by Legato Midvale, photos by Dixon Chow
Living in China, we often forget that there are indeed still places that you can go where there is nobody else around you; places seemingly only captured on hit television series such as Man vs. Wild by handsome men who eat hordes of bugs and basically anything else they can kill with a nearby rock. If you’re not in the great outdoors, however, there are some bland morsels that just aren’t worthwhile eating.
I was sitting in a posh restaurant with a large menu, faced with a vast selection of delicacies that anyone would enjoy. But who wants to read about indulgence in pork neck and curry beef? I had originally arrived with the intention of sampling some scorpion, but while perusing my options, my eye fell upon something better: snake and scorpion soup. We have written about snake soup in a previous issue, but I couldn’t possibly turn down this opportunity to prove my manliness, times two.
Bracing myself for a rollercoaster of flavors and sensations, it was a rather anti-climatic culinary adventure. The broth tasted remarkably like chicken soup, but with gristly exoskeletons instead of noodles. The scorpions themselves are like nothing more than salty water; insubstantial mouthfuls that you wouldn’t order to pleasure your palate.
Biting into the abdomen causes the scorpion to explode in your mouth; you’ll have to break out the toothpicks to remove tiny claws from between your teeth. An obligatory warning: the infamous tail is not safe to eat, so be sure to pluck it off before chomping down.
From a Chinese medicinal standpoint, scorpions are used to treat anything from strokes to paralysis, as well as supposedly enhancing the liver’s ability to dispel toxins. The tiny arthropods are also meant to aid in joint mobility, so it may be no coincidence that the next day I had a little extra spring in my step.
// Jixiang Guan, 11, Luhu Lu, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou 广州市越秀区麓湖路11号 (020-8358 0381)
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