1796 Foods

665. Gjetost

This was another of the picnic-style lunches that I like so much. I’d visited Wally’s delicatessen in town so I picked out a bunch of list items to make up a pretty fancy meal. The first thing was gjetost, which is a Norwegian brown cheese. It’s a caramelised cheese made from boiled whey, and it ends up having a fudgey texture and a sweet taste. It was just about the weirdest thing I’ve ever eaten in my whole life. Neither the texture nor the taste was anything like any other cheese I’ve ever had. It wasn’t bad per se, it was just so confusing to my mouth that I don’t think my brain really knew what to do with it. It retains a vague hint of cheesiness, but that is overshadowed by the sweetness, so you’re left kind of unsure as to whether you’re actually eating a cheese or if it’s really some odd type of candy. I ended up offering tastes to a bunch of my friends and family and they all had similar experiences.

666. Ajvar

Ajvar is a sauce made from red peppers. I used it here as a dip for veggies, but I think it would also be really nice for a lot of other uses. I’m going to try adding it to grilled cheese sandwiches, and I think it would be great as a ready-made pasta sauce.

667. Prosciutto di San Daniele and 668. Finochionna Salami

I also got a couple of meats from the charcuterie counter. Prosciutto di San Daniele is an Italian ham, which I found was really just very similar to any other kind of prosciutto or Parma ham I have tried in the past. The finochionna salami is a salami made with fennel seed and, as someone who isn’t a huge salami fan, I found it delicious. It was really meaty with a hint of spiciness and sweetness.

668 down, 1128 to go

628. Yakisoba

Occasionally Pie and I order sushi. It tends to be much rarer and much more of a treat than ordering other takeout because it’s that much more expensive. I only first tried sushi a few years ago but I’ve grown to love it. I do find though that I can’t eat a whole big meal of just sushi, and I prefer to have a few pieces followed by some noodles or another hot dish (more like how they actually eat it in Japan). On this occasion I went for the chicken yakisoba. Normally if I’m having Japanese food I’ll go for either katsu curry or ramen, but these yakisoba were definitely a good alternative - kind of like a Japanese version of chow mein (and I’m never going to complain about chow mein).

629. Sea Urchin and 630. Wakame

This restaurant had a pretty good sushi selection so we picked a couple of more unusual items like the sea urchin and wakame nigiris. I knew that sea urchin is considered a real delicacy so I was pretty excited to try it. I’m still not sure whether I liked it or not though. It didn’t taste like fish, really I can’t describe it any more accurately that saying it tasted like sea smell. You know when you go to the beach and there’s that aroma of salt and sand? Yeah, just exactly like that. It was strange, but I would try it again for sure. The wakame is a type of Japanese seaweed. I didn’t find that it tasted of all that much, it was just bland with a slimy texture and I wouldn’t bother ordering it again.

630 down, 1166 to go

607. Kangaroo and 608. Ostrich

For my brother’s birthday, we had an ‘Exotic Meats Barbecue’. We got four different weird meats - kangaroo, ostrich, kudu, and zebra - and everyone tried a little piece of each. The only one I’d tried before was ostrich, and that was as a burger. They all had similar tastes to an extent, they were gamey, and as obvious as it sounds, steak-like. I definitely had my favourites though. Kangaroo tasted good to start but had a slightly odd aftertaste that I’m not sure if I was so keen on. Zebra was probably the strongest of them all (I haven’t tried horse so I’m not sure if it tastes similar, though I guess that it would). Kudu was similar to springbok which I’ve had before and that was pretty nice, as was the ostrich. It was really fun to try all the different meats.

608 down, 1188 to go

574. Cockles

I knew as soon as we decided to go to Whitby that I would have to face one of my most-dreaded items from the list. Cockles were already on my dubious list because I’m still introducing myself to shellfish, but then add to that the fact that they look like a snail, and worst of all they’re cold (cold seafood is NEVER right) and it all adds up to something wholly unappealing. It didn’t help that when I saw them they looked gross too (I mean come on, look at the picture, that looks like a bit of another food that you would throw away), but the whole point of this list is that I try to be open minded and give things ago rather than judging them purely on what they are/look like. As it turns out though in this case I was totally right, they were chewy, and sandy, and just plain bad. I think that perhaps if they were treated like clams and put in a chowder or pasta then I could just about accept them, but I shall certainly not be eating them like this again. As a special treat here is a picture of my reaction after eating it.

574 down, 1222 to go

517. Octopus

Octopus was one of the foods on the list that I was dreading. The idea of eating the suckers on the tentacles freaked me out no end, and I figured that it would be really chewy like squid can be and over-chewiness is probably the one thing that puts me off food more than anything. I was really pleasantly surprised though. The texture was not too chewy at all, and it had a lovely delicate flavour. Luckily it was chopped into small pieces so I wasn’t confronted too full-on with a giant suckery tentacle, but it actually was much less creepy to eat than I expected. I even tried a really curly bit from the very end of the tentacle. There were two choices on the menu and we chose the marinated octopus, which was served cold with an olive oil, chilli and herb marinade.

518. Saganaki

The other appetiser that we chose to share was saganaki which is fried cheese. I had assumed it would be similar to halloumi but it is much more ‘fried’ than that. The cheese actually melts a little so that it has a really crispy outside and then a soft, stringy centre - kind of like a perfect grilled cheese sandwich but without the bread!

518 down, 1278 to go

456. Escargot

Of all the foods on the list, there were quite a few that I was not especially looking forward too, but escargot was the one that I wanted to try the least. I have a huge phobia of slugs and snails to the extent where I can barely even look at a picture of them, so the idea of putting one in my mouth filled me with utter dread. Pie had these one evening in Quebec as a starter (served in traditional garlic butter) and I knew I just had to bite the bullet and get it over and done with. The fact that they did not have the shells on helped a lot with helping to forget what they were! Tastewise they were actually not terrible, mostly they just tasted of garlic, and they were also less chewy than I had anticipated after reading about what everyone else says about them, so judging them entirely on what they are like as a food and ignoring what they are, they were not all that bad. On remembering that they are in fact snails though I really don’t think that I will be having them again, but I feel proud that I at least did it once!

456 down, 1340 to go

69. Jellyfish

If you had told me a couple of years ago that I would put jellyfish in my mouth I would never have believed you. Come to think of it, if you’d told me a few weeks ago I probably would have been dubious. I was always a fussy eater as a child, I blame a lot of it on my mum who is really fussy and so it must have rubbed off. But over the past couple of years I’ve started trying a lot more stuff, and since I’ve been doing the list I’ve been considerably more open. So far I’ve had eel, frog and now jellyfish which are all things I never would have thought I would eat. I’m starting to feel actually kind of proud of myself. Jellyfish I actually really liked, it had the weirdest texture, it’s this odd combination of halfway between chewy and crunchy. Normally I hate chewy things, and I was expecting it to be like bad calamari but it wasn’t at all.

70. Sesame Oil

It was dressed in a sesame oil-based sauce. I love a bit of sesame oil. My friend often puts it on carrots which makes them taste about 100 times better than regular plain carrots.

70 down, 1726 to go

67. Frog

Frogs legs are one of those things that I never thought I would eat, the idea that I’m nibbling on a slimy, jumpy amphibian still freaks me out a little, but ignoring that fact they were really tasty. I was told that like a lot of other things, it tastes like chicken, but I found that to actually be really true, I probably wouldn’t have known I wasn’t eating a crispy chicken wing if someone had fed it to me blindfolded. I find it weird that a frog can taste so much more like a chicken than say, a duck tastes like a chicken, considering they are from entirely different sectors of the animal kingdom and all. Apparently I still need to try them roasted in the French way, but these deep-fried salt and chilli ones were definitely a tasty start.

67 down, 1729 to go