Summer Herald: First, the talking pig ... then some foul fruit

"Eat me" said the pig ... so Susan Strongman did just that. Picture / Dean Purcell

Awful offal sets tough test for party-weakened stomach

When I arranged to eat miscellaneous offal at work on a Friday afternoon, it seemed like as good a time as any.

I hadn't thought about the fact that it was the day after the Herald's Christmas Party, at which I had consumed many beers.

So as the pungent smell of durian - probably the world's stinkiest fruit - began wafting through the newsroom, my stomach began to churn.

I'm not usually overly fussy about food, I told myself. How bad could it be?

I followed the stench to the kitchen and was greeted by a spread of South Korean offal soup (Sundaeguk), Chinese century egg, a Polynesian-style roasted whole pig's head, and the dreaded durian - a spiky fruit with a pus-coloured centre.

My colleague Lincoln Tan had taken on the role of provider of gross food with great pleasure, and as I sat between a blindly staring swine and a grey bowl of murk featuring floating bits of miscellaneous meat, I thought his grin mirrored the pig's to perfection.

I began with the soup, which contained fatty pieces of intestine, liver, lung, cartilage and "other".

It was quite nice, to be honest - how can you go wrong with salty, meaty and "other"?

But Mr Tan had decided I was enjoying it too much, and as I ate a hunk of blood sausage - made from pig's intestine, stuffed with chewy cellophane noodles - he came up with some creative and unsavoury similes that cannot be repeated. I swallowed without chewing, and moved on to the next course - Chinese century egg.

This traditional Asian street dish is made by preserving a whole egg in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, quicklime and rice hulls for several weeks or months.

I bit into the egg. Its interior was a dark putrid green colour, and it was surrounded by a thick layer of brown gelatinous something. It smelt like ammonia and its flavour and texture could only be described as salty-fart-tyre.

I happily moved on to Old Major - the whole, delicious-smelling, head of a probably-not-free-range porker whose time came too soon.

I looked at the pig. The pig looked back at me, and winked.

"Eat me," it snorted.

Had the century egg caused me to hallucinate, or was I getting Mr Tan and the pig confused again?

I didn't care, it smelt good, and my mouth tasted like fart-tyre. I stuck my snout into the trough, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Next up was dessert. The durian was emitting a stench that had drawn an audience of curious Herald employees.

I tried hard to stop thinking about how the thorny fruit, with its pale yellow gooey centre, looked and smelt like a sebaceous cyst.

The best technique for conquering this battle, I decided, was to close my eyes, block my nose, and imagine it was custard - stringy, meaty, stinky custard.

After a small section of the Southeast Asian fruit, I was beat.

I sauntered back to my desk ... and the smell came with me.