Weird Foods Kassel Has Eaten: Tokush edition

Last night I was called up to dinner.  Since it was raining and path from my room to the stairs leading up to the kitchen is rather mud and chicken and cuy poop-filled I pulled on my black galoshes and made my way up the stairs.  I was immediately confronted by the worst smell I’ve ever, and I mean EVER, encountered in my entire life.  I must have accidentally and unwittingly stepped in a dead animal’s rotting intestines on the way up to dinner.  I was clearly dragging whatever I had stepped in all around the floor, and yet no one seemed to notice that I had brought the stench of putrid, rotting for a month death to dinner.  Wanna know why that was?  Because that smell was dinner.  It was tokush.

Tokush is essentially a form of pudding, called masamora, that consists of corn that has been left to ferment in water for a month.  Tokush=fermented corn pudding.

Thankfully, all Peruvians know that no one except for themselves likes tokush.  I think they take a certain pride in that.  Even St. Nicole (the volunteer who worked in my site before me and who, as far as I’ve heard, could and can do no wrong) didn’t like tokush.  So there was a back-up meal prepared for me. Whew!

Final opinion:  I will say that it tastes better than it smells, but as I’ve said, it smells like death died so that’s not saying much. 

But don’t take my word for it.  I’ve decided that I am going to do my damnedest to insure that anyone who visits gets the chance to try it.  You will try it.  You will hate it.  And you will be a better person for it.

Besos!