You may know Andrew Zimmern as the guy who goes around the world eating strange things like spleen soup and fish head curry. (And liking them!)
As his TV show "Bizarre Foods" enters its eighth season on Travel Channel, Andrew spoke to Star via conference call about his latest adventures. In the season premiere — which airs Monday, April 13 at 6 p.m. Pacific Time — Andrew travels to Kazakhstan to feast on sheep brains, fermented camel milk and smoked horse sausage. Here are some highlights from the interview ...
Did you eat anything in Kazakhstan that you regretted instantly after trying?
I had nothing but fantastic things in Kazakhstan. In the farm country, they slaughter a sheep, they stuff the stomach with every piece of meat from the animal until it’s about the size of a rounded manhole cover ... And on top of the earth where it lays, they make a fire out of dried animal dung and let it burn down, and you go eagle hunting, and come back later and eat the stuffed stomach with all of the meat and goodies inside.
Was there one thing that didn't work out for you at all?
Most of the things that I don’t like fall into the category of improperly cooked things. But I have to tell you that oftentimes the other circumstances do make it charming. ... (We were) in the mountains and on horseback, and this 16 pound golden eagle is on my arm and goes from the top of the crest of this mountain a quarter mile down the valley where it sees this rabbit moving, and lands on it and waits for me to get down there to grab it. That’s an amazing experience. We ate the rabbit on the banks of the river, and I skinned it and cleaned it and we pan-fried it ... Was it cooked properly? You know, maybe. I did my best.
What are your suggestions for the regular traveler?
Make sure that you leave the hotel every day. It’s a very simple thing, but if you think about it, when most of us are on vacation and we go somewhere, maybe there’s a beach involved, we sit down at the hotel and we get a little lazy. The last time that I was in Cancun, I dragged my family every night for dinner into the city, which is on the other side of the tracks. ... And it was one of the best vacations we ever had.
On eating horse meat ...
Horse meat is one of my, maybe my favorite red meat. I mean, I only hedge because donkey is so delicious. ... Horse to me has the flavor of what beef wants to be. It’s lean, but it has a lot of intramuscular fat that can be ground in if you’re doing grinding or making sausage.
... (In Kazakhstan) they have a national dish called Besbarmak that is one of my favorites. It’s a homemade flat noodle, like a lasagna shape that they smother with sautéed horse meat and caramelized onion ... It was just extraordinary.
You never had any problems with textural feel of food or anything like that?
Tons of it, I still do. These things happen because we’re imprinted with those ideas, you know. I don’t like cookie dough because I don’t like the texture.
