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A Recipe for Disaster
by anna at 05:57 PM on September 03, 2003
Mix a dollop of my crazed hooligan friends with copious quantities of peyote. Put us on a chartered fishing boat moored off Key West. Turn us loose without a captain. For good measure, blend in several leggy gals we'd just met and sought to...impress.
We set sail and immediately started landing large fish, which we chucked into the cargo hold. Halfway to Cuba I noticed a buoy bobbing in the sea. It piqued my curiosity. We tugged and tugged and lo and behold we had a moss-covered crab trap in our boat. 'Twas laden with both meaty stone crabs and these eerie looking bottom-dweller fish. We knew enough to stash the crabs underneath our legitimate haul but alas, not enough to hurl the telltale fish overboard.
When we arrived back at the pier hallucinating and two hours late, the boatman was a-waiting and he was livid. He demanded to inspect our catch. Snatching one of the bottom-dwellers in the manner of a dad examining syringes he's found in his daughter's drawer, he asked, "What kind of bait did you boys catch these on?" We stammered some lame reply but he knew full well what the deal was. He informed us that had any crabber spotted us messing with their livelihood, they'd have killed us all and left our corpses to fester in the blistering Caribbean sun.
We high-tailed it back to our campsite and got a major blaze going. We boiled the crabs to perfection in a big vat. Locals popped up and confirmed what the boatman had said.
Despite the appetite-suppressing effect of the peyote, those babies were the best meal I'd ever savored and I am a fine food freak. When you know you've cheated death for a few morsels of seafood, it's a sensation like no other.
Other chow isn't so scrumptious. In Korea, for instance, waiters wrestle live dogs to the table. They skin them alive and cook them with a blowtorch. Fido is then carved up as if Peking duck. (I should clarify that this is South Korea. Given that they earn about 6% of what their Southern counterparts net, North Koreans are lucky to turn up a grub now and again.)
This time-honored culinary tradition has Brigitte Bardot and her PETA pals in a tizzy. But as far as I know they've never raised a stink about Nepalese bistros' specialty, monkey brains. (Link note: it says you have to download some shit but you don't. Just click cancel and view away.) Waiters restrain the varmint in a hole in the table. Then they take a power saw to its skull. Diners scoop the contents directly from the skull to their plates. Dig in!
Although this is supposed to impart wisdom, I'd sooner eat from a toddler's soiled diaper. Munching on monkeys hits too close to home. It's like you're scarfing your ancestors.
Here in the US we eat beef like cattle are going the way of the mastodon. Sirloin, rump roast, filet, burgers, you name and we'll grill it. This doesn't sit so well with Hindus, to whom these beasts are literally sacred cows.
So we see that it's really just a matter of cultural differences. Koreans see no harm in wolfing down a tasty schnauzer or terrier. Americans would rather walk them and scoop up their poop. Nepalese people dig chimp meat while Americans prefer their monkeys in zoos or cosmetics labs. In some parts of Africa, other people are considered dinner. And to think Hindus put us down for our beef jones.
There's probably more strange culinary practices around the world, but that's all I could think of off the top of my head. Maybe I need to eat more fresh monkey brains.
comments (16)
funny you should write this piece. i just got back from colorado, where i got to eat buffalo, venison and elk for the first time. Initial impression...i liked the elk most. the other two were mixed together in an unbelievable bratwurst soaked in guiness, so the flavor was a bit....influenced. normally i eat only fish and fowl, but these tasty rangers were quite a treat.
i'd skip on monkeys though. especially if they're looking at you and crying while you scoop.
by lajoie at September 3, 2003 7:52 PM
In the link it mentions how tourists are taken aback by monkey eyes in the stew. Like I said, it just hits too close to home.
by anna at September 4, 2003 6:45 AM
indiana jones featured monkey brains. it was a favorite saying around the dinner table. my father, generally quite staid and stoic, upon the peeeeling back, ever so carefully, of the tin foil or melted plastic wrap would affect "ahhhh....muunkee brllrllains" in his best hindi-english accent. which was really just slightly better than any other accent i ever heard him use. of course what really bugged me about that scene was the slicing open of the large snake, expelling hundreds (nay millions!) of tiny wriggling baby snakes onto the table. i don't rightly remember anything after that. something about somebody yanking a still-beating heart from a chest.....which reminds me...linz has been awful quiet for a good period.
but that's off the subject. the part that of the link that really strikes me as somewhat desultory...why mercilessly kill and eat a live monkey when it's brains are just going to taste like water tofu? that's like taking down a clydesdale, just to eat the hooves. only you know the hooves will just taste like tire rubber, but isn't it cool to serve your friends this delicate bounty?
by lajoie at September 4, 2003 3:53 PM
I don't know what's worse, that or the secret circles of rich people who live to eat the meat of endangered species. Tastes like chicken!
by anna at September 4, 2003 5:22 PM
i heard a story about a small bird in france, which has become an illegal delicacy. to properly consume it, you eat the whole bird at once. the patron covers his or her head with their napkin, and eats the prepared bird under veil. some who were curious and successful in finding someone to prepare this, were often repelled by the entirety of the animal....first the piercing of the skin, the crunching of hollow bones, taste of meat, then organs...the necessary mastication...it's too much for most people.
by lajoie at September 4, 2003 5:59 PM
I couldn't eat oysters for a long time after I saw a picture detailing all their organs-- digestive system, nervous system-- in my high school bio book. They're an animal that we eat whole, too. It was years before I could go back to thinking of them as just solid, chewy jelly, and being able to eat them again. One of my cousin adores raw oysters and can down a dozen of them at a time. I can't take oysters raw. I wonder if they're still alive at that point?
A friend once told me how he was horrified to crack open a hard-boiled egg and find a half-developed chick inside, whereupon his grandmother informed him that those things were a delicacy in the old country, and relieved him of the treat. No word on whether she cackled afterwards, or not.
by jean at September 6, 2003 5:12 PM
i'm under the impression that shellfish, given as raw, are also called 'live'.
so did your friend's grandma drape the stillborn chick over her rock-sharpened pygmy teeth, toss her head back, and then gobble it down?
oh the elderly and their prehistoric ways.
by lajoie at September 6, 2003 6:47 PM
I have all those same fears too. Watching Fear Factor has only reinforced all my food phobias. Soemtimes they make people eat these weird kind of eggs that have partially developed embryos in them. I'm reminded of feral dogs that root through the dumpsters outside lyposuction clinics. Ugh.
by anna at September 6, 2003 7:16 PM
Have you seen that show on Bravo, The Reality of Reality? It's a documentary about the making of reality shows. Tonight there was a whole parade of people who'd been on all the big reality shows, and apparently they all auditioned in the first place because they were depressed, had hit a dead end in their lives, were desperate for validation, etc. It was disturbing, really.
by jean at September 10, 2003 4:43 AM
Anyone who can feast on things I have seen on "Fear Factor" disturbs me. I have an aversion to milk. When I was younger I had a very bad experience with some milk that had gone sour. To this day I have to throw out milk a couple of days before the date on the carton. Hell, I only drink milk when I have cookies, cake or some other sweet substance. The episode that happened when I was young taught me to never drink directly from the carton though.
by Ezy at September 10, 2003 10:10 AM
believe it or not ezy, i had the same experience with orange juice. it's as bad as spoiled milk and i gagged on it. i can still drink it, but damned if i'm going by the expiration date again.
if you don't know what oj's like when it's gone bad, you probably can't appreciate this. but you probably watched it on t.v., when that white ford bronco.....ouch.
*tap, tap* ...is this thing on?
by lajoie at September 10, 2003 11:37 AM
Lajoie, I had a close friend that had a bout with out of date OJ and from what he told me it's worse than eating a shit sandwich. His words not mine. From that description I don't think I want to have any experience close to that though I have licked some ass in my time. That wasn't so bad. Hmmmmmm. Makes you think huh?
by Ezy at September 10, 2003 3:36 PM
see linz's post "all i really want is some comfort..", about halfway down...scan for the words "dogshit fight".
assuming all my faculties are working properly, i don't think i'll ever willingly lick an asshole (though i've sent some piggies to market). but i've tasted shit. and it's as bad as orange juice.
by at September 10, 2003 4:20 PM
yeah, umm that last one was me. and i don't think i meant to say piggies....but when imagery exceeds reality, you roll with it.
by lajoie at September 10, 2003 4:22 PM
I've experienced both the OJ and milk gross-outs. That's why I prefer wine, which improves with age.
by anna at September 10, 2003 5:24 PM
yes, but wine's as flawed as the preceding two once openened. i try and keep my vinegar consumption restricted to salads.
on the otherhand (or in it, as it were) we have whiskey. wonderful drink & better with age. and what do you think our little friends the cockraoches will be filling their swimming pools with come armageddon? whatever's left i say.
by lajoie at September 10, 2003 6:09 PM