Rats!

Eating rats.
Rural southern Cambodia.

We decided to tag along with a Cambodian-American friend of ours to a rural area in the southeast near the Vietnam border. He was returning, after decades, to see his aging parents and family who had survived the Khmer Rouge years. The plan was to throw a big party with 100 Buddhist monks as a blessing for the elderly parents ... and for entertainment. No TV out here.



After hours on a bumpy dirt road, crouched in the back of a covered pick-up, passing rural villages, we arrived at the family home. Armed guards and an army of excited, curious children greeted us. We were led into a guest room, and told to stay put. It took a while for word to get back to us, but here was the deal -- road bandits had murdered some neighbors the previous night. My father and I were clearly foreigners, which means we must be carrying bundles of cash, so for everyone's safety, we were instructed to stay indoors or out of sight in the covered yard. For a day or two or three, depending on when they felt the road was safe. We had 5 armed guards and even still the local provincial mayor came by to tell us everything was safe ... as long as we stayed out of sight.

But the monk party would continue as scheduled.



There was no electricity in these parts, and so I psyched myself up for a couple days of quiet living. But then came the generators. BROOOMMMMMMM!!! Lights were strung up in our room (with no off switch) and cacophonus Cambodian Buddhist music was cranked up and left on all night and day. A TV with kung fu flicks, and I think Rambo, ironically, was brought in for the kids.

In these parts, the food comes from the fields. Flooded fields full of frogs, eels, and rats. I've had plenty of frogs and eels before, so I won't go into that, but this was the first time I'd dined on rat. These are not city rats, they're big fat field rats.



They were BBQ'd well done and (I've never used this before, OK) they tasted like chicken. Tough, stringy, BBQ-chicken-style rats. I suppose I could have stuck to the frogs and eels but this was as close I'd come to weird meat as a necessity. There were no shops here, and we hadn't brought enough food for our unexpected extended stay. Our Cambodian friends told us stories of what "weird foods" they ate to survive the darkest years under the regime. Rats seemed like a fortunate feast compared to some of these. And my fear and discomfort as we waited for a safe road out seemed petty.

(Seen the movie "The Killing Fields"? The man drinking blood from a live cow ... it's not fiction)

We left the next day, straight back to Phnom Penh. On the ride, we completely covered ourselves with traditional kramas (big scarves) to avoid unwanted attention. We did, however, stop along a safer section of road to get some fruit and here I found a man hunting for rats. They have a special stick -- a long pole with a hook -- to catch the rats. I asked if the rats were for sale but the man seemed pretty proud of his catch. Some of them had guts spilling out, which looked kinda icky.



I'd eat rats again, even if not by necessity. These are not filthy city rats, they're filthy field rats, if that makes them more appetizing for you.

* Addition July 2007 ... With all the flooding going on in south and central China this summer, the rats and mice of the fields are heading north and causing trouble. So authorities are asking people to eat them to keep the numbers down.

Sea Horse Soup

My assistant Coco was chatting up WeirdMeat to a Guangdong-ese friend of hers and they suggested we go to a traditional Chinese medicine shop and get some dried seahorses.



I've always thought sea horses were cute little bizarre animals. I learned that it's actually the male sea horse that gets pregnant and carries the babies, from watching indie rock band Yo La Tengo play a live performance set to the films of Jean Painleve -- an underwater cinematographer from the 1930s or something. Real stoney stuff.

Anyway, the Cantonese make a medicinal soup with dried seahorse. Good for the facial skin and a restorative detox/cleanser. I happen to be blessed with perfect facial skin, but I could always use a little detoxing. So we found 4 seahorses -- 2 pregnant males, and 2 females (virgins?) -- and put them in a soup with carrots, ginger, and some pork stock.



The broth had a salty and pleasantly pungent oceanic flavor. The seahorses were just thrown in dry and lent their flavor and magical medicinals to the mix. And they still looked cute.

Have you ever looked at a seahorse? They have a boxey body shape, the profile of a horse's face skeleton, and a tail that curls inward towards the belly and head. They also have these perfectly symmetrical little bone spikes sticking out (like the Hellrasiser guy) that make them very difficult to eat. That's when I asked the question -- are we actually suppose to eat these? How? A few desperate calls to the medicine shop and some random Guangdong-ese comrads didn't help -- no answer. But we could taste the things from the soup broth. I did manage to extract small bits of meat from the softer part of the tails, and from the pregnant bellies of the males, and found it reminded me of dried scallops, but more salty and less complex.



There's all kinds of weird stuff I want to try in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). One that really intrigues me is this little worm thing that every Chinese person I've talked to tells me, begins life as a plant, and then turns into an animal species. Or vice versa. That's impossible, I tell them. Something lost in translation perhaps?

Why is everything in TCM good for male virility? Is there anything in TCM that isn't? What do I take if I've got too much male virility? I suppose if male humans got pregnent like the male seahorse, we'd be a bit less horny, you think?

Wild Meat Less Popular in China?

City Weekend magazine May issue carried a story called "Beef, it's what's for dinner" about a recent study by WildAid and China Wildlife Conservation Association. The study claims that wild animals are becoming less popular with Chinese consumers. I'm a bit suspicious of the numbers -- I've heard other reports on the contrary, that with a newly affluent class in China, more diners can afford to eat expensive, exotic dishes. Shark's fin soup, for example, has been under attack by animal rights activists because the demand has been increasing recently.

I'll quote from the article here:

With the media hyped fear of SARS and the bird flu spreading like wildfire over the globe, many Chinese have stopped their wild ways and are sticking to beef, pork and chicken.

"It just doesn't seem worth the risk of getting a deadly disease to eat some weird animal," said Cindy Li in Beijing.

Now I'd really like to see some stats here. Have more people died from eating weird meat? What about mad cows? Or trichonosis from pig meat? And, considering bird flu is currently the most famous food-borne disease out there, does this Cindy Li person think chickens are weird animals?

Also, check out this recent report on wild meats -- new on the menu in Shanghai, and one (rather wild himself) chef's argument that wild meat is better for ecology.

Weird Meat Feed Fixed

Yes, we were aware that our Atom/RSS syndication feed was not working properly. Blogger's support was no help. Finally a Weird Meat fan came through with the solution.



We figured it was a simple stupid fix, and it was, but we were too dumb to figure it out alone. Along came a weasel... well, the guy who does this website: Weasel Trek, and saved the day.

We really like the globetrotting weasel, and we hope that the weasel comes to visit us in Shanghai, we'll show him a good time. And we promise not to eat him, although he does look pretty tasty!

Here's the feed link, hook it up!

http://weirdmeat.com/feed/atom.xml