The Serpent and the Soup Bowl
The Serpent and the Soup Bowl
Old Cantonese joke: how do you know that Adam and Eve weren't Chinese?
Because they'd still be in the Garden of Eden, as they'd have eaten the snake instead of the apple.
And every winter, folks who adhere to the tenet "a bowl of snake soup a day keeps the doctor away" queue outside small shops to partake of the elixir that wards off diseases and the chills. Hong Kong doesn't have a "Whacking Day", à la The Simpsons, but rather a "Whacking Season": mid-November to April. Up to 200,000 live snakes are imported for consumption.
For years I've put off trying snake soup, not because I'm squeamish about serpents, but because it's never been a priority; I'd forget about it until spring, when it was too late. But after eight winters in Hong Kong, I was determined to learn why Hong Kong audiences salivate when watching films like Anaconda and Snakes on a Plane.
Snake soup, or more accurately, seh gang (蛇羹), is a "winter-warming food". Aficionados claim it's also an aphrodisiac.
With that in mind (the inner-warmth idea, not the other), my wife and I went to Seh Wong Hoi (蛇王海), or Snake King Sea, a small but popular shop in Tai Po which specialises in serving reptiles. At least its name was slightly different from the other 130-odd restaurants that serve snake, most of which are simply called Seh Wong (Snake King).
The major question was: would I like the taste? I was getting tired of hearing people say that it tasted like chicken. The only way to know was through an empirical test: order a bowl and have at it. We settled on the shop's most popular dish: the HK$25 Five-Snake Soup, a blend supposedly good for the brain, skin, heart, back and lower limbs.
While we waited, I studied the glass display case, which held geckos in the top level and snakes in the middle. A single lonely turtle occupied the bottom tier. One snake reared up and stared at me while I took its photograph (I've passed by many snake-soup shops in Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island, and most of them had a similar case or cage containing a large, pissed-off king cobra that gave passers-by the evil eye), almost daring me to select it to be eaten.
But I wasn't interested in the ultimate in freshness, and we didn't need to bother: one of the restaurant's experts sat nearby and deftly stripped the meat from freshly skinned serpent carcasses. The meat went into one bag, and skeletons into another. The meat would later be chopped into slivers.
The soup itself is a pungent mixture of ingredients which varies from shop to shop, but many include chicken, Chinese mushrooms, ginger and chrysanthemum leaves. Others add pork, abalone, or coriander. As long as our order didn't have seafood or coriander in it, I'd be happy.
And then came the moment of truth: two steaming bowls of snake soup landed on our table. My first impression was that it looked a lot like hot-and-sour soup; if I hadn't known better, I would have thought that's what it was. I spooned through the mixture to see what was in it, then separated hunks of snake meat and broth for my first taste.
Its texture was like chicken, but the similarity ended there; I thumbed through my mental files to compare the musky flavour but came up empty. Simply put, snake tastes like snake.
Part of what I'd tasted was the spices in the broth, which I found somewhat musky. On the table were condiments, such as crispy chunks of fried wonton pastry, red vinegar and shredded lime leaves. Adding these to the broth smoothed out the flavour and left a pleasant aftertaste.
By the time I was finished, I felt warmer inside, as though I'd been sipping cognac. According to the Chinese, snake soup can prevent sickness caused by exposure to cold winds, and can even thwart demonic possession. That's some powerful mojo; should Satan send one of his minions to commandeer my body he'll be in for a rude surprise.
Now that I've tried snake soup, I don't feel compelled to eat more, but I'm not against having another bowl when the temperature grows cold enough to numb me to the bone. Unless you're a vegetarian, I'd recommend that you try it once.
Think of it as revenge for that apple affair.
January 12, 2007
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