Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide to the Unusual, Exotic, and Downright Bizarre [Mass Market Paperback]

Christa Weil (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 2006

Bugs, brains, and boiled sheep-a truly extreme dining guide for fans of Anthony Bourdain's A Cook's Tour

Is comfort food getting a little too comfortable? Then grab a plate at the Fierce Food buffet, where the world's most extraordinary foods are dished up for your pleasure. Start the meal with Mexican chapulines, or grasshoppers, and then move along to the Kazakhstan boiled sheep's head, where the eyeball is reserved for the most honored guest. And if necessary, ease your queasy stomach with dried clay.

An alphabetical survey of the world's most amazing and unusual edibles, Fierce Food describes what these foods are and where they're from, and how they're captured, foraged, or, even putrefied. Readers also learn how the foods are traditionally served and eaten-and best of all, what they taste like, because if you can't actually bring yourself to eat Filipino embryonic duck eggs, reading about it is the next best thing. Fierce Food is a fascinating exploration of global cultures that definitively proves the old adage, "one man's meat is another man's poison."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fierce food turns eating into a form of an extreme sport," Weil declares, "in which we face our misgivings and dare to plunge into the unknown." In her exhaustive guide to anything and everything edible for those who dare to eat it, London journalist Weil covers it all and then some, from armadillo ("flavorsome as pork") to yuba (bean curd skin). Her descriptions are thorough, including taste, texture, preparation and history of each item: she even includes icons to note important points about each item, for example an icon of a bomb means "eating may cause pain/death" while a sad face indicates "revolting." In addition to the obviously disgusting (various bugs, live monkey brain, etc.), Weil introduces items that may not pop up on even the seasoned traveler's agenda, like foo-foo (a lump of starch in soup) or hakari (putrefied shark meat). There are times when Weil attempts to take up space with descriptions of more pedestrian fare such as coconut, but makes up for these lapses into the mundane when she describes with excruciating detail the experience of biting into a sheep's eyeball. Even if one might not plan on eating a big plate of muttonbird, this book is entertaining enough for the most jaded foodie to enjoy. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

CHRISTA WEIL has sampled two-thirds of the items described in Fierce Foods, will pass on a handful, and has sights on the rest. She is an avid triathlete and climber. Fierce Food is her second book.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Mass Market Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Plume; 1St Edition edition (September 26, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0452287006
• ISBN-13: 978-0452287006
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,655,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From the sublime to the deadly, December 31, 2006

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide to the Unusual, Exotic, and Downright Bizarre (Mass Market Paperback)

London writer Weil conducts this global guide to exotic, often culturally celebrated food with wit, panache and practicality. Each entry even includes precise instructions for preparation and consumption, should you be so inclined.

There's fugu, for example, the Japanese puffer fish that can prove fatal if incorrectly prepared. Or durian, the Philippine fruit that smells like rotting corpses. Or bat soup, the Guam festival dish, which may contain a deadly neurotoxin, depending on where your bat hales from. And the dung beetle larvae, about which no more need be said.

There are more appetizing things, however. As in a real guidebook, Weil provides a symbol key so you can see at a glance if an entry is smelly, messy, revolting, has eyes, is an aphrodisiac, might kill you, or tastes like chicken.

Hardly anything in this book seems to taste like chicken. Not lichen or cricket or blubber or fermented mares milk or sea cucumber or dog. Frogs do, of course, and guinea pig too.

Weil introduces the reader to ceremonial eating in remote places like Kazakhstan where the many vodka toasts will help in washing down the sheep's head dinner's ultimate moment, the eyeball, and she debunks a legendary shocker - the delicacy of the live monkey brain.

Sometimes hilarious, always entertaining, "Fierce Food" will spice up the most jaded armchair adventurer's palate.

-- Portsmouth Herald

4.0 out of 5 stars No photos, but great descriptions., March 3, 2008

By 

btb_anon (Silicon Valley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide to the Unusual, Exotic, and Downright Bizarre (Mass Market Paperback)

It is true that photos would have been nice, but the descriptions are excellent. The author also takes time to include interesting quotes both historical and hysterical

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fierce Food - a little dull, May 31, 2007

By 

M. Dantow "Cookbook Collector" (ON Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide to the Unusual, Exotic, and Downright Bizarre (Mass Market Paperback)

the book had great content- interesting subject matter- outlined alphabetically - but its missing the visual - no photos and very boring font- makes it more of a dictionary than an entertainment book - I was disappointed and wont keep it in my "foodie" collection for long.