sofasurfers

One of the very great joys of couchsurfing is that you get to live like a local. It’s like the three Spanish firefighters said, “As tourists who can’t speak the language, when we are hungry we can only look for big hamburger signs because it’s all we understand. But here, you actually get the chance to discover how they eat.”

So for breakfast yesterday, I was fed sheep soup. Nose-to-tail sheep soup. I endeavoured to devour all, but didn’t get very far past the innards (have pictures - will post). Yes, floating lumps of white bulbous fat, layers of digestive organ linings, tendons… And later that evening, my lovely host (for she is) showed me a video of a sheep being ‘prepared’. By which I mean said sheep is being restrained on its back by my host’s four friends, its stomach sheared, and another friend slicing into the sheep’s chest. “Unlike muslims who drain blood from their meat, Buryatians keep all the blood of an animal,” she explains. “So he’s slicing into the sheep to access a major artery which he will rip, to kill the sheep. It doesn’t contain so many nerves so it’s less painful, and quite quick.” Fortunately, the video stops short of this point.

And the provenance of said sheep soup? Yes, that’s right, said sacrificial sheep. “I bought it from the countryside because it was cheap (about GBP75) , and because sheep from this area are very tasty because the climate and grass are very good.” I’m still thinking about that artery though - isn’t it messy, I ask. ”Any blood that spills is collected in a bowl, mixed with milk and salt and put into an intestine to make blood sausage,” she adds.  So not unlike black pudding, then.