Pig Brains at 4am
After another legendary party night at my current favorite bar / live music club 4 Live, I got pulled into late-night eats with my drunken friends. We ended up meeting another group at some OK hot pot place in Hongqiao. I have no idea where. It was 4am and we were all drunk. Good idea to eat a bit to soak up the beer before bed.
About 15 people were at the table, and I had no idea who was ordering the food. And more beer, of course. An endless procession of dishes -- big leafy greens, tofu-type skewer things, various meats and mushrooms -- and then, a plate of slimy pink blobs. I started to sober up. As I've said before, I'm into weird, but I'm not crazy about animal brains. These, as I suspected, turned out to be pig brains.
We picked up the plate and slid the mushy brains into the boiling pot. Half in the spicy broth, half in the mild. We let them stew for a while before digging them out, steaming and soaked with flavor. It's difficult to eat slimy brains with chopsticks, so we had to scoop them out of a bowl held up to our mouths. They were soft and succulent like soft tofu.
Despite our lack of enthusiasm for eating brains, these were fine, we had seconds, and we wouldn't turn them down again. Besides, we've had them before, pig brains in Cambodia.
posted by Michael @ 11:34 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Haha, finally, a great update! I've been waiting for this (had the site bookmarked for quite some time now). Brains? Hmmm, did you inherit any piggy memories? Or did the alcohol kill off the spirit of Porky?
Filipinos have a great recipe for pig brains - brain omelet. Clean the brain throroughly (remove the clear skin/sac around it). Saute minced garlic in some oil until golden brown, add the brains and fry for about 3-4 minutes. Remove from pan and let cool. Whisk two eggs and add the cooled brain and fry in batches in a pan (like a pancake). It's a favorite lunch side dish.
Hi Weird Meat,
I stumbled onto your site from another blogger, and was enjoying your blogs a lot. I think I have had 95% of the weird food you listed; I simply don't eat dogs/ horses because of my very friendly relationship with their communities =D I just want to recommend another site to you: Cha Xiu Bao. The blogger is a native Hong Kong'er and his blogs are one of the best I have seen so far. He does not focus on weird meat per se (and actually a lot of them are gourmet food), but his recent visit to China has a lot of interesting food that you would probably considered as weird. If you go to his site, and go to the link call "Eating in China", Cha Xiu Bao has some good blogs about different places across China (and they are all in English!)
Don't forget to go to his Flickr photo streams. He has tons of pictures, some of them uploaded without inlcuded in his blogs (probably limited time to do the write up).
I hope you will enjoy his sites and may be go to some places that he posted. I would be interested to see whether you have a different opinion compared to him. Here is the link:
http://www.chaxiubao.typepad.com/
I have already bookmarked your site as I truly enjoyed it. Is there a RSS feed in your site?
I hope you continue to enjoy your weird meat experience and enlight readers like myself!
Chow!
kobetobiko
I added your link to my site www.internetfluff.com (under weird websites) hope you give a link back if possible. thats some very weird stuff your eating, i dont think i would have the stomach for half of it. great site with a great name!
I was reading a label of Armour pigs brains one day in the grocery store. One serving had 1100% of the USDA recommended allowance. That's 11 DAYS worth of artery clogging goodness per serving. No wonder our great great grandparents only lived into their 50s.
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