Tastes Like Chicken

DA LAT, Vietnam - The famous food writer James Beard said "Food is our common ground, a universal experience."
Well, maybe. But I never before considered silk worms a part of a balanced diet. It never crossed my mind to roast a few and pop them like peanuts. That's what a roasted silk worm tastes like, a peanut.

There's all manner of weird food out here in Asia, and I've sampled quite a bit of it - including some unidentifiable meat that makes me shudder to contemplate. Though I do admit in Cambodia I declined to taste barbecued chicken feet. I did sit there and watch them - and smell them - cook for a few minutes, and trust me, that's close enough.



I felt a little braver in the hills of southern Vietnam when an eager ambassador of all things Vietnamese shoved a roasted silk worm in my face, imploring me not to miss out. The little critters are a common afternoon snack for the female workers at a silk factory I was visiting. In the morning, they put some of the worms on one of the factory's hot pipes and let them roast. Then they pull the yellow, centipede-like bodies out of their cocoons and munch away.

Mmmmm. Like a handful of warm peanuts.