A nutter...and proud of it

Back in the 'eighties a friend told me about a (Kiwi) flatmate who cooked and ate chickens' feet. At the time New Zealand's population had very few Chinese and the concept of eating chickens' feet was virtually unknown.

I recall being utterly horrified and commenting that only a nutter would eat something so repulsive.

Well, never say "never" (unless it involves eating brains). I've had many an opportunity to eat chickens' feet over the years but have never been tempted. Until now. What has this food challenge done to me?

Last night my brothers Brody and John, and my adventurous 11-year-old son Kieran, headed to a Sichuan Chinese restaurant to see what culinary challenges we could confront. When I say "we", I exclude John, a most unadventurous eater. He stuck to spring rolls.

The menu offered plenty of wonderful potential to try new things. We had to rule out a few though, such as sea cucumbers (advance notice required, otherwise I would have eaten one - honest!), and a variety of pork lung/intestine/squidgy bit dishes (I don't like pork).

To get the ball rolling, I bought a bottle of Tsingtao beer. I've never before tried Chinese beer and found Tsingtao to be very light (in all senses, including 2% alcohol) and not very bubbly.

Rating = 5

Now for The Business. I honed straight in on "hot and sour chicken paws". Chicken PAWS? How could I resist? (Quite easily, really.) But I didn't. The hot and sour chicken paws were actually cold, hot and sour. i.e. refrigerator cold, accompanied by salty vegetable chunks, some pickled chillis and a light vinegary sauce.

Thank God they'd trimmed the claws off and cut the paws into bits so you could almost pretend not to notice what they really were. Could I eat one?

Yep. They were okay, quite bony with gelatinous skin. Chickenish tasting. I wasn't nearly as freaked out as I though I'd be - probably thanks to having consumed turkey spam the day before. Not much could be worse than that. I think the chicken paws would have been nicer if they were heated. Brody reckoned they should have been accompanied by a dipping sauce.

Rating = 6

Next up was a classic Sichuan dish, Chongquing fried chicken. Sichuan food uses lots of chilli peppers and sichuan pepper, which has mouth numbing quality and this dish had loads of both.

Nestled amongst vast quantities of fried dried red chillis were tasty nuggets of slightly lemony tasting fried chicken, accompanied by deep fried peanuts. Yum, yum, yum.

The dish was very spicy hot from the sichuan peppercorns, which made my mouth and lips go quite numb and tingly. Impressive!

Rating = 8

I didn't eat any of the chillis because I assumed they were there to lend flavour, rather than to be eaten per se. Imagine the next day's after burn if one did consume them all. We reckon there must've been the equivalent of about 100 chillis in the dish! Here's what was left after we mined out all of the chicken:

One of the other dishes we ordered, scallop and egg custard, was a nice foil to the chicken. This savoury steamed custard, studded with dried (?) scallop and scented with sesame oil came in a cute bamboo serving dish. It was lovely, albeit a bit salty.

Rating = 8

We finished the meal with a light, soupy fermented rice dessert. I thought I was ordering something previously untried but when it arrived, I realised that my Chinese cleaner has given me a similar type of dish in the past. Her (home made) version is, I think, nicer than the one we had at the restaurant. The restaurant one was refreshing, but too sweet. It should have had more of a sour tang.

We all enjoyed our meal until Brody insisted upon getting the restaurant owner to reveal the restaurant's food hygiene rating (which suspiciously had a plastic bag taped over it). It was a 'D' (i.e. the restaurant is one step off being closed down because of poor food hygiene standards).

Eeek. Wish us luck.