(T)ekuyung #atozchallenge

I reach into the bowl, the scent of ginger, chillies and lemongrass wafting towards me, pick a snail and proceed to suck the heck out of it until its flesh is vacuumed out from its enclosure with a “plop” and end up in my mouth. I crunch on the flesh and then remove the cap that protects the flesh and place the cap onto my plate. I do this umpteen more times for the rest of the night. I’m eating kiung (kee-yoong), and I’m in heaven.

Kiung, as my family refers to these delicacies, or tekuyung, are edible river snails that I believe are only found in Sarawak rivers. I say this because though I’ve seen edible snails sold in restaurants here in the peninsular, it’s not the same type of snails.

This is one of those ingredients that I’ll always ask my parents to bring whenever they visit me, if it’s in season, which means I get to eat these snails maybe twice a year at most. It’s definitely a delicacy that you need to get used to, no one else in my family likes these snails as much as I do.

Harvesting them is not easy, bait is required and only unpolluted rivers would be able to produce these snails. Due to the state of our world today, unpolluted rivers are rare but I hope someone, somewhere will be able to cultivate these snails, otherwise, I’ll just enjoy the moments I have with them, no matter how rare those moments are.