Dig In Trivia Quiz

Answer: Truffle

Technically a fungus, the truffle needs to be foraged for, often around oak trees under certain conditions. Found in a number of different regions in the world, it's often regarded by professional chefs as a luxury ingredient, both due to the difficulty in securing it and the unique flavouring it provides.

It would be difficult to locate these rare ingredients under normal circumstances, especially since they're under the soil, but people have utilized dogs and pigs for this purpose in the past, using them to scope out a location for the treasures that lay waiting.

Answer: Australia

Classic fare for Aboriginal Australians, witchetty grubs are live moth larvae commonly found inside the bark of several varieties of wattle trees. An important source of protein for the deep Outback, these can be eaten raw or cooked, especially since the outside will crisp up when fried.

They aren't for the picky eater, however, since the idea of eating large, squirming insects isn't a typical meal to most.

Answer: Earthenware pots

Though most don't go through the full process of burying kimchi underground, the process for making it is similar; you still need to place it into a sealed, temperature-controlled environment where it can ferment, but avoid freezing. Kimchi, an important dish in Korean culture, involves the preparation and fermentation of napa cabbage seasoned with chili powder and other ingredients which give it a bit of a spicy kick. Gimjang, the variant made and stored over the winter, is the one that used the earthenware pots the most, historically, and diners would dig it up to serve.

Answer: Black

Typically seen from street vendors, hot sand frying is a method through which cooks can fry up different types of nuts-- often chestnuts or peanuts-- and to do this they bury the food into the sand in the wok and let it cook, stirring it around to collect the contents as they fry.

Interestingly, as the sand cooks, the heat will burn away carbon from the food being cooked, leeching the colouring from the items and making the sand go darker. Across Asia, especially westbound through India and Pakistan, street vendors will also cook parboiled rice by these means, just replacing the sand with salt.

Answer: Peanut

Interestingly, while the peanut flowers above the ground, it fruits underneath it. Actually, a legume and not a nut, it's the only instance where one could argue that a 'nut', as it were, could grow underground. Generally grown in the tropics, it takes up to five months for peanuts to be ready for harvesting, at which point they're dug up, dried significantly (to avoid toxic molds from growing), and shipped out.

Answer: Cheese

Perhaps one of the oldest pieces of food found in human history, this chunk of cheese was more than three thousand years old when it was discovered (not bad for a perishable!). Believed to have been made from the milk of goats and sheep, the cheese was finally identified after the contents of broken jars in the tomb were sent for analysis. And no, before you ask, it's not for consumption.

Not only would it taste awful (we're thinking very high in acids), but it was covered in bacterium-- the bad kind, not the good cheese kind.

Answer: Incan

A method of cooking found in the Andean region of South America, the huatia is a dome-shaped oven made of balanced rocks that lean into one another to shelter a fire. Once the food is placed inside, the dome is left to collapse and the heat captured within cooks the dish which, when the time comes, is dug out. Pachamanca is a specific dish cooked via these means and is akin to a stew in which meat and vegetables are marinated and subsequently baked.

Answer: Agave leaves

A Caribbean preparation, cooking barbacoa style is essentially just barbecuing through other means. Though it can be done above-ground on a spit or grill, the classic method of preparing food in this way involves wrapping meat in agave leaves and cooking it in a pit. Barbacoa typically works best with tougher meat as it allows the connective tissue within to break down easier-- something like Texas brisket or beef cheeks take great advantage of this style since it will, inevitably, tenderize a tougher cut.

Answer: At a luau

In Hawaii this type of oven is called an imu, but in Samoa it's called an umu. Either way, this form of cooking involves digging out an underground oven and cooking the food deeper in the ground on, in the case of Hawaii, harder wood, or in the case of Samoa, volcanic rocks.

In both cases, hot, dry stones are layered on top and, sometimes, inside the pig to cook it. The subsequent roast should be tender enough to shred for the luau.

Answer: Clam Bake

Originating in New England but spreading across the U.S. with the advent of the railway system, the clambake is a cooking and gathering tradition that involves seafood being cooked in an underground oven over a bed of seaweed. Hot stones are placed in the center of the pit and, once ashes are cleared out, wet, soaked seaweed is placed overtop.

The contents of the bake, which can include seafood, vegetables, and other fixings, steam for hours before serving.