Asian Market Taste Test, Part 3
A comedy article
by Phuc  237,919  21
02/20/2012 01:49 PM 1520 views
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In our first and second installments, we learned that our intrepid reporter will, in fact, eat anything.
Defeat
"We are all ready to win, just as we are born knowing only life. It is defeat that you must learn to prepare for.."
--Mr. Han, in Enter the Dragon
The first four items in my taste test were a mixed bag of edible and revolting; only the oil spill emulsion labeled "Herbal Grass Jelly" presented any real challenge to my fortified intestinal constitution. Perhaps the final three might have a chance at overcoming my gut of iron.
Smiling Fish Garlic Flavoured Crispy Baby Clams
First Impressions: I love clams: Fried clams, steamed clams, bearded clams, clam chowder, pizza with white clams, clam sandwich, clamato and milk -- even a clammy handshake from your grandma. Clams are good food. But if my history with Asian Markets has taught me anything, it's that any good ingredient can be made to taste like a gangrenous street dog's ass when conceptualized by the Asian snack industry. These babies look like tiny fried clams with a too-orange coating. The smell is mildly clam-like, with a hint of chilies and vomit.
Taste Test: Happily, the vomit odor is not so prominent on the taste buds. The ocean flavor is likewise subdued, which surprised me; usually, Asian snacks accentuate an ingredient's flavor component that Westerners find most repulsive. What sucks about this snack is the texture: I expected crunchy on the outside, with a moist, squishy glob of guts in the center. What I got was a soggy coating over little bits of leather.
Verdict: The next time one of your kids breaks a vase or pees on the shag carpet, put a bag of this in his Justin Bieber lunch pail. You will have communicated to him more clearly that he is unworthy of love than if you had sent him to military school in a dress.
Pro Fusion Preserved Duck Eggs
First Impressions: My dad used to eat these things, which are also referred to as "1,000-year-old eggs," presumably because they look and smell as though a farmer during the Northern Song Dynasty buried them in a pile of water buffalo poo because they were too rancid to even feed to the pigs. The truth is not far off: Uncooked eggs are packed in ash, salt, and lyme and left to "cook" in this toxic mush for a few months. The result is a slimy, gelatinous mess in which anything that a person may have enjoyed about consuming raw eggs has been leached out and replaced with something dark and evil.
Taste Test: Once I was able to overcome my gag reflex upon shoving a bit of black jellied egg into my craw, I waShakespeare with flavors of slightly raw egg, a bitter chemical that I prayed was not arsenic or sarin, and a top note that brought to mind a low tide on the Jersey Shore.
Verdict: You would think that with all the time and effort that goes into preparing these things that they would be delicious and fun to serve at English Tea. Instead, I have a half dozen demon eggs that I'm saving for teenagers who trick or treat without costumes. October is still a few months off, so I hope that these will age like fine wine over time.
Pantai Pickled Mud Fish
First Impressions: If I'm not mistaken, the lettering on the jar is Thai. Now I know who to blame for this abomination. Unsealing the jar was reminiscent of the discovery of King Tut's tomb; those explorers were cursed when they ignored dire warnings of doom, while I easily deciphered the English words "Pickled Mud Fish" and pushed on, regardless of my obvious peril.
I will attempt the describe the smell: The alley behind an Asian Market on a tropical summer day during a garbage strike. While the primary olfactory component is fish (albeit a bottom-feeding sucker fish), there is a strong and distinct odor of rancid, baking trash.
Add to this the scaly skin, needle-sharp bones, and stringy flesh swimming in brown-orange muck, and you've got a concoction that would make Beelzebub himself crap his shorts in fright.
Taste Test: Dear sweet Christ on the crapper -- why oh why did I save this one for last? I could have had it sixth, then washed the taste away with a half dozen preserved duck eggs, though I doubt that anything less than a solution of lye, bleach, and holy water can fully erase the taste of this caustic slop from my memory. There were no instructions on the jar as to whether or not Pickled Mud Fish should be eaten raw or cooked, but I can't imagine how any application of heat short of a nuclear blast could make this vile, unclean thing fit for human -- or inhuman -- consumption. The phrase "tastes like ass" is so overused these days that it has all but lost its impact, but I'm just using it as a starting point: Pickled Mud Fish tastes like the ass of a beached blue whale that has been rotting in the sun for a month while seagulls shat on it, maggots burrowed into every inch of flesh and blubber, and Neptune himself rose from the sea to take a mighty dump in the carcass.
Verdict: "You have offended my family and you have offended the Shaolin Temple." --Bruce Lee
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Like This? Rate It!
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Hilarious
19 votes
4.6
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Hilarious
5 votes
4.4
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Fratberry 283,063  53
02/21/2012 09:47 AM
I find your lack of eating feet disturbing.
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Hilarious
3 votes
4.7
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Chickens don't usually get this old 286,651 61
02/21/2012 09:51 AM
Waitaminute! Phuc has a gag reflex?
Trixxie says he does.
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Hilarious
8 votes
4.4
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Brad Poynter 36,184 48
02/21/2012 10:21 AM
Pickled Mud Fish tastes like the ass of a beached blue whale that has been rotting in the sun for a month while seagulls shat on it, maggots burrowed into every inch of flesh and blubber, and Neptune himself rose from the sea to take a mighty dump in the carcass.
I guess Phuc really will eat anything.
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Funny
5 votes
3.4
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Phuc 237,919 21
02/21/2012 01:22 PM
I confess that I have eaten 1000 year old eggs before.
These, however, we're neither firm nor not-Shakespeare-flavored like ones I have had before.
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Funny
7 votes
3.4
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Midgets 96,156 48
02/21/2012 02:00 PM
I won't eat anything that looks like it could be found in the lower folds of a morbidly obese biker.
Those last two break that rule.
Nice to see you back!
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Chuckleworthy
2 votes
2.5
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Suzy Creamcheese 3,009 9
02/21/2012 02:41 PM
I thought you'd be over orb-whoring by now, Phuc.
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