"If It's Soft You Can Eat It."

If that looks like a bowl of cooked chicken heads...Well that's because it is a bowl of chicken heads, and I ate one of them. When I asked my Chinese dinner hosts how I should begin the process of eating this rather head-spinning Hors d'oeuvre, I was given some very practical advice that captures a very fundamental tenant of Chinese cuisine, "If it's soft you can eat it. If it's not, spit it out."

 So with these instructions I used my chopsticks and a spoon and popped one these in my mouth and went to work. With a distinctive "clink" the beak and various bones fell from my mouth into my bowl. It was not my most distinguished moment. I wasn't even that hungry and here I was acting like I hadn't seen a chicken in so long that even the head looked appetizing.

 Still, it wasn't even all that bad. It tasted like chicken, just with a texture I wasn't all that familiar with. I mean what really makes the head of the chicken any less edible than the rest of it? We suck the heads of crawfish after all. It's more of a mental block than anything I suppose, but in a country as populated as China there isn't much space for mental blocks at the dinner table.