30- war of venus

In the heart of the Amazon, in the heart of South America, where the jungle is usually so thick that if one strays a couple of meters off the path, they get lost in Venusian vegetation, monkey is a highly appreciated dish. I witnessed it being skewered from mouth to tail on a stick, roasting over a campfire until it was charred, but it still maintained its child-like form. Depending on the season, the texture can be tough or tender, but the flavor is always strong and sweet. The jungle is an immense, stifling, mysterious labyrinth, where one can wander in circles forever. You hear birds, animal cries, stealthy footsteps, there is never truly silence; it smells of moss, humidity, sometimes wafts of a sticky smell, like rotten fruits, come. To inexperienced eyes, everything is green, but for the native, it is a diverse and incredibly rich world: there are lianas that accumulate liters and liters of pure water to drink, hallucinogenic mushrooms, aphrodisiac herbs, healing resins, milk from a tree that cures coughs, latex to attach arrowheads, in short: it is the largest biogenetic reserve on the planet. The indigenous people use a poison extracted from plants that they pour into the water to numb the fish and then pick them up when they float to the surface; afterwards, they eat them without danger because the effect of the poison disappears shortly after. Starting from the point where the waters of the Rio Negro and the Salomoes converge, it is called the Amazon River, as wide as the sea in Normandy, a dark mirror when it is calm, frightening when storms erupt. The water of the Rio Negro, when placed in a glass, has an amber color and the delicate taste of strong tea. At dawn, when the sun rises, coloring the horizon red, the pink dolphins come out to play, among the few creatures of the river that are not eaten, because the meat is bitter and the skin useless, but the indigenous people still kill them with harpoons to extract their eyes and genitals, which they then turn into amulets for virility and fertility. In that same river of warm waters, where the day before I saw a couple of Russian tourists catch dozens of piranhas, I swam naked. Those fish with such a bad reputation usually do not attack people and, along with the caimans, they are useful for cleaning the water, fulfilling the same function as birds of prey: they eat the corpses. The piranhas are tasty and for some Brazilian palates, even aphrodisiac, but those tourists from Moscow had no intention of cooking them, they caught them for sport and after photographing them, they threw them back into the river. There were some that bit the hook several times, until their mouths were destroyed. Like humans, who stumble several times over the same stone, piranhas never learn. In those same waters, there are over thirty species of stingrays, all very dangerous, and there also lives the legendary anaconda, the largest water snake, a prehistoric animal that can reach up to twenty meters in length. It lives dormant in the mud, waiting for a distracted fish to pass by for its lunch. I was assured that they don't eat people, but in Malaysia, I saw a photograph of a dissected boa with a whole man inside.

One of the indigenous people, the only one who spoke a few words in Portuguese, showed me his humble belongings - arrows, a knife, empty cans that served as pots - and led me to a small clearing in the vegetation where they had planted cassava, that miraculous root that provides Amazonian populations with flour, tapioca, bread, and even liquor for celebrations. Out of curiosity, I approached the fire that was burning in one corner under the common roof and saw a meter and a half long caiman, split in four like a chicken, with nails, teeth, eyes, and skin, sadly roasting. Two piranhas and something that looked like a rat were hanging from hooks, but then I saw the skin and understood that it was a porcupine. I tried everything, of course: the caiman tasted like dry and overcooked cod, the piranhas like pure smoke, and the porcupine like fossilized pork, but I shouldn't judge indigenous cuisine based on this one and limited experience.

Sheep vulva and cow udders are infallible excitants, according to the testimony of Mesalina and other women of questionable virtue, but out of feminist solidarity, we will omit the recipes. The testicles of certain animals, usually those with a reputation for passion, have the same reputation in several cultures. Nothing is as valued in North Africa as lion testicles, which supposedly transmit strength, courage, and sexual power. The same was believed in Greece about donkey testicles, which were not only eaten, but men used to wear them hanging from their necks as a charm for virility. Testicles are not always found in the market, and once in your possession, you probably won't know what to do with them. In the countryside, when bulls are castrated, their private parts are skewered on an iron and roasted over charcoal, usually in the presence of the ex-bulls, now oxen. In an 18th-century erotic cookbook, I discovered a slightly more sophisticated recipe: boil the testicles in salted water, let them cool, remove the skin, finely chop them so that what they are is not noticeable, mix them with fried and chopped cow liver, onion, and bacon, season with plenty of rosemary, cloves, and powdered cinnamon, salt and pepper, cover with a thick wine sauce, and stuff this into a pie crust. Place in the oven for half an hour. It's disgusting.

The Argentine and Chilean Patagonia, at the southernmost tip of the American continent, is an endless expanse of flat land where the wind lashes and vegetation grows with difficulty. It is one of the largest reserves of meat in the world. Animals graze freely on this immense grassland without suspecting that their only purpose in life is to supply the meat, milk, and, in the case of sheep, wool industries.