A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [107]
Video gold.
After two hours of useless and unproductive floundering in the sea, the underwater camera rig having filled up with water – after about six miles of footage of my concave chest wheezing on the beach while Leo, our hired fishing guide, continued, without success, to catch even a stunt fish for a faked shot – we gave up. Matthew settled for frozen fish at a nearby tourist strip, and the always popular ‘Tony gets drunk on local beverage, then sits in sullen silence, hating himself and everybody to do with this production scene.’
I never wanted to eat iguana. ‘Yes you do,’ insisted the TV masterminds. I had no particular curiosity about iguana. I knew from talking to my cooks that people eat iguana when they can afford nothing else. It’s cheap and plentiful. Even Leo, talking about how he went out a few times a week with his dog to sniff out iguana, admitted he did it only because he had no money for real food. I had no expectation that a big lizard would taste good – and I was not anxious to have one killed so I could find out for sure. But Matthew seemed to feel that the ‘iguana scene’ would be must-see TV, a guaranteed cable Ace for Best Reptile Scene in a Continuing Cable Series.
Now, maybe somewhere they’re making delicious marinated, then barbecued iguana with crispy skin and well-grilled but tender meat. Maybe if you sear it and then braise it long enough and infuse it with enough other flavors, it might make a meal interesting to adventurous palates. Maybe. I didn’t see it.
The owner of our hotel was dispatched to wrangle up a nice plump example of iguanadom at its very best. But after three or four hours of investigation, he came up as empty as Leo’s fishing line. Instead, he decided to sacrifice the poor hotel mascot, a ten-year-old wrinkly, leathery, liver-spotted thing – he looked paralytic – with a bifurcated tail and a troublingly agreeable nature. I took one look at the creature and tried very hard to weasel out of the meal.
‘Matthew! Jesus Christ, man! He’s a pet, for fuck’s sake! Let the thing live! How good can he be? Just look at him!’
The hotel proprietor was no help. Stroking the iguana’s belly, he insisted, ‘Look! He is ready. He wants to die.’ I was appalled.
What arrived later were iguana tamales: the hotel pet, boiled, sectioned, then simply wrapped in corn husk with masa and sauce. Next to natto, it was maybe the worst thing I’d ever had between my teeth. The iguana was undercooked. When I unwrapped my tamale, I found that I had been honored with the head and a forearm – still on the bone. The texture was like chewing on GI Joe – if Joe had been resting at the bottom of a long-neglected turtle tank. There was almost no meat to speak of, just tough, rubbery skin, knobby, slimy little bones. When I managed now and again actually to winnow out a little meat from between bones and skin, I was sorry I had. It was dark, oily, and viscous, with the pungent aroma of steamed salamander.
In the thankfully brief scene you see in the edited version, I look like I’m eating at gunpoint.
I hit the city of Oaxaca next, a place justifiably famous for its food. It’s a beautiful town: lovely hacienda-style hotels, exquisite Spanish churches and cathedrals, a picturesque zócalo where you can sit at a café table and watch the world go by, a fabulous mercado, nice people. It is also, unfortunately, a magnet for the world’s ugliest tourists. Herds of squinting, sun-blotched fanny packers in black socks and sandals shuffled by, snapping pictures. Extravagantly pierced backpackers, filthy from the road, sat in the park, ineptly strumming old Dylan tunes on clapped-out guitars. Thick-ankled German women looking for love, and hordes of doddering tour groupers and serial shoppers, fanned out to buy the inevitable tonnage of papier-mâché figurines, hammered tin, cheap silver, ponchos, serapes, funny hats, T-shirts, and pottery. College