Strange food from around the world

Prior to mad-cow disease, you could find a sandwich filled with fried cows brains on menus in St. Louis, Missouri, USA. While it is illegal to serve cow brain that are over 30 months at slaughter, you can still order from some places in Ohio, served completely battered and put in a white bun.

This traditional Scottish dish is made with minced heart, liver and lung from a sheep. Mixed with onion, oatmeal, stock, salt and spices it is boiled in the sheeps stomach for a few hours. Available from most Scottish supermarkets in either an artificial casing or if you want it immediately, in a packaged can.

It is not uncommon to find street vendors selling fried grasshoppers, crickets, scorpions, spiders and worms on the streets of Bangkok. Insects like these are high in protein and consist of vitamins and fatty acids.

No, these are not your standard oysters found at the bottom of the ocean, these aren’t even closely related. Rocky Mountain oysters or Prairie oysters are a fancy name given to deep-fried buffalo testicles.

This is a delicacy that may just stay a delicacy in Iceland. Made by gutting a Greenland or Basking shark and then fermenting it for two to four months, hakarl is an Icelandic food that reeks of a pungent gas like ammonia.

Larvae anyone? Casu Mazu is a cheese found in the city of Sardinia and is home to live larvae. Deliberately added to cheese to help promote fermentation, the larvae can jump up to half a foot. Would you eat it?

This is no ordinary soup, it is snake meat soup. Popular in Hong Kong, it’s cooked with mushrooms and ginger. In Japan, you can find snake liquor (snake infused alcohol) and snake blood wine (red wine mixed with fresh snake blood).

Sashimi and sushi are consumed all over the world so the thought of raw food isn’t as shocking in today’s society. But what about eating live baby octopus? It is sliced and seasoned with sesame oil, still moving, the tentacles are served. Be careful when you chew, the suction cups can stick to your mouth and throat.

Fugu is Japanese for “pufferfish” and, yes, they are poisonous. Japanese law strictly control their preparation in restaurants and only highly trained chefs are allowed to handle them because if not prepared and served correctly it can result in death.

Described as tasting like a sweet fillet mignon Kangaroo meat is sold in various organic butchers around Australia. While it isn’t consumed hugely in Australia, consumption of the product is growing and has started being exported to restaurants in America.