Lamb Brain Salad

Many of you might be disgusted with the idea of touching, cooking & eating brains.  The first thing that comes to mind is “yuck!”  Do not be too quick to judge! We all have different background, especially food wise; many cultures like the Middle East, Latin America & some countries in Europe eat animal brains and other part as delicacy.  Let’s compare it to eating caviar “fish eggs” and depending on the brand, it can be pretty expense.  In my case, I would rather eat brains than caviar.  To me caviar has no real texture and/or taste, plus it is cheaper purchase lamb brains. Again, this is just my point of view.  I do not mean to offend anyone especially vegetarians.

Eating any sort of animal insides such as liver, sweetbreads, heart, kidneys, spleen, tongue, might be disgusting, but they contain a lot of vitamins that you might not be aware of.  Animal brains are a good source Vitamin C along with several other vitamins that we do not know of commonly.  Again eating lamb should be an accrued taste and if you are not afraid, it should be something you should try.  Touching, cooking and or eating these animal parts does not gross me out, because my grand father was butcher and my father is a butcher and at times I can be butcher as well.  Basically, I grew up with lamb, beef, veal & chicken in my life and my diet.

The most known way in Turkey to prepare lamb brains is to poach them; poaching simply meanings cooking in boiling water. I prepared my dish with a recipe my dad gave me and added a few other ingredients. 

Ingredients

• 4 lamb brains
• 2 whole lemons (1 1/2 juiced, 1/2 sliced)
• 2 bay leaves
• 2-3 cloves of garlic
• 2 tablespoon of olive oil
• 2 teaspoons of kosher salt
• 4 eggs (hard boiled)
• 1/2 cup of chopped parsley
• 1 pan of water for boiling the brains

Preparation

1. Wash the brain under running cold water.
2. Fill a cooking pot with cold water, place the brains, add in the bay leaves, garlic cloves, salt, 1/2 sliced lemons, 1/2 of lemon juice and let this come up to a boil. (approx 20 min) 
3. Once the water beings to boil, the brains will turn into a grayish color.  Pock one of the brains with a fork, if the fork goes in and out smoothly, that means the brains are cooked. (additional 8 – 10 min.)
4. In another pot, hard boil the 4 eggs and drain and set aside to cool.
5. One the brain is cooked, drain the water and set a side to cool for about 5 – 10 min.  Once cooled, begin slicing.  I sliced them into to 4 pieces and plated.  Do this for the remainder of the brains.
6. Remove the shells from the hard boiled eggs and slice them and placed them along the side plated brains.
7. Pour the remainder of the lemon juice and the olive oil over the brains.  The more the lemon juice the better the taste.  Sprinkle the chopped parsley over and add a bit more salt & black pepper if you like.
8. Serve cold  & Enjoy!  

Here is another posting that I found you might like, a well known celebrity chef also like to include lamb brians into his menu: “Brain food: Mario Batali’s lamb’s brains ravioli”

Fresh lamb brains and many other meats can be purchased at A&D Turkish Halal Meat Market, all meats are HALAL & fresh.  

 

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