Eating the seemingly inedible

“TABOO”

Bored to our eyebrows with many TV shows that say and show pretty much the same old stuff, we channel-surfed last week with the specific aim in mind of finding TV programs that could jerk and jolt our benumbed eyebrows up—all the way to the ceiling!

Thanks to our lucky stars, we did find such a show, “Taboo,” on NatGeo, that did exactly that—covering the annual dinner of the Explorers Club in New York City.

The rare and regal report served the most exotic and “adventurous” dishes ever cooked!

“The logic” for the special dinner goes this way: The Explorers Club is an exclusive organization that includes among its members some of the most intrepid risk-takers in the world—astronauts, Mt. Everest conquerors, visionary scientists, inventors, etc.

So, it stands to reason that they would be similarly venturesome about the unusual protein sources they put into their mouths—knock on wormwood!

Well, that’s all the club’s resident chef needed to whip up a risky and visually off-putting menu that most people would ingest only if they were forced to—and brought to them for their dubious delectation—at the end of a 10-foot polecat!

If you want to similarly titillate and shock your own adventurous friends, here’s a list of what the Explorers Club chef whipped up for his properly impressed clientele:

Grilled tarantula; pig testicles cooked in blood; broiled Latin American giant cockroach (your neighborhood canal or cesspool variety doesn’t qualify).

Live maggots dipped in chocolate; pickled duck tongue; bull’s penis; goat testicles; ostrich egg omelet; beaver head soup; fly larvae; stink bug roast; eyeballs in tomato sauce; alligator steak; snake wine; candied ants; bear paws—and Japanese poison fish! Got that?

If that sounds more gross than exciting, rest assured that, judging from the diners’ reactions as they nibbled, chewed, sucked and slurped down all those alleged uningestibles, the dishes’ actual taste and texture weren’t as off-putting and up-chuckable as initially imagined, or feared.

In fact, the risk-taking ingesters appeared to have a yummy time as they culinarily “explored” away—and, more to the point, nobody kicked the bucket as he ate the crackling roast crickets.

More tasty tidbits: In case you’re interested, a diner shared that the grilled tarantula tasted a lot “like crab”!

The nasty-sounding “stink bomb” appetizer didn’t stink and was in fact crunchily and crackingly delish.

What about the giant cockroach? It was put on an all-vegetable diet, no fetid canal critters allowed, so it too turned out to be a tantalizing taste treat. Bon (extreme) appetit!