the wierdest food yet

I've eaten some stuff that really stretched my limits since coming to China. Let's review. There was the dog meat with the drunk guys during the break after summer term. Then there were the cow knees and lamb spine soon after. I don't recall whether I've actually blogged about these next few, but there have at various times been duck brain, chicken head and claw, and cow heart ventricle. But I think this one may take the cake: deep fried tree frog. I'd definitely heard that the Chinese ate frogs, but I was under the impression that amphibian/reptile consumption was limited to the south. Apparently not because I'm about as far north as you get and today at lunch, out of the blue, comes a plate of the little critters.

I've been staying up late and sleeping in, so although they were served at lunch it was my first meal of the day. I stumbled out of bed unsuspecting. Jin Chao had roused me to tell me it was time to eat. For the past few days this has meant eat with his family at their house, but when I went upstairs to the common area the plan was to go eat at a restaraunt run by his cousin's husband. As usual, the host was incredibly hospitable, showing us plates of possible foods to eat and having us point at the ones we wanted fried up. I picked an innocuous plate of snow peas, and Jin Chao and Xu Chen's choices were equally mild. This of course only lulled me further into my unsuspecting state.

We were most of the way through our meal when they came out. I had been enjoying my peas, along with other standard dishes like fried eggs and pork ribs. The eating was punctuated by toasts from our small beer glasses as many Chinese meals are. When the plate appeared, I first thought they were small birds similar to those I'd seen a few days before. Birds and frogs may be fairly closely related in an evolutionary sense, but when they come crispy deep fried with the host smiling "dig in!" there's a big difference. Ignoring the obvious, here's a pertinent distinction: you're not supposed to eat the bird, you're supposed to eat the bird meat. I learned today that you're supposed to eat the frog.

I knew I had to act fast before I thought too much about it, so I dug right in as soon as I was absolutely clear that you eat the whole thing. I didn't want to do anything unnecessarily disgusting. Xu Chen did have time to remind me that only 10 minutes before, these frogs had been hopping around like crazy in some tub at the back of the kitchen. It must have been a sight because the plate had roughly 20 crispy hoppers. There was no doubt about their current condition, spindly limbs splayed out from a mass of froggy bodies resting at unnatural angles.

As I eat all these wierd things, I'm finding that taste isn't really a factor. Most of it is pretty mild, tastes-like-chicken stuff. The gut wrencher is the textures. Lamb spine grey matter was pasty. Cow knee was like really chewy jello. You might expect a frog to be slimy or gummy, but these weren't. When frogs are alive, they almost look boneless. The dead ones were very bony in the mouth. I'm trying to come up with something to compare it to, and here it is. The bones were a lot like those crunchy little Rold Gold pretzels. As for the rest, my family has a cream cheese and shrimp dip that we eat at holiday parties. It's really a great dish and I hope this doesn't ruin it for anyone. Imagine that dip; soft cream cheese, chewy shrimp, and a little cocktail sauce. Forget about the taste, and putting a frog in your mouth is like munching on pretzels and shrimp dip.

I got the frog down in two big mouthfuls. It wasn't bad I suppose, but I didn't go rushing for another. Sensing my reluctance, the host began a lecture about the high nutrition content, especially in the females. Apparently frog ovaries are preventative of all kinds of diseases. His graphic and passionate explaination didn't convince me. At least I ate one of the things though, and I believe it marks a new level of my adventures in dining - tree frog and beer for breakfast.

There's a couple more pictures of the frogs in this album: http://picasaweb.google.com/weiterong/Yichun