I ate brains for science, actually I did it for the quality of the experience.
We all met up at Amanda’s house to combine our knowledge and cook our brains.
I read about eating brains and discovered there is a big difference of opinion about whether they are good to eat or not. Some people love them, some people can’t stand them, for example Matt T.
I questioned him on his total dislike before even trying them and his response was a common one. It was the thought of eating brains not really anything to do with brains actually tasting bad. Even though the others in our group could not think of any reason to dislike them, no one including myself found any pleasure in the ‘thought’ of eating brains.
Zombie movies don’t help with this thought nor do ancient beliefs and rituals that make the eating of things like brains, an unusual act.
From my previous research I had built up an idea of what brains must taste like based on other people’s description of the flavour and texture. I imagined the smell to be quite off putting but it was not the case in reality.
Numerous people online commented on how lovely and creamy brains were. This didn’t make sense to me as I have never associated any type of meat with creamy, but I now understand what they meant. I do not think anyone could have described this aspect of how brains taste without trying it for myself.
We chose to explore cooking and eating brains from an interdisciplinary framework. We each contributed food items to put with the brains and supplied utensils to prepare and cook the brains in different ways based on our roles and group discussion.
I chose to soak in vinegar then crumb half of mine, then the rest went into a curry made from coconut milk and turmeric. Both these options I thought would taste amazing and would not put anyone off trying them for the first time. I thought that cooking them in a familiar way would help people to associate it with food they know tastes good and feel good about, even though they were still eating brains. Most people enjoy crispy fried chicken and a curry right?
After discussing with others about the ingredients they bought and why, I decided to alter what I was using. Kento had some lemon and parsley that I thought would add a zing to my dish and Amanda had parmesan that I thought would work nicely mixed with my panko breadcrumbs.
I liked being able to discuss options and ideas with others and in my opinion it made for a much better outcome when this occured.
At times I think we worked more cross-disciplinary but after cooking together experimentally and tasting brains cooked in different ways, we all discovered that there was nothing wrong with the taste of brains, it was all about the thought of eating brains that just made us feel a bit weird.
We all seemed to agree that crumbing the brains like Matt H and I did was the best tasting and least weird way of eating them. Probably because of their likeness to chicken nuggets and similar taste to crumbed mushrooms. Poaching them before crumbing them like Matt H did in his approach, worked the best. The underlying thought of the group was if we were to do this again then this process gave us the best tasting brains with good plate appeal to help overcome some of the bad connotations that eating brains has.
