I once read a cookbook titled Unmentionable Cuisine. A survey of all the most disgusting traditional recipes from around the world, its entries came mainly from historically poor countries whose people had no choice but to eat whatever was handy, no matter how barfalicious.
Even in this setting, the recipe on page 310 stood out:
Eviscerated sharks are buried in the sand or kept in a open barrel for three years to ferment.
This is called hákarl (pron). Delicately, the author draws a veil over the preferred ingredient to assist fermentation: pee.
You can have literally minutes of fun Googling for hákarl and people’s descriptions of it:
the vilest thing they ever tasted, almost akin to solid urine
tastes like tuna soaked in urine
the worst tasting food on earth
the single worst, most disgusting and terrible tasting thing
Everyone involved in this process should be on trial in The Hague.
Þorrablót, the festival of traditional food (‘everything grey and sour,’ says a friend), is in January so you’ve already missed your big chance to binge. But no worry – you can get it at the grocery store.
And once you’ve mastered hákarl, you can graduate to casu marzu.
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