends to share their idea of comfort food and the list ranges far and wide. An Irish woman, predictably, said Irish stew. (Although more predictable perhaps would have been potatoes.) An Indian friend said Dhal (lentil soup). A Japanese friend said miso soup. A New Zealand acquaintance said Marmite on toast. And an English friend told me she hated everything British that was meant to comfort her, from bangers and mash to lardy cake. (Cake made with lard. Ugh!) She goes, she says, to Indian restaurants to be comforted.
My mother in South Africa says comfort food to her is “Jewish penicillin.” She’s not Jewish and she’s allergic to penicillin. What she means is the chicken soup with celery and carrots my dad typically made if she or I were ill. And him? When he was alive, I watched how happy he’d get eating the fresh liverwurst he got from his Polish butcher friend, on good rye bread.
I’d say for those of us who enjoy our comfort food traditions, let’s stick to them. But if they’re just habit, any time is a good time to create new ones. There are no rules. There’s a whole world waiting to give inspiration. And scorpions are optional.
To read the interview with Andrew Zimmern from the Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, click here
Photos by Wanda Hennig
