CLOSING SOON! Win VIP tickets to Taste of Edinburgh

[Nicola Sinclair]

Yes we know, we are too good to you - digital loveliness and tasty prizes all on one site!
Tacky plug aside, we're delighted to announce that we have four pairs of Taste festival tickets to give away to 38minutes members. Taste of Edinburgh 2010 takes place in Inverleith Park from Friday 28 to Sunday 30 May. The popular event brings together some of the UK's top chefs and the best restaurants in Edinburgh for food, drinks and fun in the capital's sunshine (or drizzle).

Tickets cover entry for two people to the event on Friday, Saturday or Sunday (your pick) plus VIP passes including a glass of bubbly.

Full details of the event can be found here.

How to enter:

Channel 4 celebrity chefs Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Heston Blumenthal are famed for their bizarre culinary experiments - between them they have served up squirrel, placenta, snail porridge, blackbirds baked in a pie and ejaculating cake.

What's the strangest thing you've ever eaten? Tell us about it below in no more than 100 words.

To enter, post your answers as a comment to this blog before midnight on Tuesday 25 May. We'll choose our four favourites and contact the winners on Wednesday. Simples!

Or, if you'd rather bag a million quid, tune in to Channel 4's new show Million Dollar Drop tonight. Almost as good as a burger.

[Nicola Sinclair]

What an adventurous bunch you all are - there's some truly disgusting stuff here! We've looked at them all, weighed up the weirdness, and come up with our top 4. The winners are...

Meagan Dechen - Raw horse penis. Nuff said.
Kate Ho - The warm beating heart of a snake. Good god.
Maguiretim - Jellfish. And extra credit for not eating tiger penis (learn from that Meagan)
Marie-Claire Farmer - Poisonous green ants & chocolate covered crickets. Because everything is good with chocolate.

Congratulations to our worthy winners. You will each receive a personal email so we can arrange to get your tickets to you. And thanks to everyone who entered.

[Joe Tree]

When our family lived a self-sufficient vegetarian life in a Welsh valley, nettle soufflé was a firm family favourite (rich in iron and plenty of raw materials available from our field). It was prepared on one of the rare occasions I had a school friend round for dinner. My dad thought it would be funny to tell the enquiring lad it was a special dish made from snails and slugs. His parents never let him come for dinner again (not that they would have if father hadn't lied about the ingredients).

[aimara reques]

While filming in the Venezuelan Amazon, we saw a group of excited children gathered around a colony of ants. They were catching the big queens (considered a delicacy). The children noticed us- the cameraman and me- and put one of the ants on my hand. They had taken the legs off. It was just a big ant’s arse. After a mental struggle, I put it in my mouth and bit; what followed was an incredible explosion of sweet nectar similar to a Turkish Delight. We spent lots of time after that looking for these sweeties on the ground.

[Meagan Dechen]

As a long time vegetarian I shouldn't be able to enter this. But I am also a cultural relativist so I tend to be a ‘flexible vegetarian’ while traveling. Since Mongolia doesn't do stationary agriculture, the only vegetables or fruit outside of the capital are pickled salads canned in Russia and the occasional batch of spring onions foraged in the marshes. So, the worst dish I ever had was raw horse penis (no accoutrements). I washed it down with fermented horse milk, which is far worse than the penis because it tastes like Tabasco sauce and pickle juice - shaken, not stirred of course. Everything else I’ve ever had was ‘delightful’ in comparison.

[Carole Dunlop]

Mongolian Barbq!

No... not the Glasweigan Merchant City 'favourite' that serves up zebra fritters, ostrich and shark. Nothing so mundane. The real mccoy. Whilst in Ulan Bator to witness a solar eclipse (which we missed cos a huge cloud blew in and covered it - #epic fail) amongst several unidentified dishes, I vaguely recollect and try to wipe it from my memory each time I do - (ee gads I can smell it now) - braised ox tendons in egg white. Mmmmmmm...

Was offered duck feet marinated in blood in China but declined the kind offer so that doesn't count. Oh and in San Francisco in March with the Cross Creatives I begged them to let me order the fat fried frog (can't recall the sauce detail) on the menu in Chinatown but was slapped down quite sharply - wooses. Having done the tour that morning mind you and seen them in buckets peering up at me it's probably about the closest I've come to vegetarianism.

[Nicola Sinclair]

Entries received so far:

Geoff Kennedy
An Armenian banquet at the Aghtamar Lake Van Monastery in Exile next to Hollyrood Palace after booking via a man in a phone box! Course after course, direct oven to table, served by owner/chef/waiter in Cossack hat who refused to say what each dish was. Cous cous and salad, piles of cured meats, to oven baked trout, unidentified roast meat, fresh dough/bread between each course, sweet apricot rice, frozen berries, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten most the courses! All served in a darkened room which looked untouched (literally) since the Armenian war. A meal to remember!

maguiretim
The strangest thing I've ever eaten was probably a Gregg's steak bake. I have no idea what they put in those things. Other than that, jellyfish - in the night market in Kuala Lumpur. Apparently the Chinese think it's good for high blood pressure, and arthritis. But then they also like to eat tiger's penises...

Ewan McIntosh
I'm going to assume I'm allowed to enter ;-) For me, it was sea barnacles in Galicia. I went down to the shoreline with the guys (far more athletic than me) who risk their lives running up and down the rocky coastline to scrape them off. You boil them in a stock and then take each one, twist the white barnacle top from the leathery sheath attached to it and, under that, you suck off the sea-tasting flesh underneath.

Only ever to be eaten amongst friends, family or lovers - each time you twist sheath from barnacle, its salty juices spray the person sitting next you. Beats placenta any day.

Kate Ho
When I was 6, my parents took me to a snake store in Mainland China (before we immigrated to the UK). A gentleman pulled out a snake from a drawer (there were several full drawers), he stretched it out on a table in front of me, slit it open, scooped out its beating heart, open my mouth and made me swallow it.

Apparently it's supposed to give me courage ... unfortunately it just traumatised me instead ...