Culinary Surprises

Andouille sausage in Paris. Tripe sausage -- I didn't have it but my sister accidentally ordered it.

Cherries preserved in Calvados!!!!!!!!!

I got those served in Brittany. I swear I only had 4 (4 single cherries, not 4 glasses) but I was definitely drunk ... oh, and I miss them dearly!

12 years ago I spent a month in Finland with friends. They made me a traditional dish which I thought was pretty strange--they thought it was unusual as well--called Maammi (sp). Buckwheat pudding. Brown.

The other thing that they all just loved--a regional bread called kalakuukka (again sp?) which was.....fish bread. A loaf of bread with a fish baked in it.

But overall the food was excellent--lots of fish, pastries and beer. The saunas were wonderful and the people remain great friends who welcomed us wherever we went. We camped on islands, rode the trains and ferries, a wonderful place.

Liver dumplings are outlandish?

My husband just about died when not only did I get them in Nuremberg, but that I got the 2 year old to share with me. She also shared Tarama Salata (sp?)- fish roe spread- with me. Hmmmm. I don't think of those as weird but others might. My mom used to eat lard on bread. It's not my cup of tea, but it's not as bad as it sounds.

Oh, I know what GROSSED me out as a kid: the gelatin with lunch meat in it. I know logically that gelatin is from meat, but I like mine sweet and fruity!

Oh, lard on bread is NOT weird. Especially if you season it a bit with salt and pepper - perfect with a glass of beer :-)

This probably isn't that outlandish, but it was a surprise for me! I love fish, but wasn't prepared for the entire thing to be served on my plate--including head with eyes and many pointed teeth. After I had someone help fillet it, I really did enjoy my dinner!

We were dining at a castle sort of restaurant some place on a mountain in lower Bavaria with my ex in-laws. I ordered escargot and was happily eating them when my daughter, who was about 3, pipes up and says "I want one of those mushrooms", which she loved. So, I cut her a piece off. She sat there and chewed and chewed and finally said, "I don't like these kind of mushrooms!" Needless to say the whole table burst out in laughter.

Claire, it is Mammi (with dots on the a). It is eaten around Easter time with cream and I do not really care for it myself too much.

The other one is is Kalakukko (fishrooster is the direct translation, yeah it is weird but that is the name) and I do love it also. It is not something that I have had very often though, maybe 10 times. It is fish called vendace wrapped in bacon and baked in a 100 % rye bread.

Well, I kind of eat alot of what some people thing are weird things anyways( snails, blood sausage, bone marrow, head cheese , pickled herring, raw osysters,,),, so I haven;t been surprised in Europe yet. I do recall as a child not liking my beef served ast rare as it usuaully is,, my granny liked her steaks "bleu" is means cold inside,, super yuck to me.

The most nasty surprise I ever got food wise was in Hawaii, years ago as a child .
We went to a dinner party( I guess a luau in a way, but at someones home) at my dads friends place. There was a lovely buffet. Being the sweets loving greedy child I was, I made sure to grab the biggest bowl of what I thought must be a rather pale colored chocolate pudding.. that first shovel full into my mouth was a huge shock..

Poi is the nastiest food created anywhere ever....

This is not exactly a travel story, but I was once cooked a meal by a Romanian neighbour. I have never had anything so awful in my life. The crowning glory was something that resembled a cake made of pickled vegetables and it had green icing on it which was decorated with peas. I felt ill for the rest of the day. I have searched the internet in vain trying to find out what this cake is called. This experience has made me wary of travelling to Eastern Europe!

We were driving through Germany one year in the month of May and I was delighted to find it was asparagus season. Every restaurant we ate at had a "spargel menu" . . . I was in heaven.

Anything you can buy from a patisserie in France...and Belgian fries with mayo...

Also, and I know this is ordinary, but I'd never had arugula, aka rocket, before I went to Greece. Not because I refused, I just never did. Anyway, one night I thought I was being adventurous and ordered a rocket salad with a honey-balsamic vinaigrette and I've been having it regularly at home since.

One of my German aunts was a wonderful cook. However, on one visit she baked a large fish whole and at the end of the meal (so as not to waste a single thing), she picked the fish head clean, including eating the eyeballs.

On a visit to a different aunt, they served steak tartare, a plate of raw ground beef, with crackers. I don't care how great the quality of the meat, I cannot eat uncooked hamburger meat. Yuck.

Alexandra,

German slaughterhouses have to have veterinarians on staff that controll the meat before it goes out. My father used to work for a government office that controlled slaughterhouses and I know the kind of "small" infractions that he would target. Our school class actually had a field trip to the local slaughterhouse where the process of meat controls was explained to us. And then we got a bucket of pig eyes that we disected later on in biology class ...

Anyway, I love steak tartar but never ever would I eat it anywhere outside Germany because I'm not sure about the kind of controls they have.

I've had two nasty food surprises in Europe. I ordered an "anduillette" at a restaurant in Chenonceau (I'm a big fan of meat in tube form). I have no problem eating organ meat, but I prefer it ground, not sliced so that I could still identify the individual organs.

The other one was that salty licorice candy they sell in the Netherlands.

Not so much a nasty surprise, but at a restaurant in Belgium, one of the appetizers was a whole, raw samll octopus. It wasn't bad, but I wouldn't go out of my way to eat it again.

I have no problem with salt licorice. I grew up with it and even love it in ice cream.

Some of my not so tasty moments were, polenta, I had it in Northern Italy and I just couldn't get it down even though an old lady came by and pointed at it and said bueno or something. Also leber knodel (liver dumplings) were not for me. One big surprise in America was tuna salad sandwich. I had a picture in my mind of a sandwich with salad with tuna in it and instead I got this mush that tasted horrid.

On the other hand my grandma (she was German) used to mix an egg yolk with the best ground beef from the near by market and salt and pepper and put it raw on a piece of french bread and I loved it as a child. Never got sick. Also, loved eating medium cooked hamburger patty in Paris with pepper gravy and the best french fries ever. One time it came well done and I sent it back to the kitchen. It was some much better raw in the middle.

I also grew up with blood pancakes with lingonberry sauce. That's tasty! I also love salt cured salmon and salted fish roe with sour cream and onions. Hey, I am getting hungry here. I can't wait to go and eat some European fare again!

My mother & her sisters made blood sausage which I never ate. As an adult, I decided to try it on my first trip to Paris. My surprise was that I loved it & now order it at least once per trip.

Beatrix,

I figured the quality of meat in Germany is pretty high. It's also the only country where I'm not turned off by 'pink' pork roast. We're all so used to eating pork well-done here in the states.

Rose,
I know how you feel.
As a kid, I started to run when my grandmother started scraping liver for dumplings, today I love them,
and blood sausage too.

Hi Kaarina. I have 3 boxes of salmiakki (salty licorice) candy that my friends send me every year. Does it ever go bad. Just can't get into licorice.

Claire, not really but it will get harder as it gets older. Just throw them if you do not like them :-). I have a World Market here, if I ever feel like I need a fix.

I am of Chinese descent and so have yet to be shocked by any European food. I remember that when I was a kid, eating squid was still considered shocking by most Australians. I once had a pleasant surprise at Berne when I looked at a menu and only recognised one word, spaghetti. I picked something else at random, and got meatloaf and it was very nice.

Salted licorice -- yum. Best thing in the world for a sore throat, too.

My parents were from Holland, so I wasn't surprised, but my poor husband was really put off when we were served (very rare) horse steak when we visited my uncle. This was after we'd visited a pickled herring cart for appetizers.

As children, we visited an aunt who served milk that hadn't been refrigerated. Her family was used to it, but my sister and were pretty sick for a couple of days.

"Andouille sausage in Paris. Tripe sausage -- I didn't have it but my sister accidentally ordered it. "

Been there done that :(

Really that was my only "surprise" that I didn't like. I love the smelly cheeses.

I love Andouille in Louisiana, and I am glad I found out it's blood sausage before we (hopefully) go to Normandy next year. Otherwise...

My husband was surprised by non-refrigerated milk, and even I was a little bit hesitant about buying non-refrigerated eggs in the grocery store.

I am eating up your responses, all of them, no pun intended :-))

One of the reasons I asked for your input, is that I suffered from quite a few surprises myself when I first came to Amerika.
Kaarina already mentioned the infamous Tuna Sandwich, which is most certainly on top of my list too ;-)

In the beginning, I suffered from severe Bread Withdrawal, that was a really tough one for me!

By now, one can buy pretty decent bread in the USA, be that Italian or French, or whole grain, but in 1984, when I first landed on your shores, it was Wonder Bread - or as I referred to it: Gummibrot (rubber bread), and it was TRAUMATIC. ;-))

The other thing I really was struck by, is the fundamental difference in our food CULTURES, not so much individual dishes.

In the US everything has to be very, very dead. Very, very sanitary. Very, very well packaged. Very, very removed from its initial state of being.

In Europe, it's the total opposite: food has to, preferably, still be alive, smelly and seasonal.
Europeans use every part of an animal or plant, hence the many dishes with organ meats, much like it is in your North American Indian cultures.

Here, food is sensual. The modern markets are but an outgrowth of the ancient ones. The more blood is dripping from the ware, the more earth clings to it, the more fur adheres to it, the better.
Here, butchers still hang carcasses in the window, especially hare with tail and paws attached, to prove that it is not cat.
Here you still will find meats made of horse meat. Not because horses have a lesser value than in the US, au contraire! Waste not, want not. Honor what nourishes you, honor what you took from your surroundings, be it a fish or a carrot.

I know this can be shocking to Americans. But we still have a relationship with our food here.
Food is tied totally to history and locality, hence the huge regional differences, only kilometers apart.

I can very well understand your concerns about non-refrigerated milk, or, on the hand, unpasteurized milk.
I can understand your amazement that refrigeration is still a work in progress in Europe, even though we are on the cutting edge of modern technology.

We have tiny fridges. We think nothing of storing left-overs in a cool basement, or, oh horror: on the back of the stove until the next day.

Even I need about 48 hours after coming home to Europe for my digestive system to switch over from 'dead to alive'.

Keep it coming!! :-))

Steve - you leave our spotted dick alone!

Nothing in Europe can compare with the horror that is American Cheese! Mind you, you put maple syrup on your breakfast so your cuisine isn't all bad!

Laura, if it helps, technically, the label on American Cheese says "Processed Cheese Food Product". Whatever THAT is. Oh, and it works much better in a mousetrap than between 2 slices of bread. ;-)

How about "coffee whitener" ?

At a lovely dinner at Aux Lyonnais in Paris last year I ordered an appetizer of baby artichokes. They came in a dish mostly submerged in a kind of "soup" -- with a raw egg added right before serving. I just kind of fished the artichokes out and tried to stay away from the raw egg part.
Then in Amboise this spring I got a pizza which had a raw egg right in the middle of it. Again, I just carefully ate around it. Every time we get pizza now, my husband asks if I want an egg with it!

I think there's a slight confusion over terms here. "Andouille" is the typical sausage used in cajun cooking and it also exists in France. Although it's often made of internal organs, the parts are ground to a texture similar to other sausages. And most people would agree- it's delicious!

Not to be confused with "andouillette", which is the tripe sausage a few of us have mentioned. The organ meat is only sliced, not ground, giving the sausage a rather different texture and flavour. This is more of an aquired taste, which quite frankly, I would rather not aquire.

Actually, I consider myself pretty open minded when it comes to food and willing to try most (though not all) things. I'm certainly not what one would call a "picky eater". I can honestly say I don't remember eating anything in Europe that I actually disliked.

Having said that however, I do have a bit of a squeamish stomach and I find myself avoiding certain foods if the NAME of something or the ingredients in something freak me out. If I can get past the name or ingredients I'm usually ok.

Just as a for instance....

Hagis sounded fine until I found out what it actually is.

Kokereç sounds fine as well until someone told me it was Lamb intestines.

The aforementioned "blood sausage" makes me want to pass out just by the name.

And lastly, I remember what I believe is a type of desert in Britian know as... (drumroll please)... "spotted dick". I try to stay away from foods that sound like diseases. :)

Fear not, Steve ! The "spots" are just raisins. Blood sausage goes by another name, which is "black pudding", so maybe you should try it under that not-so-off-putting alias. Who knows, you might find you like it.... nothing ventured and all that.

I really have no fears when ordering food, often even seek out those local "delicacies" My surprises have come more in local interpretation or misunderstanding to my expectations. One was in Prague, in the early days, where a small hole in the wall place was making an effort to advertise their pizza. We ordered a vegatable pizza that was on the menu(Wife is vegetarian) and received a very plain crust with ketchup as the sauce and the canned Corn/Peas/Carrot mix as the vegatable. Another place in Germany we diligently tried to explain that my wife was a vegetarian, hoping for guidance on the menu, the waiter lit up suddenly and indicated OK and off he went. My Schnitzel and other food arrived, with him then bringing my wife...not a plate...but a platter of pan fried cauliflower. It was fantastic, but my wife obviously was hoping for a little more variety.

The unrefrigerated milk amazed me too when I was in France. For those of you that don't like blood in your food, avoid the czarnina soup in Poland-it's made from duck blood. That part doesn't bother me, I just don't like the raisins.

Corrina,

I can relate to a lot of your comments. I can't speak for everyone but yes, admittedly, I like my food dead..lol. In a few instances (i.e. - sushi) dead doesn't nescessarily mean cooked, but in regard to beef, yes, blood on my plate makes me turn "A Whiter Shade of Pale" (if you remember that song..lol). I'm trying though. I've switched from well done to medium well, and perhaps I can now move from medium well to medium. You know, a little at a time...baby steps.

I remember ordering a burger in a British pub and the waiter asking How I wanted it cooked. I told him well done and remember him asking (as if I had asked the strangest question in the world) me to verify that I really wanted my burger "burnt". We both had a good laugh on that one.

Tom, I have seen the blood sausage referred to as Andouille in France, too- that's what warned me not to try it in France as it appears to be the same name, different sausage! Andouillette would be smaller versions, if my memory from three years of French isn't failing me.

More (source: http://www.gumbopages.com/food/andouille.html):

"Andouille (pronounced "ahn-DOO-wee") is the Cajun smoked sausage so famous nationally today. Made with pork butt, shank and a small amount of pork fat, this sausage is seasoned with salt, cracked black pepper and garlic. The andouille is then slowly smoked over pecan wood and sugar cane. True andouille is stuffed into the beef middle casing which makes the sausage approximately one and a half inches in diameter. When smoked, it becomes very dark to almost black in color. It is not uncommon for the Cajuns to smoke andouille for seven to eight hours at approximately 175 degrees.

Traditionally, the andouilles from France were made from the large intestines and stomach of the pig, seasoned heavily and smoked. In parts of Germany, where some say andouille originated, the sausage was made with all remaining intestines and casings pulled through a larger casing, seasoned and smoked. It was served thinly sliced as an hors d'oeuvre."

My (German) mom finds tuna salad offensive, too. I loooooove it! However, she WILL eat pickled herring. (Yuck for me.) I also remember her buying Limburger and eating that when I was a kid.

We were not allowed Wonder bread or American cheese as children, and I felt so deprived! LOL. My mother either bought German rye bread (when available) or (horrors!) baked her own bread. I thought she was torturing me with that hard stuff. (By the way, it is not great for pb&j sandwiches.) I went through a rebel period when I got older and ate all the crap she wouldn't let us have, but now I am back to forbidding my kids from eating that garbage, and they think I torture them. Ha.

I don't know that anything surprises me, just having grown up with it. There are some things I will not eat, though....

I'm pretty much up for anything as long as you don't tell me what it is!

On my last trip to Italy I tried: wild boar (delicious!), rabbit (tastes like chicken), and the rarest steak I've ever eaten (I like my beef 'burnt' too), chicken liver pate, and a few random pastas I haven't had before.

The only thing I didn't try was the tripe. Just wasn't up for it. Next time maybe.

The thing that surprised me the most was 10 years ago in a pub in England--the scales were on one side of the fish, under the breading...

Corinna, how true it is what you wrote. My husband would have a heart attack, if I presented him with a fish for dinner that still looks like a fish - head attached and so on. A square fish patty is what he will eat and that is it.

I had the same problem with bread when I first arrived here but now you can get pretty decent bread here. I still mainly eat cracker breads like Siljan's, Wasa or Finn Crisp. I've got to have rye!

Same thing with cheeses - now you can get good imported ones - what most people eat here is just so boring.

My daughter has been raised with my ideas of what food is and she does not like hamburgers. She loves crayfish, salt cured salmon, rain deer, clams, snails etc. She likes to tease her dad about his lack of courage when it comes to food.

I also tried wild boar in Italy and loved it. I always have blood pudding in England when I can get it, and I prefer it to the Chinese equivalent. As for fish with its head on, I grew up with fish head stew which is a Chinese dish. Here in Australia you can often get hamburgers with a fried egg in it. A personal favourite of mine, though very messy to eat. McDonalds also locally marketed a burger with fried egg which it called the Aussie burger. The same thing was sold in NZ as the Kiwi burger.

Since a few of us started to talk about culinary surprises when arriving in the US I add my thoughts as well.

The bread wasn't a big surprise to me as I had learned living in France and Africa that there is no decent bread outside Germany. Call me biased but that's a fact. Period. So I didn't expect any better on the other side of the Atlantik.

What I didn't expect either were jellied salads!!! Who had that crazy idea?!?!?!?!?!

lol, Jo!
Coffee Whitener was another big surprise for me - among other things.
I learned to read labels pretty fast, and to distinguish between 'food stuff' and actual food.

A better life through chemistry??? ;-))

One of my sons once brought a friend home, who, after school, rooted around our kitchen for an after-school snack. My son said to him:
'' Sorry :-(( My Mom is Austrian, we don't have food, we only have ingredients.''

It's a classic in our family.

Actually, Steve. Kokorec is a great delicacy. My parents enjoyed it when I was a child. At the time, I hated it, but as I've grown older I have learned to acquire a taste for it and wish it was more readily available in the US.

In Eastern Germany they spread Goose fat with dried onions on bread once I thought it through not much different then butter .

I lived in Germany for 4 1/2 hears and traveled all over to different countries and the only thing I remember I really didn't care for was the lard spread for bread in Germany and "real" Italian spaghetti sauce.

My mom was Japanese and we/she ate a lot of weird things growing up: sashimi, raw eggs over rice with soy sauce (I never could do that but I love runny-yoke fried eggs the same way), squid, octopus, fish cooked with their heads on. My mom used to fry up flounder and cut out the eggs if they had any, fry them up separately, they were so good. One particularly gross looking jarred food was squid that was blended up into a slimy mush and salted and eaten with rice. It was pink and gray.

So, nothing that I've had in other countries has ever really grossed me out.

Oh, that "schmalz" is pretty disgusting. Like eating flavored crisco on bread. (shudder).

I don't really like the "handkäse with music" that is a Frankfurt speciality. The cheese stinks and one is supposed to let it ripen in a little crock in the fridge for a few days first and then eat it with oil, vinegar and onions on dark bread. Needless to say the "music" comes later or the next day! This cheese is not like any other cheese I have ever seen or eaten.

I think the weirdest thing I ever ate was when I lived in Florida. We had armadillo once and I also tried rattlesnake. Several times had alligator which is pretty darn good. So, not part of Europe and technically not yucky, just fairly different.

As a guest at a friends house, they served me some Spanish blood sausage, and I valiantly tried to get it down, cutting it in tiny pieces, smothering it in potatoes, til they finally noticed and told me I didn't have to eat it. I don't know why I don't like it, but it just tastes awful. On the other hand, I used to always eat raw ground beef. Both my parents ate it and I grew up eating it, just the meat and salt and pepper, none of that raw egg stuff. Occasionally I will get some at my local Turkish store. Working in restaurants, the grill cooks always used to eat pieces of filet mignon. Just salt and pepper and it tastes great.

The French andouillettes are made from cooked chitterlings and maws, stuffed inside pork casing. Quite a surprise to someone expecting a Louisiana andouille.

As far as stinky cheeses go, nothing I've tried beats Handkase mit Musik. Eat it now, make music later....