Cuy

When it arrived at my table, I started sawing away with my knife on his back. Nothing happened. I really leaned into it for the second attempt. Not much better.

I called over the waiter and asked him for a sharper knife. He said they have some, but cuy is not eaten with a knife and fork, too bony, it is eaten with the hands.

The hands? And I mimed picking up the cuy and eating it like it was corn on the cob.

He said, yes, the hands.

After some hesitation, I picked up the front half with my right hand, the back with my left, and brought my hands together as if I were bending a steel bar. The bones inside the cuy cracked, but the body remained intact.

I moved my left hand to a hind leg, my right grabbed the torso in the centre, and I twisted with my left hand until the leg came off.

And I began to eat.

The skin was thick and rubbery, not my favourite part, I ended up leaving most of it intact, instead peeling the cuy like a banana.

The meat was white and either they used very interesting spices or it is the tastiest meat God placed on this Earth. There is, however, very little of it. So you pick up the leg, or the back half, or the front half, and you gnaw. You gnaw to get as much meat as you can from it.

In the centre, underneath, there was a huge hole with a green paste that would be dripping out of it were it more liquid. It looked just like tomali does from a lobster.

Inside the hole, I saw the two little kidney's just hanging out. The only organs visible.

Now, I hate offal. From any animal I've eaten, I've hated offal. So I ripped one out of his inside and take the tiniest bite. Not bad. Soft. Tender. And, like the body, it absorbed the spices quite well.

In the end, I don't think I did a very good job of eating cuy. I'm sure there were little hidden caches of meat that I was missing.

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Photographic evidence is on facebook in the folder entitled Cuy.