Rip the belly into two – the three month cage has done its job. [1]
Wrangle with the blood and flesh and organs and dig until you get
to the very center and pick your harvest. It’s been a long wait.

[1] When I first saw her skinning it a wave of cold dread went through me. It looked too big, too round, unlike the flat body of a fish. “It’s shark,” Grandma said. “You like fish, right?”

Its cries will be piercing at first, but don’t let it distraught you.
Clean up the blood, peel any leftover membrane. Do this with care,
it’s very fragile [2], and very rare [3].

[2] Its clear, bulbous eyes looked at me in a permanent state of petrified shock, mouth half opened in its last futile attempt to cry. It’s no longer than the width of the square sink – a juvenile, a baby from the ocean.

[3] Sharks belong in oceans. Or if not, they should be in a restaurant somewhere, weighed under a bed of ice. Not in the sink where my Grandma mauls its intestines and butchers it. 100 million are hunted each year, and for some reason one had to end up here.

In a large boiling pot, boil the broth at medium to high heat. 
Add shredded drumstick, scallops, crab meat, and shiitake mushrooms.
Then gently lay it in the soup [4], add shaoxing wine and soy sauce. Boil for 10 minutes.

[4] She cooked it in curry because she knows I love nothing else than curry fish. My dad was thrilled about the feast (shark is expensive). He picked up his chopsticks and went straight for the head, pierced into the fleshy eye and scooped up the perfect ball of muscle, its bulbous flesh dripping with sweetness. The whole thing came off perfectly, leaving nothing but a gaping hole behind that you could see the other side of the bowl.  He gave it to me. “Your favourite.”

Turn off the heat and start plating. Grab your bowl and fill it with the soup first,
Make sure you add in the other ingredients too. Then finally, plate the jewel [5] right
at the very center. Top it off with the placenta. Swirl the umbilical cord as decor.

[5] Shark is delicious. Its meat is unlike fish meat. There is something heavy about shark flesh. A certain fishiness, a certain taste of blood. I could imagine how big it would have grown, how it would become one of the many kings of the sea. The descendant of the Megalodon, the last few giants in the world, the thing closest to a miracle of the long-lost dynasty.

When Dad gave me the eye – the same eye that gawked at me that morning – I couldn’t say no. So I ate, chewed past the fishiness, the lingering taste of blood.  Swallowed the eye, the head, the meat – everything – whole and after a while I got used to it.

Dinner is served [6].

[6] Right before I went to sleep I vomited. For the first five minutes nothing came out. Finally, I retched them: the dog, the cat, the elephant, the pangolin, the tiger, the monkey, the bat, the bear, and the shark, all their bones and eyes floating in the toilet bowl, prehistoric artefacts. And finally, with the biggest breath I could take I heaved and pushed, delivered the piece de resistance – the baby, my son, disfigured child of the future, born into the dying world eaten away by me.