SCRUMPTIOUS, I’M AFRAID : Unmasking Those Foods You Dread Reveals Some Unearthly Delights

The food world is a fearsome place of hobgoblins and monsters. If you don’t believe me, ask any kid.

They didn’t have gross- out foods like candy rats and gummy worms when I was growing up, but there were still plenty of foods that scared me to death at a young age: liver, beets and, scariest of all, a wriggling fish, sitting on our kitchen counter, waiting to be chopped and cleaned.

In this generation, common food fears revolve around nutrition, public health and excessive fat in the diet. If you’re finicky, scary foods pop up all the time, unexpectedly. Ethnic markets have such items as pig’s head, blood sausage and hairy vegetables. Italian restaurants serve black pastas, colored by squid ink (the ink is tasteless). And consider trendy food expressions: “outrageous,” “to die for,” “killer.”

The following short list contains foods that look, sound or taste scary, accompanied by a small reality check. For the record, bad cooking is what scares me, not unusual names or exotic ingredients.

Trick or treat, a little early.

McDonald’s Milkshake

Many of my health-food-oriented friends are scared to death of fast food. So I’ll bet most of them would be surprised to find that, with regards to the commercially popular McDonald’s milkshake, they have little to fear.

McDonald’s San Diego office provided me with a list of ingredients that go into milkshakes: nonfat milk, milk, sugar, corn syrup, flavored syrup, guar gum, carageenan and locust bean gum. The last three are thickening agents from plants and contain no artificial substances.

The syrups do contain chemicals such as sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate or propyline glycol to retard spoilage, but no more than you would find in any commercial cookie or cracker. Of the three main flavors--chocolate, vanilla and strawberry--only the strawberry has artificial colors: red 40, yellow 6 and blue 1.

And there’s more good news for fans of this food giant. Consumer Reports tested milkshakes from several large chains, and McDonald’s--surprise--turned out to be the lowest in fat calories. The shakes, for the record, contain between 310 and 350 calories (and 5 to 6 grams of fat) per 16-ounce serving. If the chalky flavors don’t scare you off, the shakes can be a boon to dieting. If you want a richer shake, there’s always Ben and Jerry’s.

McDonald’s, locations throughout Orange County. 16-ounce milkshake, $1.19 (prices may vary slightly with franchise).

Sea Cucumber

In a book called “The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig,” anthropologist Marvin Harris writes about the curious reasons certain foods are reviled and others revered around the world. Surely the practical Cantonese would laugh at such a scholarly tome. They boast about eating “everything that flies except an airplane, everything that has wings except a table.”

The new Sam Woo Restaurant in Irvine stops well short of that notion, but you will find sea cucumber on the menu. This Chinese delicacy, a.k.a. trapang, is a primitive, worm-like creature with a gelatinous texture. Most Chinese restaurants serve it in a brown sauce, accompanied by black mushroom or bok choy.

This is about as low as things go on the food chain, but not on the taste chain. Sea cucumber has a delicate, subtle flavor that absorbs oil and the flavors of vegetables admirably. Sam Woo’s version is delightful, as long as you aren’t put off by the sight of a shallow water, coastal worm sliced into rounds. And if you look at it from the Cantonese perspective, it’s far less scary than a slice of fermented beast secretion--what we know as cheese.

Sam Woo Restaurant, 15333 Culver Drive, Irvine. (714) 262-0888. Open daily, 11:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sea cucumber with tender greens, $10.

Steak

It’s popular to include red meat in any updated list of scary foods. Excessive amounts of red meat in the diet have been linked to a variety of ailments, and health food stores are stocked with books that explain the reasons.

None of this seems to deter anyone from stopping in at Pinnacle Peak in Garden Grove. This homey, bargain-priced steakhouse specializes in a monstrous, 32-ounce Porterhouse called the Trail Boss. If the sheer thought of it doesn’t make your arteries shudder, you’re in for a treat.

This isn’t fatty beef like prime cut in a high-priced steakhouse, but rather Select, a grade of beef available to the average consumer. What makes it special is a combination of two things: The restaurant uses mesquite wood to barbecue, and the fire gets as hot as 1,000 degrees, which sears in the meat’s delicious flavors.

A steak loses approximately 25% of its weight during the cooking process, so count on about 24 ounces of great eating should you order this steak. If you are counting calories, this comes out to about 1,200 without the trimmings, a scary thought for weight-watchers.

Pinnacle Peak, 9100 Trask Ave., Garden Grove. (714) 892-7311. Dinner only, 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, till 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Trail Boss, $12.95.

Kiss of Death and Chocolate Suicide

Ever since a Williamsburg, Va., chef named Marcel Desaulniers created his Death by Chocolate in 1982, dessert-makers have been bombarding us with cutesy names for super-saturated chocolate desserts. You can’t really die from chocolate, of course--unless, as in the Tommy Smothers song, you fall into a vat of the stuff. (Smothers, in the song, yells “fire” and is rescued; since nobody “would save me if I yelled CHOCOLATE!”)

C’est Si Bon and Grandma’s Sugarplums, two local bakeries, have taken this theme and personalized it. At C’est Si Bon, a French bakery with locations in Newport Beach and Corona del Mar, it takes the form of a fudgy, torte-like concoction called Kiss of Death chocolate cake. Grandma’s Sugarplums, with locations in Cypress and Long Beach, primarily a sweet shop, brings us the self-flagellating Chocolate Suicide.

Kiss of Death is not a Mafia don’s farewell, but rather a flour-less chocolate cake with a raspberry fruit topping. Eat it at room temperature, when it is soft and smooth. Chocolate Suicide is a three-layer chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream and bittersweet chocolate chips between each layer. Furthermore, the entire cake is half drowned in Hershey’s syrup.

Death be not proud.

C’est Si Bon, 149 Riverside Ave., Newport Beach, (714) 645-0447, and 3444 E. Coast Highway, Corona del Mar, (714) 675-0994. Both stores open 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday. Kiss of Death chocolate cake, $16 and $32.

Grandma’s Sugarplums, 9919 Walker St., Cypress, (714) 220-5979. Open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. 10-inch Chocolate Suicide, $39.95. Also 4908 E. 2nd St., Long Beach. (310) 439-3363. Open 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, until midnight Friday and Saturday. Slice, $3.25.

Prik Kin Nu

If you’re scared by really hot chilies, join the crowd. This is one fear that strikes me as rational, though I enjoy the sensation of a fiery mouth, a sweaty brow and a throbbing tongue.

Many O.C. restaurants cook up three-alarm specialties, but my candidate for the hottest local dish is No. 31, kai kra pao, from the menu at Thai Nakorn in Buena Park. Some say Thais eat the world’s hottest food on a daily basis. If that’s true, it is because of kai kra pao’s active ingredient, prik kin nu --what in English is called bird’s chili.

Prik kin nu is Thai for rat-dropping chili, purely because of a long, narrow shape, and that alone makes it fearsome. But this chili is approximately 10 times hotter than a jalapeno in Scoville units, a measurement of a chili’s ability to dilute in water, and has a burn that George Hamilton would envy. It’s not for amateurs. Have your kai kra pao stir-fried chilies with a choice of beef, pork or chicken and call the fire department. Cut it with some of this restaurant’s deliciously fragrant jasmine rice. Water only makes it worse.

Thai Nakorn, 8674 Stanton Ave., Buena Park. (714) 952-4954. Open 10:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, till 10:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Kai kra pao, $5.95.

Birria

Authentic Mexican food can be a shock to the chips-and-salsa set. Considering that some Mexicans eat the worm in a bottle of mescal--along with brain tacos and that age-old hangover remedy, the tripe soup called menudo --it’s not exactly a church supper in Wichita.

My favorite authentic Mexican dish is birria de chivo, essentially kid stew. (We’re referring to the kid that grows up to be a goat, in case you scared yourself.) Kid is a tender, gamy meat that has a wonderfully rich taste. A birria is basically a spicy stew consisting mainly of meat and broth. Mexicans love to eat such stews after sprinkling in handfuls of cilantro and chopped onion.

A tiny, Fountain Valley hole-in-the-mall, Birria Tepechi makes a terrific kid stew, all crunchy bits of meat and one of the ruddiest, most flavorful stocks I’ve tasted anywhere outside Mexico. You’ll find menudo, rice, beans and handmade tortillas here, as well as a brace of other Mexican dishes. The birria recipe and chef are both from a village called Tepechitlan, near Zacatecas.

Birria Tepechi, 16040 Harbor Blvd., Fountain Valley. (714) 839-6034. Open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday through Monday. Birria de chivo, $4.10.

Beans in a Glass

Anyone who has ever been in a Vietnamese restaurant has probably noticed squiggly, multicolored shapes mingling with ice in a tall glass. These are Vietnamese desserts, the stuff a friend has dubbed “beans in a glass.”

That’s not far wrong. Many Vietnamese desserts are based on beans--red beans, lima beans, small white beans--usually mixed with sugar, tropical fruits and oddly shaped bits of flavored and colored cornstarch. They do look bizarre, but most of them taste surprisingly banal. That monster in the closet usually turns out to be dad’s winter coat, the case here.

Hue Rendez-Vous is my favorite Vietnamese restaurant in Little Saigon, in part due to the effervescent Tran family, your hosts, and in part due to the light, savory cooking of Hue, in central Vietnam. Che dau ngu is basically a dessert for purists: beans, sugar, ice, ginger on request--perfect for a hot summer day. If the day is blustery, try che bot loc dua, clear cornstarch pearls eaten with coconut or peanut, floating in a hot broth, about as far as you can get from a hot fudge sundae.

Hue Rendez-Vous, 15562 Brookhurst St., Westminster. (714) 775-7192. Open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Desserts, $1.50.

Escargots

The most celebrated of loathsome creatures are snails, a.k.a. escargots. No matter how much you dress one up, it’s still a snail.

Many local French restaurants prepare escargot Burgundy style, swimming in parsley and garlic butter, stuffed into some kind of plastic shell. I can live with the plastic, but I do find the whole thing a little tired.

Chef Jean-Pierre Lemanissier of Antoine’s in Le Meridien has a better idea. Just saying the dish-- feuillete d’escargots au jus de persil --is a mouthful. Eating it is sheer pleasure.

Imagine a plateful of moss green sauce, a square of puff pastry loaded with tiny snails out of the shell and even tinier, pearl-sized balls of turnip, carrot and zucchini--the whole mixture redolent of herbs. This is one of the most creative and delicious interpretations of a classic I know of, even if it does cost a pretty penny.

Antoine’s is French dining at its most elegant, all silver domes, white tuxedos and strolling musicians. If you are going to scare yourself half to death, you might as well go out in style.

Antoine’s in Le Meridien, 4500 MacArthur Blvd., Newport Beach. (714) 476-2001. Dinner 6 to 10:30 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. Feuillete d’escargots au jus de persil, $13.