Eating the Shark -- for Curtis

The conference organizer, Benedikt, put together a dinner of typical Icelandic foods. Among other things we had a dark boiled bread, a very thick fish soup, a lentil soup, some dried fish that you spread butter on, like crackers, and hákarl which is shark. It is prepared from basking shark (which is poisonous when caught) by burying it in sand for 6-12 weeks depending on the time of year. Then it is dried and skinned and finally edible. It comes in two types, and it appears that we were eating the soft skyr type, which is the body, not the stomach.


Then Rob captured my reaction:



I think Kristen really nails it, though.

And I like what Anthony Zimmern of Bizarre Foods had to say about it (taken from the Wikipedia link above): "described the smell as reminding him of 'some of the most horrific things I've ever breathed in my life,' but said the taste was not nearly as bad as the smell. Nonetheless, he did note that hákarl was 'hardcore food' and 'not for beginners.'"

Comments

Curtis said…
I'm glad I glanced over at your blog archive. I totally missed this. I'm so proud of both of you. However, you can't tell from the video or the photos, but did you actually swallow? Were there any strange side effects afterward? I can imagine some nasty residual stinky shark burps.

Popular posts from this blog

Mohr im Hemd

The Trip Home: A Report Card

Gumdroppapalooza