[Music] [Applause] [Music] and here's something else I've never seen before this little fella doesn't look like any rat or squirrel that I've ever seen so that means he's the one I'm most curious to taste thank you thank you very much I appreciate it now all I have to do is find somebody who can cook this up for me typically in markets like this people don't just shop for groceries to take home it's also a Fast Food Emporium where the food Hawk will cook up whatever fresh ingredients you bring them and I'm still not sure what
this Critter is or how it's best prepared if you're going to roast your mole SL Weevil hole and not take the guts out of it you want to make sure there's plenty of salt I will tell you something I actually was somewhat excited about trying this until about 10 seconds ago when he sort of split open and the smell of his entrails sort of flooded the marketplace thank you very much this is like jumping off a mountain I swear to gosh it's like parachuting signs you just have to say Ready set go oh God woo
[Music] so I took a bigger bite than I was intending to but if you can see that little tunnel as I inhaled and pulled my walth away all of the aroma from the entrails just went right into my mouth here's the problem every time I say I'm not going to eat it again I'm reminded of my rule that is I have to try it twice that just has a sour rancid aftertaste that I sometimes words fail me before we leave the jungle Market a couple of follow-ups first I finally found someone who identified this creature
as what is colloquially referred to as a bamboo rat it's a cousin to the naked whole rat but no one in this family looks too appetizing second most people here don't eat their bamboo rats whole they eat them stir fried and wrapped in banana leaves you live you [Music] learn well I'll tell you whoa [Music] spicy this proves once again that if you take some sort of wild rodent and you skin it and you blanch it and you strip it of all its fat and you shred the meat and you boil that along with lemongrass
and chilies and bamboo shoots just about anything tastes good you're a very good cook this is very good you've got your choice when it comes to pizza here at PJs you have hot dog flavored seafood seafood curry powder or Hawaiian you know I'm going to have to go with the seaf food curry powder this is not really someone trying to make pizza this is a combination of artificial ingredients made to look like pizza all right oh go oh no way it's all the fake cheese fake seafood and fake hot dog on there the minute you
put it in your mouth you're just too much gag reflex can't do it can't even can't even get past the thought and as is normally the case the foods that I find the most repulsive are the ones with the most amount of ingredients that are not found in nature this Brave vendor serves durian a spiky Strang looking fruit that has the reputation of being the smelliest fruit in the world once one gets past the smell it supposedly tastes pretty good to find out the truth I asked a few locals for their opinion what does that
smell like to you uh like some sushi like sushi like fish no no no shet shweet sweet shet sweet I thought you said something else that's a bad word you can't say on television special like Malaysia T ah smells special that's code word for I'm not convinced and am inclined to believe this little fella who has a very definitive opinion finally an honest reaction the durian fruit has quite a reputation throughout Asia it smells so repulsive that it's not even permitted inside hotels or on public transportation panang just happens to be one of Southeast Asia's
largest suppliers of durian and we traveled to an orchard just outside of Georgetown in search of this odd fruit as we walked the orchard our guide explained a few facts about the Misunderstood durian I can say that smell is unique right so maybe the smells to The Foreigner is something bad but we enjoy the smell at the same time as we enjoy the fruit we also enjoy this unique smell one interesting point about the durian is that they're not really harvested they just simply fall to the ground when they're close to being ripe because they're
so heavy and can actually knock you out their Nets stretch throughout the orchard to catch the Falling Fruit the mless so after all the buildup it's time to taste the forbidden fruit come on try it I'm getting psyched up forget but whatever you hear about the promotion they give to the fruits oh well they well they are only fruits they are only fruits you don't have to be worry okay do you be worry it tastes like completely uh rotten mushy onions oh my god well that is your taste yeah no I I respect everybody's right
to enjoy what they want to enjoy I eat a lot of weird stuff believe me I'm the king of eating weird stuff so these are weird right more than weird this is too much for me moving on to the main dish OK these are the giant worms the U the yes in Adobo with soy sauce and vinegar vinegar on chilies all right so the head and the little feet come off yes right you can eat it all and then you put out the uh mean the tough part of it that is skin and so you
don't eat the tough part of course you do not right don't eat of oh oh of course of course you don't but you you suck all out all this stuff that's on the inside all right cheers how does it taste oh my gosh I don't know what those things ate [Laughter] something but they didn't digest it very well that's very gritty and very oh my gosh you clean out the inside of that stuff it's like jelly on the inside of there it's worm jelly maybe it's e better eat and raw better eat and raw God
I love you unbelievable I wasn't a big fan of the uok but it's easy to understand why they're an important part of the indigenous diet they're a great source of protein something that's not always easy to come by in this part of the world first a little tofu history Shen Kang is the source and it all starts here at the Wang tofu Factory this place provides 90% of the Tofu for the region including Taipei that's BS before stink every day owner Chun Jung Wang and his small group of employees grind the soybeans boil them and
create the past that they then press into forms for tofu up to 20,000 pieces daily it's been done this way for centuries and the wangs take pride in their Hands-On operation tofu demystified I'm feeling even more confident about heading back to Taipei and taking on what's been called the ultimate here it is something every traveler should experience dy's House of unique stink and you guessed it everything on the menu is made from stinky tofu but this isn't just any stinky tofu this stuff is made by the legendary Miz woo nice to see you they make
the tofu upstairs yeah yeah we're making F it's two stories up and I can already smell something foul M Woo's laboratory as it seems is filled with Vats of varying stages of stink she starts with blocks of frozen tofu that are immersed in a secret black mixture of fermented vegetable matter as the tofu thaws it absorbs the bacteria yeah that's ripe oh she's slathering it on there yeah oh it gives a oh it's a whole new meaning to the term spell my fingers that was very this tofu is so unique each piece is stamped with
dy's logo the pieces are transferred to a new vat of room temperature matter every few days these things are alive this is living food you look that I'm waiting for something to leap out of there and grab me by the throat it takes about 2 weeks for the tofu to reach its ultimate stink factor and at that point it's packed up and put in the freezer to keep until M Woo is ready to prepare it as I anticipate eating the ultimate I think about all that earlier bravado way back in Shen Kang you just can't
believe how good this is until you actually get your mouth around it whoa the smell of this stuff alone beats the Street version 10 times over it's been a long time since food has intimidated me as much as I am intimidated sitting in front of these two dishes here I can only imagine what the cooked Taiwanese hamburger that's cow's stomach with the fried stinky tofu bun or the stinky tofu with thousand-year-old egg salad is going to taste like I'm scared to try either one quite frankly and well I guess there's no delaying oh I can't
do it wow here's the problem the cooked stinky tofu tastes tastes so rotten I can't get it down past the back of my mouth it's that automatic reflex that just tells you don't do it you can't eat it you can't eat it there's a sour spoiled flavor in my mouth that is absolutely singular there's nothing quite like it it's like rotten nuts uh mixed with rotted fish now the cook stinky tofu that I had on the streets in Shang Kang well that doesn't even compare to this no way no how I mean that's like comparing
boxer jug wine with a 75y old burgundy I mean this is it's not even in the same ballpark it's not even the same food that is absolutely horrifying okay I've gone from scared to repulsed but I said I'd try it raw stinky tofu salad mixed with thousand-year-old eggs then in this corner oh my gosh bring this back no way you take that ah um um this is the fully dressed and liberated 14-day old stin garnished with nuts and little fried Crispies and scallions and the thousand-year-old eggs let's see how this is w i could squeeze
that down oh man you know I was under the false impression that gilding the Lily with all of the scallions and little tasty bits would help this is just the 14-day old tofu at the house of unique stink is just too putrid and foul for me this woo thank you so much sh that was awesome thank you give me a hug that's the only that is you make the only food that beat me en I love you thank you I'll see you later byebye okay byebye I know what you're thinking I left way too much
food on my plate but I think the most memorable part of this meal it's going to stay with me for a couple days if you know what I mean suang took me to a place serving one of her sentimental comfort food favorites fermented skate do they just let the fish rot or or how do they make the fermented skate actually they just cut off and then they put in the jar MH and with some stro or hay and one in one place and I think they just fermented in the jar now any chef will tell
you skate is the world's fastest spoiling fish this is a species that literally pees through its skin so the flesh is soaked with uric acid it getss nasty even after a day or two in the refrigerator but Koreans like suang have a taste for skate that's been spoiling for days at room temperature my mom used to make it really yeah oh I love that mhm so it's it is comfort food for you reminds you of your mom oh yeah sure oh my gosh do you eat a plane what do you do do you wrap it
do you eat it with the hot pepper what do you uh um I just put some kimchi here uh-huh the idea is to bury the skate under a small mountain of bansan for each bite in case you were wondering the reason this won't kill you is that the good bacteria gradually kills the pathogenic bad bacteria after a couple of days but how many of you would want to eat something that tastes like disinfectant it's like someone just washed out a old rusty bin down in the basement with a qu of chlorox or something oh my
God there's only a handful of foods out there that have the rep reputation that this stuff has though oh wow the garlic the chilies the kimchi the bean paste going on there four of the biggest flavors known to man and they don't even begin to cover up yeah the stink of that fish the strongest of the strongest oh my God this stuff is horrific but it's about to get worse actually my dad and my brothers just to tried only this one not the the garlics and the yeah only this one with oh really yeah yeah
they they've got to be crazy they've got to be nuts so a bite with just one ingredient and almost no attempt to cover that stunning stink I don't want you to go home tonight and say to yourself that Andrew Zimmer guy he was a big food pansy this is how your father and your brother did it yep oh see you can't even breathe in and get psyched up about this food cuz it's just so smelly smell that see what I'm talking about that's nasty that is nasty how of places that serve this stuff stay in
business this stuff is Harsh when we started out this morning and you told me that Koreans loved their fermented foods you were not kidding that was fabulous thank you for a great day
