In Sri Lanka there’s a type of small pastry which looks remarkably like a large deep-fried wart.
It tastes quite pleasant, though, and has a pretty name in Sinhalese.
The Chinese, on the other hand, have a genius for giving revolting names to even the most delicious dishes. Maybe that’s just an Anglo perspective — we’ve grown accustomed to fresh-picked-by-virgins-at-dawn menus, full of tautologies (“garden salad” — as opposed to what? pavement salad?) and random pointless adjectives (“lightly fried”).
And then there’s the whole new wave of heirloom this, and rare-breed that, and single-origin whatever, with menu notes to tell you where your pork chop went to school and what its grade-point average was.
In fact we’re so squeamish we don’t even eat bits of pig or cow; we eat pork and beef (as do the French. Perhaps that’s where we got it from.). Basically, if it’s a mammal we give it a different name when it’s dead. Except for lamb, of course. Years ago a nice old lady in Iowa asked me what Australians liked to eat, and I said mostly lamb. She recoiled in shock. “Lamb? They eat LAAAMB?”
I said, “Lamb chops? You’ve heard of lamb chops?” She relaxed. Chops were OK; she understood chops. Chops weren’t cute and fluffy.
I saw the same reaction at a safari camp in Africa, where the assembled guests, having pre-dinner drinks, learned to their horror that they’d been nibbling on impala kebabs.
So it’s not surprising we blanch a little when confronted by a menu that pulls no punches, translated bluntly with little regard for Western sensibilities. Curiously, Chinese-language menus can be poetic to the point of opacity (The Brazier Kills the Pig Vegetable; The Self-Restraint Digs up the Pig Face). But for the English version they tend toward literal translations that call a spade a bloody shovel. I’m not talking here about simple typos like the well-known “Crap in Chili Sauce”; these are straight-from-the-dictionary renditions, naked and unadorned. Like, for example:
Crisp Fried Fish Bladder
Stinky Tofu
Spicy Pork Lung Slice
Deer Tendon
Pork Intestine
Saliva of a Chicken Product
Braised Sea Slug
And my all-time personal favourite: Braised Pig’s Butt
You can easily start your own collection when visiting any Chinese-speaking part of the world. But while you’re making notes and having a giggle, do try at last one of the dishes. Especially the Pig’s Butt…you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
(This is what’s now referred to at our house as Pig’s Bum. It’s a Shanghainese speciality: pork hock slow-cooked until it’s so tender you can cut it with a spoon, and served whole with a rich brown glaze and steamed greens like bok choy. We love it.)