Continuing with my gastronomy of the food in the Philippines, below is an example of a more adventurous Filipino delicacy (and even considered taboo by some westerners). Balut is a partially gestated duck embryo that is cooked in the egg and eaten directly from the shell. Like many "scary" foods in different cultures, some people consider eating balut as an aphrodisiac. Balut was even something the contestants had to eat on on an episode of Fear Factor.
This is the time I tried eating a whole balut. I've tried it before in the past in the both in the US and the Philippines, however I never ate the chick before. I just ate the yolk in the past and left the chick. However, this trip I actually tried eating the whole thing. It wasn't bad. As a whole, it tasted much like normal boiled eggs. With the chick and the fluid in the shell, it also tasted very much like a mixture of chicken and duck. Since it is eaten whole, you get the feathers and everything. The feathers felt kind of weird. It was like getting small fish bones stuck in your throat.
It wasn't as scary as most make it out to be, however my girlfriend didn't eat the chick. She just ate the yolk. I guess I'm more Filipino than her and she was born and raised in the Philippines while I was born and raised in the US.
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