There really is no place like Asia for incredible and cheap food. On the side of the road, a stretch of food stalls is dimly lit by street lamps. Printed on large tarpaulins draped down one side of the stalls are photos of what its vendors sell: snakes.
Tourists and locals come to Jalan Mangga Besar for women and nightclubs and karaoke, but they also come here for a taste of snake. Barbed-wire cages sit on the ground by the stalls, containing live spitting cobras. The cobras, some coiled, some hissing, are piled on top of each other. The skin is then peeled off the snake and its bones removed by Ibu Liea’s nimble fingers. There is a visible, massive scar that crawls up her forearm. The highly venomous snake is eaten across Southeast Asia, where its blood and meat is believed to have curative properties.
One stall is bustling with activity, with a short line of motorcycle drivers waiting for orders to deliver to their customers. Ibu Liea, the vendor, takes the snake a customer selects, and puts it on a chopping board with her bare hands. She lets it stand upright, the snake displaying its hood. But i am going to talk with you a very amazing street food which selling in Indonesia. A huge cobra it to be a good ten feet long. Once the head was cut off (which was still moving on the floor in the corner), they began draining the blood into a cup. Our young “sous chef” stood on top of the tanks of cobras in order to fully empty the snake of its blood into a small, brown, ceramic cup that was being stirred. Once the snake had been completely drained, they took it away to make the meal. Meanwhile, the cup with the blood in it made it out to the front counter where it was combined with Chinese rice wine. Apparently, this is not done for flavor but to kill salmonella. As if the fear of a cobra bite wasn’t enough..The skinned snake is chopped up into small pieces, skewered onto sticks, and barbequed over a hot grill. It is served as snake satay, dripping in peanut sauce and spices.
It tastes like chicken, according to customers, but the meat is chewier. The whole meal costs about Rp 80,000-130,000, or $6 – $10 for the blood, and Rp 40,000 or $3 for the satay.
Ibu Liea said the earnings from her snake business have provided well for her family over the years. “I’ve been doing this for decades, since my kid was small until now. He’s now in his 8th semester of university, from the profits of selling snakes.” Snake is not common fare in Indonesian dishes, but it is readily available, as it is in other parts of Asia like Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Thailand and the Philippines – although it is prepared differently in every country. In Vietnam, they eat a beating heart. In China, they are used in snake soup.
But in all these countries, snake is eaten because it is believed to have healing powers and is said to enhance male pleasure.
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