Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre World of Food Read online

  Text copyright © 2011 by Andrew Zimmern

  Jacket art copyright © 2011 by The Travel Channel, L.L.C.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. This work is based upon The Bizarre Truth: How I Walked Out the Door Mouth First … and Came Back Shaking My Head, published in hardcover in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 2009.

  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon

  is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Insert photographs courtesy of The Travel Channel, L.L.C.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Zimmern, Andrew.

  [Bizarre world of food]

  Andrew Zimmern’s bizarre world of food : brains, bugs, and blood sausage /

  Andrew Zimmern. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89870-9

  1. International cooking. 2. Cooking (Wild foods). 3. Food habits.

  4. Cooking—Humor. I. Title.

  TX725.A1A494 2011

  394.1’2—dc22

  2011001133

  Random House Children’s Books supports the

  First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Introduction

  Modern-Day Vikings:

  Puffin Hunting in the Land of Fire and Ice

  The Most Dangerous Game:

  How I Almost Lost My Life Tracking Down Samoa’s

  Elusive Giant Fruit Bat

  Journey to the Source:

  Why the Shortest Distance from Sea to Plate Makes for

  Amazing Meals

  Muddy Waters:

  Ugandan Lungfishing Can Be Messy

  Saving Huatulco:

  Free Diving for Octopus

  Death Match:

  Can a Matador Save Madrid’s Historic Tabernas?

  Forgotten Foods:

  Juicy Cheese Worms Are Making a Comeback!

  Welcome to a Wazwan:

  The Meal That Nearly Killed Me

  Mary’s Corner:

  The Quest for the Best Laksa in Singapore

  Simple Foods:

  Noodle Houses of Guangzhou

  Fish Heaven:

  Finding Perfection in a Ginza Basement

  Nature’s Candy:

  The Achachairu

  Pleasant Surprises:

  A Gallimaufry

  Some Final Thoughts

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  I am a traveler. I am not a tourist. Occasionally I do touristy things, but I’ve discovered that diving into a culture mouth-first is my favorite way to explore a new place. It makes me happy. Now I’m reaching out to you, my most important reader. I want you to love to travel, to feel inspired by firsthand accounts of journeys, so you’ll go into the heart of the African jungles in search of lost culinary gold. I want you to experience the rush of warm air on your cheek as you exit a tiny plane on the tarmac of a small airfield in South America. I want you to feel your heart race, imagining the adventure of a lifetime that awaits you. I want you to let go.

  My parents divorced when I was about six. My mom and I spent summers at the beach house and managed to get to a warm-weather island at least once every year (my mom was writing a book about shells), but my dad was the one who loved to really take off. I traveled a lot with him. At first it was ski weekends in Manchester, Vermont; by the time I was twelve, it was off to Europe. On those trips with my dad, I learned a new approach to spending time in a foreign country.

  My dad taught me many things—how to travel, how to write, how to tell a joke and “take the room,” how to shop for socks and tie a tie—but most importantly, he taught me how to eat and how to cook. When my dad and I visited London, we spent as much time cruising the aisles at Harrods and exploring Chinatown as we did looking at the British Museum’s Elgin Marbles. That’s not to say that if you ever find yourself in Rome you should skip the Colosseum or the Forum—those are some of the most awesome sites in the world—but be sure to make time for people-watching in neighborhood cafés as well. That’s where you will find the authentic Roman experience.

  My dad also taught me that exploring off the beaten path was the best way to experience a country, a culture, and its people. Traveling as far as we could in one day, just for a great meal, was how we rolled. Dad insisted that you don’t have to leave the country—or even your area code—to put his traveler’s creed into practice. It’s easy to forget how much there is to explore right outside your own front door. Every summer, my dad would drive us from our summer home in East Hampton, Long Island, out to Montauk at the island’s tip. It was only about twenty miles away, but it felt like the other side of the world. We’d sit on a dock, watching fishing boats unload crates of fresh seafood pulled right out of the Atlantic. My dad and I would hound these crates to the clam bars on Montauk’s docks just to eat the freshest food we could—because that’s the best it’s ever going to taste. Time is the enemy of food. Whenever we could, we’d favor the smaller, local clam bars. That was our summer.

  In the winter, we lived to ski. In 1976, we took a family trip to Val d’Isère, France. For the first two days, we woke to six inches of fresh powder under the warm March sun. We were ecstatic. On our third day, it began to snow, and by that afternoon we were forced off the mountain by whiteout conditions. It snowed so heavily for so long that food delivery to the Alpine ski village ceased after a week. By day nine, we were living on sardines and crackers in the hotel lobby. After day ten, the snow finally stopped. The mountain wasn’t open for skiing yet, but cars were allowed on the roads. Dad piled everyone into the van and drove all day across France to Paul Bocuse’s restaurant in Lyon.

  The great French chef Paul Bocuse, one of my heroes, was born on February 11, 1926, making him only a few months older than my father. Critics often remark that without Bocuse, there would be no modern food movement. Bocuse pursued a revolutionary idea that food must be cooked in a way that allows the natural and true flavors of the ingredients to shine through. He believed that quality, technique, improvisation, and fantasy all play roles in defining great cuisine. Each meal you have should be an incredible, fun, and new experience. Savor and enjoy it.

  In the 1970s, Bocuse’s restaurant was universally regarded as the world’s finest. Today, the idea that a chef’s food is only as good as his ingredients is no longer novel. Neither is the concept that simple food can be as good as complicated, technique-driven food. Instead of elaborate sauces and ornate presentations, Bocuse relied on the fresh ingredients of Lyon and provincial France. As I walked through the restaurant, I couldn’t stop staring at the fancy chandeliers, white tablecloths, expensive table settings, and ornate decorations. This place was elegant by any standards, and I was intimidated. I crossed my fingers, closed my eyes, and hoped not to break anything. I clearly remember the kitchen help, women in their fifties in traditional long skirts and head coverings, running out into the gardens for the season’s first herbs. The aromas were deep and exhilarating, and many dishes were still being served and finished tableside.

  I’ll never forget the look of shock on my father’s face when I spoke and ordered the chef’s tasting menu. Dad just shook his head in disbe
lief—he exuberantly supported my food life, but plunking down a few hundred bucks for his kid’s meal didn’t make him very happy. I think I had four courses before the entire table was served a balloon of truffle soup en croûte, arguably the trendiest dish in the world that year. Bocuse created his famous soupe aux truffes for a presidential luncheon at the Elysée Palace in February of 1975, on the day then-president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was awarded the Legion of Honor. Ever since that day, the soup has been served at the restaurant as Soupe aux Truffes Noires V.G.E.—the president’s initials. The soup came in an enormous white bowl, crowned with a thin, brittle, buttery dome of puff pastry. I got my first legitimate food high when I tasted that dish, and I knew, at that exact moment in time, that I had to spend my life in the culinary world.

  It was a revelation. The Volaille de Bresse en Vessie “Mère Fillioux” (Bresse chicken cooked inside a pig’s bladder), still one of Bocuse’s most famous dishes, was unlike any dish I’d ever experienced. I’d never tasted morel mushrooms like this, or seen sliced truffles slid under a chicken’s skin before. I’d never even seen a pig’s bladder before! What made the meal complete was meeting the great Bocuse himself, who was kind enough to autograph my menu and who invited me to return. The effect this meal had on me was staggering. I knew I wanted to share stories about food and the people who made it. I knew I needed to see and eat my way around the globe. More importantly, I wanted to understand and experience the culture behind the dish. Knowing the people behind what you eat turns the food into a meal you won’t forget.

  To this day I remember each culinary journey I took with my dad, and each culinary master, like Paul Bocuse, to whom I was introduced. I believe honesty and authenticity are found at the end of your fork—if you are eating in the right places. Thanks to my dad, I learned to find them.

  So to my fellow adventurers: Please be a traveler, not a tourist. Try new things, meet new people, and look beyond what’s right in front of you. Those are the keys to understanding this amazing world we live in. I hope you enjoy this book, and I hope you get to walk outside your comfort zone and discover yourself in the process.

  Iceland looks and feels like no other place on earth. As our plane touched down just outside Reykjavík, I was almost convinced we’d landed on the moon. Not surprising, given that NASA astronauts trained in Iceland prior to the first moon landing. In much of the country, the barren, rocky topography looks otherworldly. Iceland, which is roughly the size of Ohio, is a glacial, rocky, moss-covered expanse born from volcanic eruptions.

  Reykjavík is the world’s northernmost capital city and is home to two-thirds of Iceland’s total population of about 320,000 people.

  Treeless mountains, sweeping fields of arctic grasses waving out to the horizon, awe-inspiring geysers, raging rivers, spectacular ocean vistas, and therapeutic hot springs fueled by underwater volcanoes are stunning but make much of the island uninhabitable. Iceland is called the Land of Fire and Ice, yet despite its staggering natural beauty, the overwhelming majority of the population lives in the capital city of Reykjavík. Everyone else is a farmer or works in either the thermal energy business (booming) or the greenhouse-gardening industry (emerging).

  Iceland’s name implies that the weather is freezing, but that’s not the case. Summer temps rarely hit the sixty-degree mark, but the winters are surprisingly mild—the average temperature in January is 32°F.

  The country is changing and growing all the time—literally. In 1963, a volcanic explosion just off the southern coast of Iceland created an island that eventually expanded to one square mile in size. This landmass, named Surtsey after Surtur, the Icelandic fire god, grew to this official landmass status in only three and a half years. I was fortunate enough to travel to Surtsey by boat one day. It’s a phenomenal thing to see, an island that is as big as it is, that is as new as it is, and freakishly almost exactly as old as I am.

  I knew the food in Iceland would be wonderful. As a chef in New York and Minneapolis, I’d always been floored by the quality of the Icelandic lamb, dairy products, and seafood I’d run across from time to time. Icelandic animals drink the cleanest water on earth, eat the freshest grass, and breathe the purest air.

  The only native land mammal when humans arrived was the arctic fox, which came to the island at the end of the last ice age, walking over the frozen sea. There are no native reptiles or amphibians on the island.

  Everything, from the horses to the sheep and cows, is genetically pristine, and the animals are raised not only for their meat but for their milk and cheese products. Skyr, the addictively cheesy yogurt product you see everywhere in Iceland, comes from cows that eat sweet grass for a brief period of time, then silage for most of the year. The cows’ diet produces a unique flavor profile that is distinctly their own.

  I spent much of my time in Reykjavík, puttering around town and enjoying the beautiful summer weather. Summer temperatures climb into the forties during the day, maybe the fifties in the sun.

  Because Iceland is so close to the North Pole, the country experiences midnight sun in the summer. In the winter, expect only four to five hours of daylight.

  The food scene in Iceland is vibrant. I was looking forward to my first taste of puffin, those cute little black-and-white birds with big orange beaks. Before you get yourself all worked up about me eating this cute ’n’ cuddly creature, consider the fact that only about 320,000 people call Iceland home. The puffin population, on the other hand, runs between 8 and 10 million. Icelanders could eat puffin meat at every meal from now until eternity and they would never make a dent in the region’s population. As a matter of fact, they urge people to eat the birds as a point of civic duty because there are just so many of them.

  HEADING TO THE SOURCE

  But to eat the best puffins, and to hunt them where they live, you need to head south of Reykjavík. There you’ll find the Vestmannaeyjar Islands, a cluster of smaller islands that make up one of the region’s most famous fishing communities. This area’s other claim to fame is the 1973 volcanic eruption on Heimaey, the largest island in the chain. It’s Iceland’s version of Pompeii, but only a few decades old. Lava flows crushed half the town, and when you see the end results of something that destructive and realize that it happened within your lifetime, it takes your breath away. You see homes buried, and cars half frozen in black, porous rock. Luckily, everyone was able to get off the island in time to save themselves.

  Millions of puffins call the Vestmannaeyjar Islands home, and the local restaurateurs take advantage of this ample source of food. The rest of the citizenry are devoted puffin eaters or hunters, or both. Once our six-seat puddle jumper landed on Heimaey, the Bizarre Foods production crew and I tried to negotiate our way over to the far side of Vestmannaeyjar, with its simple harbor, occasional spouting orca, seals, and numerous birds. We ended up running into a guy who claimed he could arrange to have us picked up by boat on the far side of the island and taken to an uninhabited area to experience a puffin hunt firsthand. Without hesitation, we piled into our van and headed over.

  It’s a bright, beautiful summer’s day in Iceland, perfect sweatshirt weather. We pass alongside a huge half-moon bay, complete with breathtaking views of the ocean and the outer isles, which include Surtsey. We start unloading our gear onto the mile-long black sand beach at Surtsey. There isn’t a trace of human imprint as far as you can see. Not a jet contrail in the sky, not a footprint in the sand, not a boat at sea … it’s just empty and desolate. You know for sure you’re at one of the ends of the earth—a feeling I find so satisfying I could have sat on that beach all day.

  We Will Rock You: The volcanic island of Surtsey formed during a volcanic eruption that began about 426 feet below the water’s surface. It reached the surface on November 14, 1963. The eruption lasted nearly four years—until June 5, 1967! By that time, this newborn island reached its maximum size of one square mile. The land has steadily eroded away in the years since.

  We lock our vehicles
, thank our new friends, and wait for our guide by a giant piece of driftwood on the beach. After twenty minutes, we see a Zodiac boat putt-putting over to us. It lands on the beach and off steps Pall. He’s a modern-day Viking: the kind of guy who would travel alone in a Zodiac, a fourteen-foot flat-bottom rubber boat, across five miles of open ocean from an uninhabited island to pick me up. Hot on Pall’s heels is a closed-cabin, twenty-foot cruiser with an inboard engine that will ferry the crew as they capture Pall and me having the “authentic” experience of taking the Zodiac to the island of Alsey, where his family has hunted for years.

  Elves, Elves Everywhere

  Many Icelanders either believe in elves or are unwilling to rule out their existence. Chalk it up to thousands of years of elf-laden folklore and mythology. Some of my favorite stories:

  ~Some Icelanders believe guardian spirits, disguised as birds and bulls, protect the land from foreign invaders.

  ~Merman and mermaid sightings are said to be commonplace in the waters surrounding the country.

  ~Farmers often take care moving large stones in their fields, as trolls may live beneath said stones.

  ~Road crews have been known to change the course of a road when the construction disturbed the fairy folk enough to cause trouble.

  As I pile into his boat from the surf side, I feel glad I put on my knee-high rubber boots that morning. The crew has already headed out into the channel on the cruiser, headed toward a giant boulder looming in the distance. I’ve been in a Zodiac plenty of times, so I plop down on the edge of the craft on the gunwale, just as I did as a little kid puttering around the inner harbors of the South Fork of Long Island. It’s the perfect vehicle for flat, calm water. Easy in, easy out. But today Pall instructs me to sit down on the floor of the boat itself, explaining that’s how it’s done in Iceland. I’m all confused—What do you mean, sit on the flat bottom? In the water, no less? And in his stern, Vikingly way, he says it again: Sit on the flat bottom. Next, he instructs me to wrap my arms around the ropes attached to the gunwales. What do you mean, wrap my arms around the ropes? He explains that I have to hang on tight unless I want to get thrown out of the boat. It is then that I begin to get a faint idea of what the afternoon will hold for me. He turns toward me, sees the look on my face, and a huge grin spreads across his. “Today will be a great test of your manhood,” he tells me. And he goes back to staring out at the horizon as he guides the boat out of the quiet water and into the rolling seas.