Today’s mission (suggested by Ben) was:
Eat something ‘gross’ that is considered a delicacy in another culture.
Ever since watching “The Strange Case of Benjamin Button” (which, sidebar, I didn’t like due to the excessive sadness) I’ve wanted to combine vodka and caviar –Â like Tilda Swinton’s character does in the film.
Since I’m buying caviar for my epic birthday feast – but don’t plan to buy enough vodka for everyone – I chose to indulge myself today.
I discovered that, ironically, vodka “ice” (unlike regular vodka) can freeze. After waiting for it to unfreeze, CJ and I ate Russia’s answer to Devonshire Tea.
Vodka is pretty yucky without sugar, but cruisers always taste nice. Caviar is an extraordinarily neat food – both in the jar and on the tongue. Each sphere is perfectly formed and doesn’t taste of anything much. They feel surprisingly solid, like tiny marbles. Then you bite down and juicy saltiness just explodes. (I forgot to note back at the “sushi” entry that I do like one salty food – caviar.)
Then you have a little more vodka. Then some more caviar. Then vodka. Then caviar. I think the effect of the vodka is to burn away the flavour so each new mouthful of caviar is a brilliant surprise.
I enjoyed this very much. (The little jars, by the way, only cost about $6.)
In the past, I’ve also eaten:
Chicken feet and neck (tastes like. . . er, chicken. Particularly chicken wings).
Crocodile (like very dense, dry chicken).
Dog (like extremely tough red meat – yuck).
Turtle/Tortoise (I don’t know which because no-one there spoke English), which was the worst thing I’ve ever tasted. It tasted wrong and dirty and gravelly – much like I expected dog to taste, actually.
And I’ve eaten frog’s legs (like extremely tiny drumsticks, and perfectly nice despite the difficulty of actually eating them) and. . . drum roll. . . fried frog’s skin.
The fried frog’s skin was crunchy – crunchier than crunchy potato chips – and mostly tasted burnt.
One question remains: Who on earth goes around peeling frogs?
PS Now I want to go eat some more caviar. And have more vodka.
Yay for Russia.
Maybe we could have had something like this that evening in Beijing…if we’d been game enough to order anything 😉
Absolut Vanilla is very nice if you’re after something that tastes a bit sweeter but is closer to ‘real’ vodka. And yes, it can be stored in the freezer as it’s the same strength as straight vodka. Random factoid – vodka is distilled multiple times, the idea being to make it as close as possible to 100% pure ethanol (purer distillate is one of the things that makes a good vodka good), and then it is diluted to the desired strength (usually about 40«V). The quality of the water used to dilute it is the other major factor in a vodka’s level of goodness. So, given that you’re essentially just tasting ethanol, it’s not that big a surprise that a lot of people don’t like the taste of vodka.
Nick: That infamous night in the Russian quarter. . . lol. I do really like absolut vanilla – have done ever since a couple of equally famous nights in Lush bar Beijing. Thanks for shouting me that seriously delicious vanilla vodka and chocolate cocktail (more than once, as I recall).