Pitch: A local Food Challenge tour/trip

A Pitch for a Local 'Fear Factor' Food Challenge Tour/Trip

"Are you adventurous?" asks this otherwise fun online quiz on food adventurousness.

Considering the options presented in the test (rabbit meat? oyster? duck meat?), however, the only proper reaction from me would be, "What a question!" To use current Internet lingo, Filipinos be like, "You kidding me?" That's what we eat everyday. I mean, come on. Chitterlings (a.k.a. chicharron)? That's exotic enough to you? That's downright insulting.

Take this Filipino test instead. Or better yet, join me on a local food challenge tour in this town where exotic fare is everyday fare. The squeamish is definitely not invited, unless as a cheering, maybe even vomiting spectator.

Salads

For starters, let's have the ar-arusip salad. Notice the slime? Try if you could get past it.

You did? Congratulations! Now try our steamed flowers: squash, malunggay, samsamping, and ampalaya flowers in a medley of shots.

Then try the raw pancit-pancitan salad using a common weed often found in damp places like canals and mossy cemeteries.

Still there? Try also our karot salad, which uses a root crop that is poisonous if incorrectly prepared.

Soup

Congrats again, you're still alive. Now try our labong with saluyot soup to see if you can survive the slimy consistency, as in phlegm-like slimy.

Since there are lots of Ilocanos here, let's have an extreme dinengdeng version with the following included: baeg (local amaranth flower), sabsabirukong flowers, young samsamping pods, young singkamas pods. This combo should give that complex pharmaceutical flavor profile.

Since you've gained the momentum, pinapaitan is also a must. Apart from the cholesterol overload guaranteed to clog your arteries on the spot, the authentic Ilocano version should contain pespes, the green gunk from the partly digested grass extracted from one of the cow's four abdominal compartments.

We Pangasinenses have invented kaleskes, a version of pinapaitan with toned-down acidity, and it's definitely not endearing in the looks or presentation department.

An arroz caldo with chicken heart (puso), gizzard (batikuleng), liver (altey), and spleen (pali in Tagalog) should be another option to try.

Tulya soup in tomatoes and ginger should also be challenge if you're not into clams. Note the grains of sand remaining at the bottom of your soup.

Main Course: Meat

Baguisen is a favorite here, and it's not because it looks like what you'd have for Halloween. You need to acquire the taste.

Enjoy as well the cartilaginous consistency of bopis (pig lungs) -- if you can, all the while pretending that you don’t know what it is made from.

Choosing between adobong sawa or adobong bayawak should do the job of making you lose your appetite completely at this point.

If you get past that stage, then lastly, there's dog -- traditionally eaten here as azucena, an adobo-like dish.

Main Course: Fish and Seafood

Still ok? Inselar ya pantat is a favorite here. Try if you can get over its overly fishy flavor without scrunching your nose. It's not for nothing that this town celebrates the so-called Malangsi 'Fishtival,' with malangsi meaning malansa or fishy.

Bangus sinigang, preferably with guava fruit wedges, would also be good. Just make sure to finish the belly and eat the eyes as well without squirming. Then try bangus another way, as kilawin, and see the difference.

When Mangabul Lake was still in existence, people here ate an assortment of freshwater catch, including karpa varieties, snails like alireg and larangan, and giant clams, so these items should be included in the menu.

Main Course: Vegetables

Our town's unofficial comfort food is our version of pinakbet, and a proper pinakbet contains bagoong. Let's see if you can take a risk with the "extreme funkiness" of bagoong.

Then let's have a papait dish sauteed in tomatoes. The overpowering bitterness should be another challenge you won't forget for a lifetime.

Then try kinurkor a ponti, grated near-ripe saba stewed with malunggay leaves and grilled fish like gourami, to see if you could take the resulting appearance of the soup and not be reminded of anything gross and icky.

Dips and Condiments

A local meal won't be complete without the usual bagoong monamon dip or agamang (bagoong alamang) shrimp paste with calamansi squeezed in.

The vinegar used should be authentic sukang Iloko with live wriggling worms on top, to get the right Fear Factor reaction from you.

Appetizers, Sidings, Relishes

As appetizers, one may choose the following.

Steamed chicken feet in stinky tausi is level-up delicious, if you can get past being aghast at the sight of decapitated chicken feet.

Lumpiang isaw or chicken small intestine has that requisite bitter note with each bite, to make certain you are turned off enough.

We love daing or dried fish around here. Of course, our favorites include the intensely flavorful tuyo and dilis. We've also learned to eat danggit, by the way.

The concentrated umami of buro brings local meals to a whole new level -- if you can take the extreme scent, which you could smell one kilometer away. Burong dalag would be the most preferred variety of buro, followed by other fish varieties.

It's not only fish that we are fond of fermenting. We also ferment green mangoes, kamias fruit, shrimp, and pork. We also used to ferment bangus intestines, but it has been a lost art.

It's not only Kapampangans who love eating insects. Risk allergy or even anaphylactic shock with abuos, the Ilocano sauteed hantik ant egg specialty.

We also traditionally eat crickets and mole crickets, maybe even grasshoppers and locusts -- some say even the papery wasp nest including the eggs.

Black snails cooked in coconut milk is an unforgettably creamy dish, if you can ignore the looks and color of the snails.

Dessert

For dessert, don't forget the inlubi, the horribly black biko or rice cake.

Next, let's have an unconventional fruit platter of tropical 'exotics': wedges of chesa, mabolo, granate, balimbing, aratiles, kamantiles, pias, makopa, rattan, buri, sungsung carabao, wild (and miniature) pipino, and caramay (fresh and pickled in salt and sugar).

But if you wish to gag or simply freak out, you can't go wrong with binuburan, with its vomit-like look on top of its smell of rot and regurgitation.

Tea/Coffee

Rice coffee would be good at this point to round out your meal dégustation style. It is actually delicious with milk and brown sugar. Consider this your reward for having reached this stage of the challenge.

Next, try our pito-pito tea as cleansing drink. It is a tisane or infusion of leaves of mango, guava, banaba, pandan, sambong, dangla (lagundi), plus kulantro (coriander seeds) or anis (anise).

If you get this far, that's the only time you get perfect score.

Now that's what you call adventurous!

Meanwhile, a Pangasinense worth his salt would find the following exotics as adequately adventurous fare: kopi luwak, stinky tofu, adobong uok, jumping salad, adobong tito, jellyfish, cat siopao, betamax, inihaw na ulo ng manok, earthworm burger/hotdog, sasing, tamilok, crocodile, ostrich, kangaroo, pako salad, pinuneg or blood sausage, etag with molds and worms, tapang usa, ipon, padas, burong baby oysters, ginataang paniki, huitlacoche or Mexican corn fungus delicacy, Mexican live bugs, scorpion, centipede, waterbug, cobra in wine, monkey, field rat, sriracha, rocoto chili, Peruvian cuy or guinea pig delicacy, tteokbokki or Korean spicy rice sticks, jjamppong, pigweed, durian, durian ice cream, marang, cazu marzu or Sardinian cheese with maggots, fugu, natto, and san-nakji or Korean live octopus dish. 

Next time, please don't be ridiculous with your laughable examples of adventurous.