So the other night I was drinking my aguita and fighting off these yellow flying cockroach things that like to hit me in the face since our kitchen is outside and they are attracted to light at night when my neighbors came by to tell me that my favorite cow had died from eating too much alfafa. You might ask, why do I have a favorite cow? Well, I learned to milk with this one and walked a long side it sometimes when we were moving the cows to another pasture...and I live in the campo where one has the tendency to go slowly crazy.
There was no time to waste since the loss of a cow is loss of income (milk sells for 80 centimos a kilo to companies like GLORIA leche and Nestle) so we had to turn this cow into meat pronto. I walked the half mile to where it was in the dark under the gorgeous sky full of stars and as we got close I could see its corpse lit up by car lights....seriously looked like a sacrifice from far away...
Anyway, I watched the whole process of turning it from a beast into my next lomo saltado and the conversation when something like this:
Me (watching all the parts I never knew existed getting pulled out): sooo, what do you do with this part?
Answer: Oh, thats great in soup.
Me:oo yum.
Answer: Its delicious, thats what we do with the intestines too.
Me: So are you going to sell all this at the market in Chota?
Answer: No, we will eat most of it over the next two weeks.
Me: What about the head, I saw a furry head all cut up in Chota once but I figured they were going to burn it.
Answer: The head is one of the best parts to put in soup....come over for lunch tomorrow and you can try it with some mote.
Me: Tragically I'm going to Cajamarca tomorrow, what a pity!
I narrowly escaped being subjected to devouring every part of that creature...but talk about not wasting ANYTHING. As gross as it was, I know its still a cleaner process of prepping meat that you'd likely find in a meat factory in the states. I still ate lomo saltado (beef dish with onions, tomato etc thats pretty standard anywhere here) afterwards, blame on being protein starved from my pasta, rice, and white potato diet.
Turns out CUY isn't my worst culinary nightmare anymore! Yum.
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