Looking for foods to try and share a bit of my own culture. My family is cantonese viet and I grew up eating in a lot of traditional banquet hall restaurants. Usually these are dim sum menu for lunch and traditional shared foods for dinner. Most people have tried the common ones like siu mai (pork wrapper dumpling) and haw gow (shrimp rice dumpling) but my favorites are the uncommon ones like ngau zaap (beef offal) and baak wan fung zaau (pickled chicken feet).
Ngau zaap is basically braised brown sauce using off cuts, usually stomach and whatnot, with chinese radish. Its very savory, kinda like if you made an asian gravy.
Baak wan fung zaau is just chicken feet pickled in white vinegar. If you had pickled radish it’s essentially the same pickling and the chicken feet is gelatinous and a bit crunchy. You can also get them sometimes boneless since eating around the bones is kinda a pain. I really like pickled foods so this is one of my faves
Lutefisk is always talked about jokingly as being like super gross, but I’ve always wondered if it could be good if done right.
Can it actually taste good? And not just like ammonia or whatever?
It tastes pretty “normal”, it’s just the prep method that is very strange to most, which gives it a different texture (extremely tender). The only strange part about the flavor (to many) is the fact that mustard is used on fish, but I consider that optional. I like it, tho.
If prepped poorly, it fucks up both the flavor and the texture, and the result can be anything from jell-o that tastes extremely of fish (too much lye for too long), to just regular boiled cod (watered too long or boiled too long, or not enough lye.
And using quality Stockfish as a starting point is of course essential.
And no, it doesn’t taste of lye. It might have the tiniest hint of it, but not too much. It’s not really noticeable because of the bacon and mustard.