“There.
There’s the crocodile.” In the crowded lane of the Philippines’ Puerto Princesa
city, Allan Stephen M Luneta, the guide, hollered. “The crocodile.” He hooted.
Crocodile in a crowded street? My mind mumbled an improbable question to
itself. I looked around. Perhaps crocodiles stroll in the Philippines. “There,”
Luneta pointed. Then I saw a crocodile. Curled around a dish loaded with diced
meat. And a garish signboard tom-tomming the goodness of the crocodile: Good
for the heart/asthma. Lowers your cholesterol. Raises the libido. All the
goodness packed in a dead crocodile, its meat diced, sautéed into a sisig.
In
the Philippines, the crocodile is not the only fauna-food option. There really
is menagerie on the menu. The entire zoo on your plate. Animals grilled,
barbecued, sautéed, boiled, simmered, baked. Metre-long monitor lizards
simmered with onion and garlic. Snake as snack. Dogs as starters. Monkeys for a
feast. Ant eggs as a drink accompaniment. Raw tamilok (shipworms) as a
side dish. Deep fried pork belly as a souvenir. Wait, you ain’t heard it all.
If you order Soup no. 5, a bull’s penis will come floating in it. As if the
chicken feet were not spooky enough, try breaded nails of the chicken.
In
the nation of 7,000 islands, I thought there could be no more meat. Until I saw
a pail of blood in the Puerto Princesa Market.
A woman was hawking it for 25 pesos (roughly Rs 37). I thought a bunch
of beetroot had bled itself silly. I stood corrected. It was pig’s blood that
can be simmered into a thick pudding with onion, garlic and chilli. Or, cooked
into a dinuguan (stew made with pig offal and tripes). So dark is the dinuguan
that is often referred as chocolate meat. There is no chocolate in the dinuguan.
The name comes from the colour of the cooked blood.
The
red of the pig’s blood stalked me. I stepped into the Puerto Princesa Baywalk
and watched the sky turn pink and then borrow the red off the pail of blood. In
the spectacular backdrop, petite women were selling caramelised bananas and
sinful twice-fried potato wafers topped with mayo and barbecue sauce. Suddenly,
I heard a cold, crisp voice above the clamour of a marketplace. “Balut.
Quail. Balut. Balut.” A frail woman brought in her handcart and the crowd
started milling around. Balut? Curiosity hastened my pace and edged for
a peek into the cart. Tiny quail eggs were dangling in slender plastic bags. In
a wicker basket lay white eggs. Just plain, simple white eggs. My brows
furrowed about the fuss. “Want to try the embryo?” The cart woman asked
graciously. After a long day rowing inside an underground river, one of the
seven New Wonders of Nature, I sure required nutrients. But an embryo? I
thought my ears were ringing. The cart woman meant business and explained. “It
is a 17-day embryo. It is boiled but when you crack the egg open, the head and
feathers of the chick are visible.” She was getting descriptive and my hunger
was dying with every thought of wolfing a boiled duck embryo. I am not a
Filippino. I cannot daub the embryo with vinegar, throw a dash of salt and then
gobble at one go. “No.” It was a vehement no for balut, the fave street
food of the Filippinos.
Too
many no-nos to the animal menu was keeping me hungry. To find food, I had to
say yes-yes to being repetitive. In the country that takes its name from King
Philip II of Spain, I practised repetition. Say the dish name twice. Everything
twice. Halo-halo (icy dessert). Kare-kare (beef in peanut sauce).
Sapin-sapin (sticky rice). Lapu-lapu (a fish variety). Bilo-bilo
(sago dessert). For the infallible find-food mantra, I tried this: For a bait-bait
halo-halo, step into a turo-turo (Read: For a very good icy dessert,
go to a local eatery).
I
know repetition is a literary device but it sure wasn’t serving as a handy
hunger-device. I left aside the repetition, the blood, the lizard, the
crocodile and every other animal. In the Philippines, I picked up chopsticks
for a meal of black rice and boiled beans.
