One night in the old Soviet city of Tblisi, Georgia, at the end of many hours of toasting and feasting, our host took out a knife the size of a machete. He seized the remains of the whole roast pig, which by that point in the evening had been reduced to a few rib bones and the head. “And now,” he declared, “for our guests of honor, Karen and Rich – the brains of the pig!” With a single massive blow he cut the head in half. Extracting a small morsel from the interior, he held it out to me on the point of the blade. “For you!”
Clearly this was an honor I couldn’t refuse. “You’re too kind!” I murmured and tossed the greasy morsel down with copious amounts of wine. (If you must know, it tasted like lard.)
Another time we were in Thailand, and our guide ordered a plate of fried flies, passing them around the table for everyone to sample. Later, telling friends about this unconventional snack, I explained that it was salty, greasy and crunchy – a lot like cocktail peanuts, in fact. “How do you know they weren’t really peanuts?” one skeptic asked. “Well,” I said, “the wings were sort of a giveaway…”
Sampling pig brains and fried flies make for good stories, but I wouldn’t recommend them as a steady diet. Some of the other odd things we’ve sampled – snake, for example, or alligator – are part of the everyday fare in other parts of the world. Here in Spain, we often eat
colo de toro
(tail of the bull),
carillada
(stewed pig cheeks) and
angulas
(baby eels). For health reasons, I draw the line at suspicious shellfish and raw meats, and avoid internal organs whenever possible. Except of course, for haggis.
Rich doing his best to address the haggis in its native lanuguage.
This year, Rich and I were lucky enough to be invited to share a haggis with friends at a
Burns supper
on January 25th, when people around the world gather to celebrate Scotland’s most famous poet, Robert Burns. Cue
bagpipe music
! Enter Rich, dressed in tartan and sporran with a dirk (dagger) tucked into his sock!
He’d been asked to perform the ritual reading of Burns’ famous poem,
Address to a Haggis
, which begins
Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!
Aboon them a’ ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace
As lang’s my arm.
After eight verses in this vein, Rich concluded with the traditional stabbing of the haggis, and the meal was served.
For those of you who have not had the felicity to experience a haggis, I’ll explain that it’s a sheep’s stomach stuffed with sheep’s pluck (organs you don’t want to think about) minced with onion, oatmeal, suet and spices. Everybody always talks about the ghastly ingredients, but the flavor is actually quite delicious and savory. What they should warn you about is how staggeringly rich and filling it is. After a few bites I was ready to put down my fork, but I tried my best to do justice to the generous portion on my plate. A “wee dram” of
Scotch whisky
helped the haggis along.
People sometimes ask me about the aftereffects of feasting on strange and exotic foods and what I do to restore my system’s equilibrium. Every country has its own remedy. After a very long night partying with some Georgian friends in their family’s farmhouse near the Chechnya border, we all gathered for a breakfast of their traditional morning-after pick-me-up: entrails soup. I’m talking about a bowl of broth with unspeakable parts of the cow floating in it. Cooked, thank heavens, but still … Luckily the grandfather was entitled to the choicest serving; his bowl had a whole cow’s hoof sticking up out of it. When they asked if I would like a glass of vodka with my breakfast, I actually said yes.
For the most part, these strange foods are much more challenging to contemplate than to digest. When my stomach does protest a bit, I usually turn to good old Coca-Cola. It’s available just about everywhere, and although it’s an everyday beverage now, there’s a reason it was originally sold in drug stores as a heath tonic. I don’t drink much of it in the ordinary course of things, but for settling the stomach after an excess of fried flies, haggis or home-made wine, it’s a much better pick-me-up than entrails soup.
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