I had a excellent supper at Il Bacaro in Little Collins St, I told my mother. I could smell the southern oceans in the freshly shucked Tasmanian oysters. And the goat fell off the bone it was…”What do you mean goat,” she interjected. “Are you sure it wasn’t kid? Goat is very tough and stringy. It tastes like monkey. Kid isn’t as strong…”
What has my mother been up to, I ask? I know she spent the first 16 years of her life in the Canary islands and I’m not aware of monkey stew being a tradition there.
In Africa primates are a popular as bush meat. Jerry Hopkins in Extreme Cuisine says:
“in an open marketplace he counted 2,000 smoked primate carcasses and about a thosand fresh ones. Monkey. Chimpanzee. Gorilla…”
Apparently half the meat eaten in Equatorial Africa is bush meat. And it is popular in more civilized parts of the world too.
But my mother eating monkey? Stranger things have happened.
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