10 Odd Foods to Try This Christmas Eve!

Are you sick and tired of having the same traditional Christmas dishes such as roasted turkey, fried chicken, barbecue, spaghetti, fruit salad and red wine among others served before your very eyes over and over again? Then, why not for a change, dressed your Christmas table with these 10 odd delicacies you probably heard for the first time.

Birds’nest soup

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A popular delicacy in Chinese cuisine, Bird’s nest soup can either be sweet or savory soup of cooked saliva nests. The nests are constructed by male Oriental swiftlets made not of twigs, straws or leaves but rather from the bird’s saliva. When dissolved in water, swiftlets nests produce a gummy texture used for soup. Bird’s nest soup is rich in iron, calcium, potassium and magnesium. Hence in traditional Chinese medicine,
The soup is believed to have health benefits such as relieving asthma, alleviating indigestion, increasing the immune system and has aphrodisiac properties. 

Kopi luwak coffee

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Kopi luwak is a type of coffee made from coffee berries that have been eaten and digested by an Asian palm civet. These civets found in Indonesia, Ceylon, Philippines, Bangladesh and other southeast Asian countries consume the ripe red coffee berries but the beans goes through its digestive system undigested. While in the palm civet’s stomach, a chemical process takes place where the bitter taste of the beans are removed, leaving a sweeter and expensive bean. The resulting coffee has a rich, heavy flavor that taste like caramel or chocolate. Kopi Luwak that sells for between $100 and $600 USD per pound is the most expensive coffee in the world.

Chicha

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Chicha a term used for various types of fermented beverages, are drunk in some Latin American countries.  across South America. Traditionally, chichi is made from a specific kind of yellow maize (jora) which  is prepared by germinating maize, removing the malt sugar, then cooked, and fermenting it in large vessels.  In some regions, the maize is ground rather than germinating them,  the maize chew in the chicha maker’s mouth, spat back out, formed into small balls then fermented to make the drink.