| Now that the Shangri-La Hotel in Delhi has placed fried pigeon on its menu, the benchmarks for "What's the most disgusting thing you've eaten?" are bound to rise. As it is, when I told an aunt, who lives in the north-east, that pigeons could be had for lunch in the city, she didn't bat an eyelid before remarking, "Yes, they're supposed to be quite good, almost like partridges." |
| More interestingly, sniffing her way through a cold, she added, "There's an epidemic of flowering bamboos that's expected in the region." "Doesn't that mean rat fertility will increase and they'll end up destroying crops?" I asked her. "Yes,' she replied, "but for a lot of people it'll mean a huge banquet of rat meat which," she added, "can be really yummy." |
| If you're going yuck already, maybe you shouldn't be reading any more of this, because readers have pilloried an editor of a popular magazine recently for writing about his repast in these same parts where he was served (and couldn't refuse) everything from the flesh of monkeys to elephant meat. Not quite what you'd find on your menu in the city, but then a man's gotta eat what he's served, if only to ensure table manners and a respect for the host's table. |
| Different people have different measures for digestive disgust. A dinner partner, just the other night, insisted he never dared ask his Korean hosts, with whom he does business, what was on his plate. At least not after he was initiated into the order with a shared cocktail: "It was 500 per cent alcohol," he grimaced, "into which a little blood had been drained." Is that all? "Everyone shared the same drink," he shuddered, "and as the chief guest I was the last person who had to toss the complete contents back "" alcohol, blood, community saliva and all!" |
| Okay, that makes me go ugh! too. But then, who doesn't have their favourite tales "" of rare steak that bled all over the dinner jacket, or ox shoulder so tough you couldn't gnaw through it in over an hour; of horsemeat and kangaroo meat and alligator meat; of the flesh of snake, and of frog's legs? Or those pretending sang froid when they were served brain, but wouldn't actually get around to eating any of it? Of those who liked what they ate till they learned what their main course was and promptly threw up. And others who might throw off a nonchalant, "Didn't quite like snails the first time I had them, but must say, I quite enjoy them now." But then, who's to say what tolerance and exposure bring with them. Yesterday, diners who might have turned pale at the mention of shucking oysters now relish their squid and mussels with something akin to ardour. |
| My own most disgusting meal? Something I didn't quite get round to eating, even though it had clearly been served up as the delicacy d'jour "" rice stuffed inside the intestines of a dog that had been starved before being bludgeoned to death. Er, how did I know that? Because it was part of the recipe, stupid! |
| Fortunately, we're a little more fastidious about food at home. "So, what's the nastiest thing you ever ate?" I asked my daughter. "That must be the pakoras you made us when the cook was on leave?" she replied. "And what was wrong with them?" I protested. "Just that you made them with dough that consisted of washing powder instead of besan," she pointed "" which might have been true, they did taste a little off. "But the worst thing of all," said my wife wisely, "is having to eat one's own words." Chew on that. |
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