My Husband & Other Animals

by Janaki Lenin

IRIAN MUMU Serves: 100 Preparation time: 6 hours Ingredients: 100 kg meat (flying foxes, pythons, cassowaries, megapodes, wallabies, pigs, anything that moves), smoked and dried, or fresh and bloody, it doesn’t matter. 100 kg vegetables (yams, tubers, squashes, pandanus fruit, raw green bananas, water weeds, greens) Salt optional Method: Dig three huge pits in the ground, six feet deep and eight feet wide, and line them with banana leaves. Then start an enormous fire nearby. Haul about 200 boulders (about half to one kilo in weight each) from the nearest riverbank and throw them into the flames. Once the rocks are molten hot, pile all the meat into the leaf-lined pits. Then layer with vegetables. Wrap the whole lot with more banana leaves. Ferry the hot river boulders one by one from the fire and stack them atop the leaves. The local way of doing this is to bring the ends of a length of green stick together and snap the hinge end. Grasp each boulder firmly between the two lengths, like using a nutcracker. Caution: the round rocks drop frequently. Ignore the many burns to feet, legs and hands.