by JayasankaranKK
I belong to a chat group comprising high school classmates of our Form Five Class of ’72. The conversation there is pretty much ho-hum, run-of-the-mill stuff.
However, this morning, it perked up after one guy posted a video of an anxious porcupine scurrying through a residential neighbourhood at night.
Apparently, there’d been talk of porcupine-sightings in the neighbourhood but it was the first time the animal had been caught on film.
It seemed to know it – it began scurrying faster and looking around for threats. You could almost hear it thinking: I needle little time to figure this out.
But back to the said chat group. Being Malaysians, the conversation inevitably shifted to what it might taste like. Zainal said he’d had its soup when he was in Penang although these points had to be tasted surreptitiously as the species was protected by law.
Dollah claimed to have his grandma cooked it for him back in the day. Said it tasted like chicken, only it was “more delicious.”
Apparently, everything tastes like chicken. The phrase comes from Christopher Columbus. Looking for fresh food in the US, his men came upon “a serpent” which they killed and devoured. Columbus noted that “its meat was white and tasted like chicken.”
Whether it’s snake, iguana or crocodile, they all taste like chicken. And it isn’t anecdotal. It’s true: most of these species evolved from the same forebears ergo the taste similarity.
Incidentally, the snake and crocodile testimonies come from my daughter, Raisa, who is courageous when it comes to new food.
She charted what I considered a new low when she tried balut in the Philippines. Balut, the street food of the Manila barrios, is a fertilised, developing egg embryo that’s steamed or boiled and eaten from the shell. She baulked, however, when she felt its feathers.
Maybe I should not be too surprised – in Peru, she consumed alpacas (hoofed mammals with small heads) and guinea pigs.
Even so, I know she does not get it from me because I’m a wimp in matters of food. I think it stemmed from the time when my father urged me to eat liver. Its intense gaminess and weird texture made me nauseous and I’ve been wary of new meat ever since.
I’m in a minority in my house though: both my wife and daughter think that liver is the best thing since sourdough bread.
Worldwide though, I’m in good company. Most people would rather skip it although the Danes consider it a treat.
Aside for the country-curious reader, except for Hannibal Lecter, most Americans think the liver is “gross.”
Then there are those foods centred around snob appeal. A friend and his wife took us to a 2-Michelin place in Singapore that had rave reviews in the Singapore press.
The prices on the menu made me feel grateful that we were guests.
The dishes included mini-thosai tacos (with mutton filling) and oysters with a rasam granita encrustation.
A granita is like a semi-frozen dessert while rasam is, of course, the sour and spicy South Indian soup that was once touted as a Covid cure and, failing that, can be reliably depended on to clear your sinuses.
I wasn’t very impressed with the food but was with the beer.
Story of my life.
WE