After you've flipped to the back flap and confirmed in the Note about the Author that yes, this is the son of the notorious second Mrs. Prince Charles; flipped back to the book cover and checked out his picture with renewed interest; and then mentally reviewed all you'd heard or guessed about his mother's late predecessor, Princess Di (she was an angel/a devil/a drunk/a run-about/murdered), you can then settle down to reading the actual book.
It's a pity that Mr. Parker Bowles must be saddled with the detritus of his mother's liaisons because he is an amusing and informative writer. The Year of Eating Dangerously is a delightful, if sometimes stomach churning, book about the quest for authentic food around the globe - whether that is shish-kebabed cockroaches or ant egg salad.
Parker Bowles is a well-known food critic in his native Britain, so he knows a thing or two about food in all its forms. Yet even he was baffled by the extraordinary food aversions that normal, well-adjusted people can develop: one of his friends could not abide peas; another detested the very sight of bananas. “One man's pea is another man's tripe,” as Parker Bowles philosophizes.
He decided to explore this notion more fully by traipsing about the world in search of “dangerous” food. The book's subtitle actually states it more accurately: a “search of culinary extremes.” Beginning in England, then traveling through New Mexico, Nashville, China, Tokyo, Korea, Laos, and Spain, Parker Bowles tries (or attempts to try) everything from stewed dog to silk worm pupae to a 600,000 SCU chili pepper.
Reading about someone eating something repulsive is infinitely more rewarding than watching someone eat it. On camera, people eating squirming eels or stir-fried cobra or raw sheep tongue seem restricted to only one of three themes: (1). Grotesque facial expressions (2). Exclamations of loathing and disgust, or (3). Impromptu testimonials on the unexpected tastiness of the dog/eel/tongue.
Print, however, lifts the lid on a smorgasbord of tasty descriptions.
Like Parker Bowles' delightful description of eating a silkworm pupae in Korea: “A creamy goo spurts onto my tongue, producing one of the most repellent tastes I have ever experienced. A fetid rottenness…engulfs my mouth, spreading its filth to every corner. Every cell in my body is suffused with this festering horror and all I can think of is freshly dug graves.”
Or his experience eating raw tripe (cow stomach) in a small Laotian restaurant: “The texture is more rubbery than ever when uncooked, with a slight beefy taste. But my teeth make little headway on the slippery piece of tummy going round and round my mouth....”
Best of all is his reaction to eating dog in Korea: “I'm just imagining myself bragging about eating dog to friends back home…when it hits me - the smell…. You know when your dog has been out in the rain, possibly down a hole, and he turns up at the door, soaked and wretched? And you bring him into the house and start drying him with that dirty dog towel kept out the back. That is it, the smell of wet dog…wet, dirty, dead dog. No spice, however pungent, could mask this stink.”
The book's title is actually a bit misleading: while some of the food Parker Bowles snacks on in the course of his culinary year is truly dangerous, such as the fugu or puffer fish in Tokyo (a lethal dose of poison from this fish could fit on the head of a pin), most of the food is dangerous only to one's pride, psyche, or waistline.
When Parker Bowles attends the 16th annual Jack Daniel's World Championship Invitational BBQ in Lynchburg, Tennessee, the only real danger was that his stomach would burst after ingesting an astounding 15 lbs worth of brisket, ribs, and chicken. At a formal family dinner in Korea, his pride is in serious danger when he retches trying to eat the main dish offered to him - a hunk of white beef sinew.
Parker Bowles' writing is intelligent and witty; imagine a British Anthony Bourdain - posher, brainier, and better-looking. However, he does sometimes forget that he is a food writer and dabbles in a bit too much of environmental and political soapbox punditry. Not all the trips add up to a dangerous or even moderately dangerous experience: in England, despite the fact that he begins the book in search of elvers (eels), he never actually eats them - a bit of a let down to say the least. In several of the chapters he seems to spend more time discussing the people he met in the country than the food.
Despite this, The Year of Eating Dangerously is refreshing honest and the easiest way to get first-hand knowledge about the taste of fermented fish eggs.
