8 Straight Up Revolting Things In Nature
1. Food: Casu Marzu
No matter how bad your cooking skills are, you can rest easy knowing that you've probably never served up anything quite as stomach churning as this. Unless you're super into your traditional Sardinian cuisine that is.
Casu marzu, or "rotten cheese", is a traditional Sardinian sheep's cheese, with a notable twist. Rather than using moulds to ferment the cheese, casu marzu contains live maggots. These little critters work their way through the cheese, essentially liquefying it by eating and excreting it. Yep. It's maggot poop.
It is made by removing the rind of a perfectly good sheep's cheese and leaving it outside in the hope that a passing cheese fly will lay its eggs in it. A typical cheese will contain thousands of maggots.
The flavour has been described as "so ammoniated that it burns the tongue" and it has a distinctive aftertaste that can last for hours. The maggots can leap up to 15 cm when disturbed, so it is customary to hold one's hand above it whilst eating in order to prevent the maggots from flying off.
If you would rather eat the cheese without maggots (and why would you?) then the technique is to seal it in a paper bag. The maggots become oxygen starved and begin to leap and writhe, creating a "pitter patter" sound against the bag. When the noise subsides, the maggots are dead and you may eat the cheese. It's like popcorn, but from the deepest circle of hell.
Oh yeah, and it is considered an aphrodisiac. So sexy.
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