Brain Food – For the Brave

Pig brains used to be a popular food for Chinese. The practice has died out more or less, but I thought it would be nice to have a record of how traditional Double-Boiled Pig Brain Soup is made. And also Pig Brain Omelette, which is the photo on the left. Doesn't look too bad, does it? The other photos, however, are a bit gruesome, to be honest. So, if you're squeamish, you should not read this post. Did you get that? Repeat:

GO AWAY IF YOU'RE SQUEAMISH!

This post is for those who are brave, or those who have a bit of Hannibal in them. If you think you're one of them, please continue reading. Or come back later if you just ate.

Don't blame me if you're going 'Aaaaargh!' or 'Eeeeew!' I did warn you. This is what a pig's raw brain looks like. What did you expect? See the bit of bone fragment on the left? Nice, eh?

I don't know if other tribes eat the membrane surrounding the brain but my tribe – 'Ooonga oonga!' – doesn't. To remove the blood vessels, you stick a toothpick into the web, then twirl. All the red stuff would wind itself around the toothpick.

This is what it looks like after it's done. The twirling takes a couple of minutes.

After a thorough rinse, the brain is ready for the pot. Yes, it's soft, and slimy after it's washed.

Make a double-boiled soup with some lean pork and Chinese herbs such as ginseng, dang gui or cordyceps. Add a couple of Chinese dried dates for sweetness.

Or make an omelette, which doesn't look scary at all. No one would know what's in it unless you tell them. The brain doesn't taste nasty, just soft and creamy. If you say it's beancurd, it's totally plausible.

Judging from the price – 50 cents each – I guess the brain isn't the most treasured part of the pig now. In the old days, they were extremely popular around exam time. My mother had to go to the market early in the morning to make sure she got one. Like many other Chinese mothers, she believed pig brains improved intelligence, and ginseng provided an energy boost. So, I had double-boiled brain and ginseng soup faithfully waiting for me once or twice a week, just before going to bed. Only when school exams loomed, mind you, to make sure I scored well. Rest of the time, we had Pig Brain Omelette occasionally on Sundays. It was a treat, believe it or not, and the 'brainy' bits were the most coveted. Ah yes, those were the days . . . .

DOUBLED-BOILED PIG BRAIN SOUP (Recipe for 1 person) 8 slices dang gui, or 15 slices American ginseng 1 pig brain, cleaned as described above 100 g lean pork, rinsed 2 Chinese dried red dates, rinsed Put all ingredients in a small bowl or ramekin that can hold 300 ml (1¼ cups). Add ½ cup water. Cover the bowl or ramekin, with aluminium foil if it doesn't have a proper cover. Double-boil with gently simmering water for 3 hours. If you like, remove the herbs and dates, which are not eaten. Serve hot. Typically, pig brain soup is taken just before going to bed so that it's not eaten with other stuff that might negate the benefits of the brain and herbs. Anything acidic such as oranges is a big no-no till the soup is digested and absorbed! As are salt and pepper in the soup for the same reason. PIG BRAIN OMELETTE (Recipe for 4 persons) 1 pig brain, cleaned as described above, and cut into small, bite size pieces 2 eggs 2 tsp light soya sauce couple of dashes ground white pepper ½ tsp Shaoxing wine small pinch of sugar 3 tsp vegetable oil 1 tbsp roughly chopped Chinese parsley I like to add 1 tbsp milk/water/stock per egg when making omelettes but not for a 'brainy omelette' because there's quite a bit of water in the crevices. Beat all ingredients except oil and Chinese parsley till thoroughly combined. Heat wok or frying pan (18 cm would be just right) till very hot. Add 2 tsp oil and heat till almost smoking. Add egg mixture. Fry over medium heat till bottom is lightly golden, pushing edges to the middle so that the omelette cooks evenly. When eggs are 75% set, cut omelette into 4 pieces with a spatula. Turn each piece over. Add Chinese parsley. Drizzle with 1 tsp oil. Fry till the second side is also lightly golden brown. Plate and serve

Thai Basil Chicken

Why are fat people fat?

The finger has pointed at sugar, carbs, fat, high-fructose corn syrup, metabolic rate, genes, not having breakfast, having a heavy dinner, having a late dinner, some virus (!), fast food, packaged food, soft drinks, portion sizes, depression, boredom, childhood obesity, hormones, mixing with other fat people, lack of information, lack of education, lack of exercise, lack of will power, etc, etc.

Anything and everything under the sun that can be blamed has been.

The most bizarre reason cited for obesity, I think, is poverty. Poor people can't afford foods which are not fattening and hence, they have to eat foods which make them fat. To me, this argument is utter rubbish. It's not difficult to eat well and eat cheaply. Fruits and vegetables can be dirt cheap. It depends on which ones you go for. So are chicken and pork, especially if you buy frozen. Eggs cost next to nothing. A piece of beef tenderloin may be expensive, but certainly not minced beef.

Good, nutritious ingredients are much cheaper than the fast, convenient crap that poor people get fat on.

So why don't they go for the healthier and cheaper option?

This is where the fat-and-poor brigade wheel out their second argument. They say they have to work all the time – they're poor, remember? – so they have no time to cook. Never mind that poor people in the past cooked all the time.

Modern, "economically disadvantaged" folks are too busy to turn ingredients into something edible. Again, utter rubbish.

The recipe I'm sharing today, Thai Basil Chicken, takes three minutes to prep and cook. THREE MINUTES! Queuing at a burger joint or hawker centre takes longer than three minutes around meal time! Hang on, just getting there takes longer than three minutes! I would have cooked, eaten and washed up whilst the poverty stricken, oh-so-busy fat slob is still waiting for his greasy grub.

Eaten with rice, Thai Basil Chicken isn't a balanced meal but neither is a cheeseburger or chicken rice. It's cheaper though, besides having a lot less fat, and no chemical additives or msg. And it's lip smacking good, or aroy mak mak in Thai.

To turn the three-minute job into a balanced meal, all that's needed is some veggies. Which would take another five minutes, blanched or stir fried. A cheap, healthy, balanced meal in eight minutes. How often do you get served in eight minutes when you eat out?

THAI BASIL CHICKEN (PAD KRAPOW/HORAPA GAI) (Recipe for 4 persons) 1½ tbsp vegetable oil 4 cloves garlic, peel and mince 4 chilli padis, rinse and chop roughly 350 g coarsely minced chicken legs 4 tsp fish sauce ½ tsp dark soya sauce 50 g Thai holy (krapow) or sweet (horapa) basil, rinsed Make sure windows in your kitchen are open! Heat wok till very hot. Add oil and heat till almost smoking. Add garlic and chillies. Stir till garlic is lightly golden over high heat. Add chicken. Stir till colour changes and chicken is cooked. Add fish sauce and dark soya sauce. Mix well and stir till fish sauce is fragrant. Taste and adjust seasoning if necessary. Add basil leaves. Stir till leaves are wilted. Turn off heat. Plate and serve.

Sesame #$!☠&☠^♠‡!!! Balls

I tried making sesame balls last Saturday. You know, 煎堆, those deep fried glutinous rice balls coated with white sesame seeds. Thought it should be quite straight forward. Make a dough with glutinous rice flour, plus a bit of rice flour and sugar. Roll into little balls. Wrap with peanut butter (a stand-in for more traditional stuff like red bean paste). Dredge in white sesame seeds. Deep-fry over low heat. Easy peasy.

So, the little balls were deep-frying away when I noticed that they were going from round to pear shaped. That meant the balls weren't heating up and expanding evenly. Which was a bad sign but I didn't know at the time 'cause it was my first time making sesame balls. Suddenly, 'KABOOM!' One of the sesame balls exploded three feet into the air and shot out of the pot . . . . Ok, I exaggerate. A sesame ball did jump out but it was more like a dull 'boom!' Still, there was hot oil on my right hand. 'Aaaaargh!' I dropped the spatula immediately, turned off the stove, and darted to the tap. As I rinsed my hand, two more sesame balls exploded spectacularly, shooting out of the pot like cannon balls. I made another dash, this time to the freezer for some ice to put on my poor hand. My face was hit as well but it didn't feel as bad as the hand which had been next to the pot. I guess the oil had time to cool down a bit as it flew through the air towards my face. (Or maybe the skin on my face is really thick?)

Soothed and calmed by the ice, I surveyed the kitchen through my oil speckled glasses. There was oil everywhere on the floor and walls. The ceiling was spared but 'ground zero', the top of the stove, had a big puddle of oil. There were bits of peanut butter and white specks of flour here and there. #$!☠&☠^♠‡!!! I got some ointment for burns from the first aid box, grabbed an ice cold coke from the fridge, and scooted out of the disaster zone.

Safe in the living room, I started googling 'exploding rice balls'. Yup, these culinary missiles had attacked and claimed many victims before. A lot of unwary kitchen warriors, like me, had been caught by surprise. The enemy came out of nowhere; we had no time to run or hide.

An hour later, my hand stopped burning as the ointment took effect. I went back to the kitchen to clean up, thinking I should call it a day. There were fragments of Sesame Ball on the counter top, actually looking quite good with just the right shade of golden brown. From a solid little lump, the dough had expanded into a ball with a hollow in the middle, before detonating and exploding into fragments. I popped one of said fragments in my mouth . . . . Hey, it's good! It was still crisp after my hour-long recuperation, and it wasn't oily. If only it hadn't exploded, it would have been perfect.

Believe it or not, I decided to have another go after tasting the fragment of sesame ball. I almost succeeded, I thought. I figured the rice balls exploded because there wasn't enough oil, the oil was too hot, I wasn't stirring enough, or all of the above. All I had to do was add more oil (stop stinging!), keep the temperature really low, and stir more. In went the remaining raw rice balls, and . . . . out came the hot oil onto my hand. My right hand, again. 'Aaaaargh!'

Surrender? Hell no.

I tried again the next day. This time, I had a towel draped over my right hand! Plus a different recipe which mixed boiled, cooked dough with raw dough, and used only glutinous rice flour, without adding rice flour. The balls still exploded, but they stayed in the pot instead of blowing up completely. Hey, that's an improvement!

The fourth attempt was a combination of the first two recipes. A mix of raw and cooked dough, that was made with rice flour and glutinous rice flour. And the balls were wrapped with an air pocket inside instead of without. The results are what you see in the photos. Not too shabby, I think, even though they were little ones around 6 cm wide. Did you know those made by pros are as big as footballs? Like this one:



Notice the oil is so hot it's smoking? Yet the rice ball doesn't explode. If it did, it would really have gone 'KABOOM!' I might try making one that big one day . . . but only after I put on the protective gear worn by people who clear landmines!

Check these out:

Dry Chicken Curry	Roast Chicken with Mixed Herbs	Soya Sauce Chicken	Thai Basil Chicken

SESAME BALLS (煎堆) (Recipe for 32 pieces) 240 glutinous rice flour 40 g rice flour 4 tbsp sugar (or 6 tbsp if not using filling) ¼ cup white sesame seeds, placed in a bowl for dredging 150 g filling, e.g. red bean paste or lotus seed paste, optional vegetable oil for deep-frying Stir rice flour and glutinous rice flour till evenly mixed. Dissolve sugar in 140 ml hot water, stirring till water is warm, not hot. Add to flour. Mix well. Gather 85 g of wet dough (some flour would still be dry). Make into small discs. Cook in boiling water till floating. Mix with raw dough whilst still hot but cool enough to handle. Knead till evenly mixed. If necessary, add a bit more warm water or glutinous rice flour so that dough is not too dry or too sticky. Roll into a ball and set aside, covered, for 10 minutes. This allows the flour to fully absorb the water added. Divide dough into 32 pieces. Roll each piece into a ball. Keeping balls not working on covered, fill with chosen filling, around 1 tsp, as in this video: Make sure there's air in the dough, i.e. don't wrap dough tightly round filling. If there's no filling, it would be just an air pocket inside the dough. Dredge filled rice balls in white sesame seeds. If rice balls are dry, dunk quickly in water or pat surface with a bit of water before dredging. Press gently so that sesame seeds stick well. In a pot or wok, add enough oil to cover sesame balls, about 4 cm deep. Heat till oil is moderately hot. Test by putting an uncoated wooden chopstick in the oil. If there's no reaction, wait a few more seconds. If there's rapid sizzling and big bubbles, turn off heat to let oil cool down slightly. If there're small bubbles and gentle sizzling around the chopstick, the oil is just right. Reduce heat to very low. For gas stoves, the flame should be slightly flickering or just steady. Add glutinous rice balls, not too many so that all can move around freely. Fry till Sesame Balls start floating, gently pressing any that doesn't expand evenly to get a round shape, with a spatula against the wok/pot or another spatula. After rice balls start floating, increase heat to medium. (If the heat is too low at this stage, rice balls would be too soft and chewy inside.) Sizzling should increase from slow to moderate speed, but not too rapid. Stir gently to ensure even browning. Keep stirring and frying till rice balls are golden brown, about 10 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon to drain on paper towels and cool down. Serve.

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