Dumbo: Gourmet Extraordinaire - #5: Wild Meat

Ah, wild meat. Now that the price of everything is going up, perhaps we should check out this alternative? ;-p

***

I came from a small subrural town, so I am no stranger to wild meat. I grew up amidst stories of how my classmates hunted for monitor lizards (which would end up as a curry dish at the end of the hunt; more on this later), how someone had been gutting cats by first hanging them on the fence (and purportedly the fence of our school, no less!), or how several people had gathered around a pot of dog stew on such and such day.

Well, I was no stranger, that is, to the stories; but not the tastes.

Yeap. I grew up hearing all about different types of wild meat, from the not-so-wild (pigeons, rabbits, cats, dogs, etc.) to the as-wild-as-it-gets (squirrels, monitor lizards, snakes, etc.), but I have never tasted them.

OK, maybe I have tasted wild boar meat on countless occasions (quite easy to get from the regular wet market; when one was available, they just sold it alongside the usual pork), but frankly, it didn't feel like wild meat. A bit harder than your friendly domesticated pork, but not at all that different.

***

Therefore, a recent trip I took with my wife back to her hometown in Bintulu, Sarawak had been quite rewarding in the sense that, during that trip, I had tasted a couple of wild meats that had eluded me thus far.

***

First of all, there was this limbless crawly thingy: snake.

That Saturday when we were there, my wife's whole family - she has five brothers: two elder and three younger, all married and with kids except the youngest - gathered together for dinner at the parents' home, where we were staying.

Among the umpteen dishes ordered from a caterer was half a kilo of snake meat which the eldest brother, Peter, bought from a native Iban on his way over from Miri.

Snake cutlets, anyone? These are still raw, though...

The youngest brother, who had worked for a few years as a cook in KL, was charged with the responsibility to prepare this "special" dish. But he, being a professional, was unhappy with the state of the meat. "It's no longer fresh. It is best when it's freshly slaughtered. This won't taste good. Besides, its almost dinner time, and I won't have enough time to really cook it. The texture will be quite rubbery."

He rolled up his sleeves nonetheless and below is what he produced, snake cutlets generously spiced up with lots of lemongrass.

With irrepressible excitement, I took my first bite of snake meat--

--and decided not to touch the rest.

Our cook was right: it was rubbery. Very, very rubbery. Especially the skin.

***

While I was trying hard to swallow my first bite - and probably my last bite ever - of snake meat, my wife was playing with one of her little nephews, and seemed quite unaware of what I was eating, so I decided to take a piece of the reptilian fare to her.

Now, before I proceed, I must tell you a story about the visit my wife and I took to the Snake Temple in Penang many, many years ago.

First of all, let me remark that it is probably the only temple that demands admission fee. Enough said.

We paid our due, and was stepping into the main hall, where those famous crawly creatures reside, when all of a sudden, I felt a great force tugging at my hand, such that I could not move forward at all. I turned around and found my wife, whose hands were clutching mine, stood absolutely petrified, with an expression of utter horror on her face.

Ah. Ophidiophobia.

What was remarkable was that I weighed twice as much as she did then, yet in her fear, she was able to put a complete halt to my movement. I guess that's why Medusa was said to be able to petrify anyone who looked at her.

As I got to know my wife more and more, I discovered that even just pictures or documentaries of snakes are enough to send chills down her spine.

So, on this occasion, with a piece of snake meat in my hand, I came to her without telling her what I was trying to feed her, and said without betraying any trace of emotion on my face, "open up."

She obediently - I thought it was obedience - took a bite.

Then I asked her, "Do you know what you have just tasted?"

"Yeah. Snake."

I was dumbfounded. So, it was not obedience. In retrospect, there seemed to have been a look of steely resolution on her face when she took that bite.

I guess I underestimated my wife. I take my hat off to her.

***

Then there was rabbit.

Those cute, cuddly little rodents.

There had always been a Bah-kut-teh stall in Penang which features rabbit meat rather than pork, but somehow, I never visited the place.

On this same recent trip to Bintulu, I finally tasted the little nibbling critter.

Actually, I didn't set out deliberately to try to eat such a cute animal. But our trip to Bintulu this time was actually to visit my wife's father who was quite ill recently. His weight plummeted to just 43 kg within weeks.

To help him recuperate, someone suggested rabbit stew, and my mother-in-law decided to give it a try.

Now, those little long-eared rodents are not cheap, mind you. The one we bought cost RM50+, and it was considered a small one.

Anyway, cuteness and costliness notwithstanding, off it went into the simmer pot after being chopped up into small pieces ("Poor wittle bunny"), and in a couple of hours, voila, wabbit stew.

I didn't take a picture, so, well, this will do. :-)

At that time, my father-in-law's appetite was still quite weak, so he practically just drank the soup. But someone had got to eat up the flesh, lest it went to waste, right? So, that person was yours truly.

Well, I must say that it tasted nice. The flesh itself is rather like chicken, perhaps a little more tender. The skin is totally different. It is almost gel-like, and will virtually melt in your mouth. Then again, maybe it was because the one I ate was stewed.

***

Now, actually, the snake and the rabbit are not the first wild meats I tasted.

After I started working, I had had the occasion of tasting venison (deer meat) in Batu Maung, Penang, crocodile meat in Sitiawan, Perak, and on my first ever trip to Sarawak, the meat of a monitor lizard (finally! after hearing all those stories in my childhood).

I must say that venison tasted good. But the croc meat, well, like the aforementioned snake meat: no seconds, please. The monitor lizard, well, I can't really remember how it tasted now. At that time, I was rather nervous, meeting my future (now present) in-laws for the first time, so I did not realize what I was eating until on this latest visit, my wife's second brother told me that at that time, he had ordered monitor lizard.

***

During this recent trip back to Bintulu, Sarawak, we flew to (and from) Sibu rather than Bintulu, because of some unforeseen change of events.

Just before we boarded our flight back from Sibu, my wife's uncle who lives in Sibu took us out for breakfast, and we traded stories about wild meats.

Back in my hometown, my schoolmates hunted monitor lizards in pack (trust me, they were a wolfish enough lot to warrant this collective), with the help of a well-trained canine assistant.

As soon as the dog spotted - smelled, rather - a lizard, they would let it loose to chase down the poor reptilian chap whose luck must be down in the dump that day.

More often than not, the chase would end up with the lizard perched high up in a tree and the dog barking furiously at the root. The job of the infantry would then end there. Next came the artillery.

The sharpshooter of the pack would get ready with his slingshot, while another guy - who, with the right opportunities, would have ended up a baseball great - would wait with a club just below where the scared-out-of-its-wit little reptile was perching.

And they always took aim at where it hurts most. And no, I do not mean the head.

If the shot found its target, the little fella would fall from the branch, right into the swinging club. "Whack!" And dinner would be almost ready.

***

After I finished relating what I knew about lizard-hunt, my wife's uncle (her mother's youngest brother) told of a spectacular sight he had witnessed as a small child.

To sum it all up in 10 words: Tree-top battle between a boa and a monitor lizard.

"I was playing outside the house, when suddenly I noticed a lot of people talking excitedly and heading towards the woods, so I went along to have a look.

"Then and there I saw it: a monitor lizard was being chased by a boa, which was obviously out for a reptilian diet that day.

"The chase started on the ground, but soon the scene shifted to the dense branches just above the small clearing where we, the spectators, were gathered.

"You would never believe it until you have seen it with your own eyes, how agile a big fat boa can be up there on a tree. The lizard was fast, but the boa was not doing any worse. They practically leapt from one branch to another in that spectacular once-in-a-lifetime battle scene."

At that point, I couldn't help visualizing that scene in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon where Chow Yun-Fat fought with Zhang Ziyi atop the bamboo forest. :-p

***

Martial-art films aside, how did the battle end, you may ask?

How else? After satisfying their curiosity for a fight between two ferocious reptiles, the villagers first shot down the boa, and then the monitor lizard, and had both for a great feast that night.

It's like an alternative ending for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, where a bunch of cannibals passing by the fighting scene first cheered for the fight, and then shot down both hero and anti-heroine for a sumptuous meal.

>.<

There goes my appetite.