Cambodian chef and villagers gear up for dry season rat

Link : http://uk.news.yahoo.com/041008/323/f47go.html




PHUM BEK KROANG, Cambodia(AFP) - Soeung Thy is praying for the monsoons to end so he can begin frying, grilling and currying rats to satisfy the hundreds of Cambodian villagers anticipating his feasts.

Sitting in his small unnamed restaurant -- believed to be the first specialising in rats in the kingdom -- the 27-year-old says he started cooking up rodents to wild acclaim two years ago in this southwestern village.

"At first I just cooked them for my family to eat, but guests who tried them said they were tasty, so I started selling a few fried rats to the villagers," he said. Business boomed so he devoted his menu to them.

Soeung Thy will soon be serving the small rice-field rats, found only when the monsoon floods recede in October and they return from high ground, in spicy curries, stir-fries, or simply grilled to a crisp over hot coals.

A pair of fried rats, typically downed with sweet palm juice, rice wine or an ice-cold beer, sell for 500 riel (13 cents).

Last season, Soeung Thy said, he even lured curious well-heeled Cambodians from the nearby port city of Sihanoukville.

"I don't know who they were, but they looked rich -- they were dressed smartly and drove their cars here to eat my fried and grilled rats," said Soeng Thy, who for now is half-heartedly whipping up ordinary Khmer dishes.

"I still have a lot of clients stopping by to ask me about the rats."

He belonged to the Khmer ethnic minority living in Vietnam but along with many of the villagers here migrated in the 1980s, bringing their custom of occasionally eating the animals. Soeung Thy's restaurant has led to a rat revolution.

"Now we eat rat like we eat duck and chicken. We don't know really what nutrition it provides to our bodies, but we know that rat meat has a really good taste," said villager Soeung Nhean, 45.

"There are more than 100 families in this village, and a hundred percent of them eat rat meat."

Many villagers, including Soeung Nhean, are preparing to return to their new seasonal trade of nocturnal rat-catching within the next few weeks, selling to the restaurant as well as a few rat dealers who have emerged.

Wearing flashlights wrapped around their heads powered by hefty motorcycle batteries, the catchers fan out across rice-fields using nothing more than a bamboo stick to help them catch the beasts by hand.

Eating rats is not considered overly unusual in Cambodia, partly owing to many resorting to eating them during the genocidal 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, but they have never achieved such mainstream popularity.

Still, the villagers are choosy.

"We only eat the small rats -- we dare not eat the big ones because they have too much hair," said farmer Sing Song, wrinkling his nose in distaste.

Businesswoman Nob Mom says she has come from a nearby village to buy fish and wild birds from the villagers this week but is also keenly awaiting the dry season and relaunch of her rat trade.

"I can make a tidy profit from selling rat meat to those people from Sihanoukville," she said, adding however that she would not dare touch the meat herself.

An official from Cambodia's department of animal health and production told AFP that there were some concerns about villagers eating rats.

"It would be better if people ate only animals that they raised themselves so they know what they've been eating," he said.