Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre World of Food

by Andrew Zimmern

  As I ate my first marula fruit, it brought me right back to Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where I first tasted my favorite fruit of all time. For twenty years, I measured everything against the mangosteen. Tree-ripened apricots from the mountains a day’s ride outside Marrakesh, Morocco, placed a close second. That is, until both were trumped by the achachairu.

  THE BEST FRESH FRUIT STANDS

  Compared to the stark, cold, and brown lunar landscapes that sweep most of Bolivia, Santa Cruz is a lush tropical paradise. Serving as the country’s gateway to the Amazon, this area teems with amazing produce and wildlife. The crew and I headed to Yacapani, an even smaller town in the area that boasts a restaurant whose reputation for serving some of the world’s best fish and roasted armadillo reached me all the way back in America. Some people love licorice, beef jerky, or ice cream on road trips, but to me nothing accompanies a long, dusty car ride quite like fresh fruit. I’m always on the lookout for roadside fruit stands. Taking out your penknife and cutting into a fresh papaya, melon, or bunch of bananas on a road trip is my idea of heaven.

  The first fruit stand we encountered outside of Santa Cruz was filled with watermelon, avocado, and baskets of a strange citrus fruit. However, the stand looked a little down on its luck. There is nothing more disappointing than fruit that is not up to snuff—I’d rather eat my Puma sneakers than a mealy pear or a flavorless melon. My driver assured me there would be more stands along the road. Sure enough, we pulled over at a gem of a place ten minutes later. Mesh baskets hung from the wooden edge of the lean-to that protected the fruit from the hot noonday sun. At first glance, the baskets looked to be full of small lemons or limes. Upon closer inspection, I realized I’d never seen anything like this fruit: pale orange in color, some almost flaming red, and figlike in appearance, with a harder, leathery skin, much like the marula fruit.

  “It’s called an ‘achachairu,’ ” the vendor explained. “It’s a fruit.” Sounded more like a sneeze to me, but I purchased a small bag anyhow. I was smitten.

  Attacking a foreign fruit can be complicated business. It’s crucial for the neophyte to ask how to eat it. Imagine diving into a coconut, pineapple, or banana without any guidance. Do you bite into it like an apple from the orchard? Peel it like an orange? Like the marula fruit, lychee, and rambutan, the achachairu must be opened in order to access the fruit. But instead of a tidbit of white flesh surrounding a large nut, it’s the exact opposite. The skin is rather thin compared to its cousins’, so slipping the fruit out is a much easier endeavor. Inside, you will find a huge bite of the most delicious floral, sour symphony of flavors, which explodes into your mouth.

  The Seven Weirdest Fruits in the World

  ~Frankenfruits. The Grapple (grape + apple), Pluot (plum + apricot), and Aprium (apricot + plum) all weird me out. These—or varieties of them—are actually corporately branded fruits sitting at your local supermarket. I find it mind-boggling that there are actually scientists devoting their brainpower to making frankenfruits. Why fuss with something Mother Nature was already doing perfectly fine on her own?

  ~Durian. My archnemesis, this is one of the most revolting foods I’ve ever tasted. It’s a hard, spiny member of the melon family; the scent of the football-size fruit alone will take down a grown man faster than Sugar Ray Leonard. Imagine a slightly sweet onion, rotting for weeks in the hot sun. Now multiply that smell by 100 and you’ve got durian.

  ~Rambutan. These small, red, pom-pom-like fruits are native to Asia. Their translucent flesh is white or pink and tastes sweet. Eater beware: Each fruit contains a soft, crunchy seed, which is mildly poisonous when raw. If it’s cooked, you’ll be fine.

  ~Miracle fruit. This edible, Synsepalum dulcificum, earned its nickname due to an unusual characteristic: it makes sour foods taste sweet. You can actually suck on a lemon after chewing on miracle fruit and override the lemon’s puckering qualities.

  ~Ugly fruit. This big, rugged, and gnarled fruit native to Jamaica deserves its name. However, it has a wonderful sweet and citrusy flavor. Let’s just say the ugly fruit might not be much to look at, but it has a great personality.

  ~Cherimoya. Resembling a misshapen artichoke, the cherimoya has a sweet-sour taste comparable to a pineapple-banana-strawberry mix. Sounds delicious, but now consider that its crushed seeds are poisonous and its bark can induce paralysis when injected. Still hungry? Didn’t think so.

  ~Square watermelon. The first square watermelons were thought to have been produced by a Japanese farmer and have been sold for upwards of eighty dollars a pop. However, it turns out the melons were grown in square molds on the vine—forcing them into perfect square shapes. So I guess these fruits aren’t actually that weird. (They’re just a big rip-off.)

  Advice to exotic-fruit lovers: Never ever, ever, ever buy a small piece of fruit for a couple of pennies and get back in the car. And don’t ever drive away in a hurry—especially when you have yet to sample your purchase. If it’s disappointing to your palate, you haven’t lost anything. No matter where you taste the purchase, at the curb or an hour’s drive away, you’re going to dispose of it if you don’t like it, or stop eating it, or give it to someone else who is going to enjoy it, probably in reverse order. But if it’s new to you and you love it, you’re going to want to eat a lot of it. I always sample at the curb.

  One bite of achachairu sent me into a frenzy. They came in little one-kilo bags with roughly twenty fruits inside. I bought three bags and finished them within hours. That night, I ventured to the village market, bought three more bags, and brought them back to the room. I pounded those down in a day.

  On the way back to the airport, I bought five more bags. By this time, I had convinced the crew that maybe they would want to eat some, and over the course of the next couple hours we demolished three of the bags. Just before we headed to the airport, I made a pit stop for a few more bags. My passion for fruit knows no bounds. I ate two more bags in the airport. If I could have taken them back to La Paz, I would have. Sadly, I couldn’t buy enough, couldn’t hold enough, and couldn’t bring enough onto the airplane. I was eating every single piece of achachairu that I could.

  Cultural elitism, price, and difficulty in procuring a certain ingredient can give food an artificially heightened sense of scarcity. However, where there is sunshine and water, there is fruit. Fruit is a very egalitarian edible, and obtaining it doesn’t require special privilege—just a keen eye in a field if you’re foraging, or a few cents if you’re shopping in a market. Unless you’re after a two-hundred-dollar square watermelon in Tokyo, fruit offers the best bang for the buck when it comes to exciting ingredients. Fruit also teaches us all a lesson in immediacy politics—there’s a “carpe diem” quality that other foods don’t have. Eat it when it’s ripe, or miss your moment forever. And never pass up the fruit stand unless you know something that I don’t.

  Since childhood, I’d dreamed of seeing the Great Barrier Reef, off the coast of Queensland, Australia. When I had the opportunity to travel there as an adult, I regressed to that giddy little kid staring out the window of my New York City apartment, dreaming of the world. Surfing, sharks, amazing snorkeling—what’s not to love? Few more incredible natural structures exist than this coral reef that edges almost the entire northeastern coast of the Australian landmass.

  The Great Barrier Reef is one of the seven wonders of the natural world. It’s larger than the Great Wall of China and the only living thing on earth visible from outer space.

  I was stunned to discover just how far offshore the reef is located. Operators run giant diving barges with semipermanent structures floating above the reef; these support the massive influx of annual visitors, who are ferried in and out. There is no question about it: Pressure on a reef kills it. Activity in the water equals damage. The growth of the shipping lanes and commercial fishing, combined with the environmental circumstances of global warming, have resulted in a less productive and less vibrant reef. That being said, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the top
ten attractions in the world, as far as I’m concerned.

  The main industry on the Great Barrier Reef is tourism, which reportedly generates $1 billion annually.

  My palms were sweating as the crew and I boarded our boat in Cairns for the two-hour trip to our dive spot.

  INTO THE REEF I GO.…

  My diving companion was a gentleman named Lurch. He was a crazy Australian if ever there was one, a carefree guy who’d spent his formative years on the water, where his family made their living. Now he’s stuck with the family business, resulting in days filled with free diving for fish, equipped with only a mask, an incredible oversize spear gun, and a pair of flippers. We finally arrived at our diving spot, where Lurch instructed me to start putting on my gear. As I dealt with my equipment, Lurch gave me a fifteen-minute tour of the shark bites and moray eel stings that covered his body. (I think this was an intimidation technique, and, frankly, it kind of worked.) However, this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and I didn’t have time to freak out, so over the side we went.

  Danger Down Unda

  Before you don your snorkel, beware of these potentially dangerous species:

  ~Box jellyfish, which cleverly gets its name from its boxlike shape. It has the ability to deliver fatal stings to humans. You’re unlikely to happen upon this fish on the reef, as it typically stays close to river mouths and shallow waters. Stinger season runs November through March, so if you’re hopping into the water, keep an eye out for them.

  ~Lionfish, with their prominent vertical stripes, actually look more like tigers than lions, and should be avoided. Venomous spines that can produce painful puncture wounds protrude from their dorsal and pectoral fins. Though you’ll likely survive, a sting from a lionfish does not tickle—it hurts like heck!

  ~There are approximately fifteen species of sea snakes on the reef, and all of them are venomous. Having small fangs, they are not normally aggressive. There have been no reported deaths from sea snakes; however, they should still be treated with respect.

  ~Other dangerous creatures? The blue-ringed octopus, stingrays, and, of course, the great white shark.

  Lurch and I have the same idea of a good time. We spent a couple of hours in the water, pulling up as many crustaceans and mollusks as we could. We got a giant coral trout for the grill and a beautiful Spanish mackerel, but the real star of our lunch was a rainbow crayfish—or a proper rainbow crayfish, as Lurch likes to say.

  Often referred to as painted lobsters, these creatures are actually members of the crayfish family. When I hear the name “crayfish,” I think of some mudbug down in Louisiana, boiled with a mess of corn, potatoes, sausage, garlic, and onions. This is one of my favorite food treats, and I was expecting to experience the Down Under versions with the hundreds of crayfish we were to collect that day. Lurch kept looking under these giant rock overhangs in about eighteen to twenty feet of water, where most of the hefty ones live. He pulled out the first couple, showed them to me underwater, and signaled that they were too small to keep. I was stunned. These crayfish were the length of my arm, with a tail as big as my forearm. These were no mudbugs; they looked like giant tropical lobsters, complete with brilliant blue, red, and orange flanging all along their exoskeletal armor.

  Lurch finally found one big rainbow crayfish, weighing in at about two and a half pounds. This massive beast was lunch. I’m a New England lobster guy and I just assumed this lobster was going to be roasted whole. Lurch had another idea. He brought a small pan to put on top of the grill. Next, he dabbed a tablespoon of butter in it, twisted off the lobster tail, cut the tip of the tail off the rear fin flaps, pushed this giant two-pound raw lobster steak out of the tube of skeleton that it lives in, chopped it into one-inch chunks, and panfried the meat in browned butter, finishing it off with a generous squirt of lemon.

  We sat there on the beach while the Spanish mackerel, the kingfish, and the coral trout cooked. I tolerate warm-water lobster. The North Atlantic Homarus americanus is my kind of crustacean. However, the second-best lobster I’ve ever had is that rainbow crayfish from the Great Barrier Reef.

  Rainbow crays are one of those delicious foods that you can find only down in Australia and some of the island countries just north of it. They have them in Indonesia and in Okinawa, Japan, but physically plucking them from the Great Barrier Reef with a man who has spent his life diving there is an experience I wish for everyone.

  A complex ecosystem, the Great Barrier Reef is home to the world’s largest population of corals, coral sponges, mollusks, rays, and dolphins. There are over fifteen hundred species of tropical fish, more than two hundred types of birds, and about twenty types of reptiles, including sea turtles.

  While people Down Under speak English, nonnatives might want to check out this crash course in Aussie slang.

  Barbie: A barbecue. Very popular in Australia. Example: “Throw another shrimp on the barbie, Lurch!”

  Blue: Fight. Example: “He was having a blue with his brother.”

  Bottler: An expression for someone who performs well. Example: “When it comes to eating weird food, he’s a little bottler.”

  Sanger: Sandwich. Also sango. Example: “I’d like some Vegemite on my sango.”

  Chips: French fries. Example: “Would you like some chips with your sango?”

  Earbashing: Nagging, nonstop chatter. Example: “My mom kept earbashing me to clean my room.”

  Grundies: Underpants. Example: “Hope you brought a clean pair of grundies.”

  Lolly: Candy. Lolly water is soda. A trough lolly is a perfumed urinal cake.

  Oldies: Parents. Example: “I’d love to go, but have to ask my oldies first.”

  Pozzy: A position or spot. Example: “Let’s find a good pozzy at the movie theater.”

  Spit chips: To be very angry. Example: “If you call me a moron one more time, I’m going to spit chips.”

  Stirrer: Not a wooden spoon but a troublemaker. To stir is to provoke someone. Example: “He is a stirrer.”

  “Who opened their lunch?”: “Okay, who farted?”

  CHILE

  Speaking of seafood destinations, my favorite might surprise you. It isn’t Australia, though I had a great time there. Japan certainly comes to mind, as do lots of places in Southeast Asia, or even the East Coast of the United States. But when it comes to seafood, Chile is a force to be reckoned with.

  Chile is probably my favorite destination to recommend to any traveler, whether a well-seasoned one or someone heading abroad for the first time. Geographically diverse, financially sound, socially conscious, and certainly a very developed nation, Chile offers something for everyone. Gorgeous, relaxing beaches? After Brazil, Chile features the continent’s longest coastline. Bustling cities? Santiago, a modern, pulsing Latin city, is a great global hot spot for everything from late-night dining and clubbing to historical tourism. If hiking and breathing the fresh mountain air are more your style, head to the Andes. The best part? All of this can be done on a shoestring.

  And then there is the seafood.

  Chilean cuisine is a melting pot of techniques and flavors, influenced by Spain, Germany, Italy, Croatia, France, and the Middle East. Seafood is popular in Chilean dishes, since the country’s western border is all coastline.

  MERCADO CENTRAL

  The cold Humboldt Current runs from the Antarctic Ocean along the Chilean coastline, creating a perfect environment for an abundant fishing industry. The quality and variety of the fish boggle the mind. One trip to Mercado Central’s seafood hall in Santiago will confirm that Chileans are on top of their seafood game—gooseneck barnacles, abalone, pink-lipped angel clams, and loads of fresh fish. Exploring the Mercado Central is a singular experience. This is not one giant market, but several small specialty markets located within the hustle and bustle of the capital city. Whether you’re looking for fresh produce, fine cuts of beef, or the country’s best horse meat (yes, horse meat), you’ll be sure to find it here.

  The Mercado Central in Santi
ago was built between 1864 and 1872 as a place for artists to show their work. It quickly turned into a market center, though, and if you go there today, you’ll find a variety of fresh food, especially sea products.

  The market’s seafood hall is a hub through which the greater part of Chile’s seafood passes. Giant squid, conger eel, oysters the size of my hand, piles of mussels—you name it, if it swims, you’ll find it at Mercado Central. People always ask me about the strangest food I’ve ever encountered. I think piure takes the cake. Piure is a giant sea squirt about the size of a small piece of luggage, and until this market trip, I’d never even heard of such a thing. If you were to encounter one in the ocean, you’d certainly cruise by it a million times, convinced it’s a rock, not food. The best way to eat piure is raw, and the fishmonger slinging the stuff let me try it right there at the market. He took a huge serrated knife—really a sword, it was that huge—and sliced the animal into two giant halves.