There are many things that our students tell me are specialty foods in Hunan. Most of the time, I don't really believe them, things like dumplings, steamed bread, peppers (maybe I believe that one based on the pepper to all other food ratio), or pork are kinda staples everywhere but, whenever they say cho dofu is a special Hunan dish I wholeheartedly agree.
Cho dofu means stinky tofu in english, and you can smell these street vendors a block away. The tofu is 'marinated' in 'spices' and then fried in this big pot of oil. My teammate says it smells like someone used the restroom in a pair of dirty socks, and she's right. According to my students it originated in Changsha, which is the largest city in Hunan and it seems that half of them love it and half of them hate it. What's odd is everyone says it tastes just like it smells and everyone agrees it smells pretty foul. So when a few of us traveled to Changsha to hit up the western grocery store and go to a real pizza place, I decided to try some.
Yayyyyy.
Another teammate helped me order, apparently the fresh green onions and spicy sauce complete the flavor palate.
Bottoms up! Please take note that these are served with two long toothpicks. And it tasted...just like it smelled. Just kidding, that's too easy. It tasted kinda like chewing on spicy, oily peppers and onions while walking into a barn that desperately needs to be cleaned, but keeping your mouth open while you chew and taking deep breaths to really get the smell of manure up your nose. I wish I could say it was terrible but, I might consider eating it again. Possibly because I permenately damaged my tastebuds and singed my nosehairs and can no longer tell what tastes good. I did try to eat a whole tin of Altoids before breathing on anyone, just to be nice.
Chou DoFu is the WORST. Its like someone put all the stinkiest socks in the world in scent form and wafted it in a 500 yard radius around the tofu stand. yuck. way to be a baller and give it a try tho! you'd have to hold me down & force feed me!
ReplyDeleteI cannot believe you ate this!!! Hunan may claim it as their specialty food, but they've shared its nastiness over this way. We have to walk by a stand going to the market, and sometimes it becomes a "how long can you hold your breath" game. This is so much worse than our scorpion on a stick. You win, friend. You win. And lose all at the same time!
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