The Tao of Travel

July 7—Rather weak and sickish this morning, and all about a piece of bread.

—John Muir,

My First Summer in the Sierra

(1916)

Congolese Monkey Stew, Batetela Style

MY FRIEND DOUG Kelly, a widely traveled Foreign Service officer, served in the Peace Corps in Tshumbe, central Congo, in the 1980s. Over the course of two years there, he frequently observed the Batetela people prepare and eat monkey. Most of the Batetela inhabit an area in the Sankuru district of Kasai Oriental province. Their language, Otetela, is considered very difficult to learn by other Congolese. In fact, it is often referred to as "le Chinois du Congo."

The Batetela are fortunate in that their homeland is still relatively rich in wildlife. The most common wild game, and thus the cheapest, is monkey. Following is the recipe for a repast of monkey cooked a la Batetela, as Doug Kelly describes it in a letter to me:

Take a dead monkey and hack it up. Keep the hands intact, but you can slice the rest of the carcass any way you want. Don't leave the pieces too big, because they will take longer to cook and you want to eat it soon because you are hungry.

Place the hacked-up pieces, including the intact hands, in a pot of boiling water and boil away. Don't add any spices, because you don't have any, and don't use too much water, because you're going to want to drink the watery "gravy" and you want it to have a lot of undiluted monkey taste.

After the monkey has been boiled for quite a while, take it out of the water and serve it on a bed of rice or millet. (Note: The Batetela are the only people who grow rice in Congo. The Arabs taught them how in the nineteenth century, when the Batetela were raiding tribes to the south and selling the captives into slavery to the Arabs. Millet is the traditional Batetela grain and is still raised in the dry season. Other Congolese tribes prefer manioc, or "fu fu.") Pour some of the monkey-water gravy on the rice or millet. Eat the whole concoction with your hands, or a spoon if you feel formality is necessary.

Now comes the good part. Serve the intact hands to your guests. A monkey hand resting on a plate looks like pretty upscale dining, at least if you are sitting in a mud hut in Sankuru. If you are the favored guest, eat the whole hand—the Batetela never leave any bones when they are eating meat, unless it's a particularly big pig femur or something equivalent. For monkeys, ducks, and chickens, it's everything down the hatch. You are encouraged to gnaw the monkey knuckles, removing the meat before cracking them open with your teeth and sucking out the marrow. Yum.

Sampling Fried Sago Beetle in New Guinea

Stef cooked a dinner of fried catfish, along with a healthy portion of sago beetle. The larvae were fried brown in the pan. They were crisp and sort of fishy tasting on the outside, probably because they had been sauteed in fish oil. Inside, the larvae were the color and consistency of custard. They were unlike anything I had ever eaten before, and the closest I can come to describing the taste is to say creamy snail.

 —Tim Cahill,

Pass the Butterworms

(1997)

Dog Meat in Asia

THE SMELL OF a skinned, sinewy dog, hung by its hind legs in a Chinese butcher shop, can been detected from many feet away. So their term "fragrant meat" is related to the sort of euphemism that identifies a garbage truck as a honey wagon. In the literal-minded Philippines the dish is unambiguously called dog stew (aso adobo), and the key ingredient in the Korean soup boshintang is always understood to be dog meat. Dogs are eaten in many parts of Asia and the high Arctic, and have been a staple in much of the Pacific: Captain James Cook mentioned that a dish of Tahitian dog was almost as tasty as lamb. It is only the Western prohibition against pet-eating that horrifies us, but the edible dog is never a pet.

While it is generally known by educated travelers that the Cantonese (and, for that matter, Dongbei Ren; that is, northeastern Chinese) love dog meat, it is not as well known that (1) it is seasonal—dog meat is considered warming for the blood, so is overwhelmingly eaten in the winter; and (2) a dog is considered good to eat only if its fur is black or, in a pinch, dark brown. I've never been given a good explanation for the second requirement, although it seems to be linked to the first, seasonal reason for eating dog meat—dogs with dark fur have the highest warming quality. I don't know what this theory is based on, but it's real—a Cantonese would be shocked if you suggested he eat a white poodle, and it would confirm his belief that you are, after all, a barbarian.