What the fuck is this?

My mom picked some of these up at FuBonn last month during her visit. She claimed she ate them as a child in her village in Southern Vietnam. Rest assured, I promise you my mother is a proper Buddhist, and — to the best of my knowledge — does not own any Slayer, Morbid Angel, or Napalm Death albums.

As you can see, they are quite nefarious in appearance, as if somebody commissioned H.R. Giger to reimagine the chestnut. I suppose this is the kind of snack Damien the Omen eats while watching Spongebob Satanpants and channeling Lucifer’s minions to serve the dark lord’s whimsy. When my sister-in-law saw a picture of these in my iPhoto library, she exclaimed that she couldn’t believe I would harbor such evil with a two-year old daughter living under my roof.

My mom stuck them in a saucepan and boiled these “Dante’s nuggets” for about 5 minutes. Once they were cooled, I tried to improve upon her method of simply cutting them in half with my new Global knife (and dulling the blade), and digging out the “meat” with a fork. I instead used a crab claw cracker, but it basically just spewed devil shards all over my kitchen counter.

The flavor of the “flesh” is similar to a chestnut. Pure, white, evil, devilishly spawned, demonic, underworldish chestnuts. I wouldn’t go through the trouble of extracting the meat from a few dozen of these to, say, augment a turkey dressing. But if I ever found myself in Satan’s foyer, waiting for my entrance exam, I’d suck on a few out of respect.