Catholics tired of fish on Friday can enjoy a Lent-friendly smorgasbord in Nicaragua, where soups made with iguana or armadillo are served with a healthy portion of bull testicles.
The delicacies violate local laws against eating such species during their breeding period, but are seen as a meat-free dish in the lead-up to Easter.
They are also considered an aphrodisiac, and are thus popular with older men.
“It is really tasty. It is a traditional dish,” Manuel Zamora said as he bought two iguanas at a market.
The iguana soup is made with the animal’s meat and eggs, ground and toasted corn meal, and vegetables.
Pedro Espinoza, a Nicaraguan who lives in Costa Rica but is home visiting, says: “I like the taste of iguana. The little eggs are delicious.”
Especially popular is a performance-enhancing soup called Levanta Muerto, which translates roughly as “raises the dead.”
It is said to boost energy and virility, and nourish the brain.
The soup consists of meat from the black, spiny-tailed iguana, brains, bone marrow, bull testicles and, in some cases, shellfish.
“I love bull testicles,” said Jose Cordoba, a fan of the dish, which is popular among older men and office workers.
Miriam Sirias, who runs a lunch counter in a Managua market, says people eat the soup to keep their gray matter sharp.
Her chef Cristina Gutierrez cuts in to add: “A lot of people eat it for its aphrodisiac effect.”
Armadillo meat is also popular, even though some experts say it can carry the bacteria that cause leprosy.
However, it is the spiny-tailed iguana, known in Spanish as a garrobo, that is the biggest hit in popular Nicaraguan cooking. People here say it helps fight cancer, diabetes, anemia and other ailments.
Jennifer Gomez, accompanying her mother to the market, says garrobo flesh kills cancer cells, adding she has a neighbor who has had cancer for nine years but keeps it in check by eating garrobo three times a week.
“She has not died,” Gomez said.
Demand for garrobo is so fierce that live animals are brought to markets in large numbers, even though you are not supposed to hunt them during their breeding season from September to April.
“Here, we sell them skinned,” said one vendor, Iveth, as she chops the head off a garrobo, removes the skin, rips out the guts and hands over the body and eggs to a customer, all for the equivalent of less than four US dollars.
Another soup popular along Nicaragua’s very poor Atlantic coast is made of turtle flesh, fish, beef coconut milk and vegetables.
Enrique Rimbaud, head of an environmental group called Amarte, said it is a pity to sacrifice all these animals.
He is collecting signatures to press Nicaragua’s parliament to pass a law protecting 187 endangered species by classifying them as part of the national heritage.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not