Whose the brains in this outfit ?

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moikel

Master of the Pit
Original poster
OTBS Member
Jul 26, 2011
3,198
218
Sydney &Greenwell Point Australia
Just back from Hong Kong & reading  a magazine article about the disappearing dishes of Hong Kong.No detailed recipes just narrative & what restaurants still serve them.Walked straight past one of the restaurants little hole in the wall but it had a line up.Next time.

Anyway theres this dish thats nuggets of pigs brain that are wrapped in caul fat thats been marinated in rose wine,white pepper,other bits. You then deep fry it.I would put an acidic citrus sauce with it to cut the richness or that black vinegar dipping stuff.

I eat lambs brains already & I dig the pig , so maybe match it up with some watercress,or other bitter greens in a salad.

If you wandered into this section by accident its going to be a bit confronting but it takes all kinds.

I will have to track down pigs brains in the New Year,going to the coast for 3 weeks.

Any interest?
 
I for one would like to hear of your adventures.

We recently had our customer appreciation dinner at my favorite Basque Hotel, and the blood sausage was excellent.  Daughter Cathy and Mom, Margaret made the sausage this year as my buddy Fermin has passed.  Excellent stuff.

When he made  this each year, he would save some of the brains from the hog heads.  He would use the brains in a Spanish style omelette and it was wonderful!  Strangely I think they call it a tortilla which means something very different in my part of the world.

As always, keep us posted!

Good luck and good smoking.
 
Blood sausage has had a revival here,the Spanish /South American morcilla is my preferred version. German one has too much fat. Very popular with our ever increasing Irish community,there was  a long history of migration convict,political prisoner & free settler in this country. Now its all economic,lot of construction workers. They love that Belfast fry,eggs bacon,black pudding,tomato,potato cake.

The Irish happily eat the morcilla in place of their version.
 
Blood sausage has had a revival here,the Spanish /South American morcilla is my preferred version. German one has too much fat.

It must be a regional thing, the German blood sausage I make dose not have that much fat in it

As for the UK black pudding  I am doing 400 lbs a week, out of the six recipes I have (UK) the Scottish one is the worse for fat content

Very popular with our ever increasing Irish community,there was  a long history of migration convict,political prisoner & free settler in this country. Now its all economic,lot of construction workers. They love that Belfast fry,eggs bacon,black pudding,tomato,potato cake.

The Irish happily eat the morcilla in place of their version.
As for a good fry up breakfast the only thing missing off the plate was the fried bread

 
I will do it in a couple of weeks.I cant get those ingredients in the little coastal village where my holiday house is.It just sounds really clever to me as an idea.I do love caul fat to wrap things in,I am thinking sort of a pile of bite size bits with some pickled veg on the side or with a salad of bitter leaves.

I dont have a recipe only an outline but that has never stopped me before
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Brican thats a great looking plate! I eat black pudding as a treat for breakfast or on St Patricks day. The big company stuff here isnt to my taste, but the little guy stuff here is by Rodriguez brothers who are Argentinian or Black Forest meats who are German. I wish I had your shop in my 'hood.

I also like the combination of black pudding with scallop,grilled then drizzled sherry vinegar,EVO,little julienned apple & radish on top. Very sexy.
 
As for a good fry up breakfast the only thing missing off the plate was the fried bread

add the fried bread and lose the tomato!!

and I think I hate you right now... haven't been able to source black pudding down in Florida yet (although I haven't tried much beyond my local area). Used to get the canadian version back in New Hampshire but its a bit far to go to get it now!!

I fancy a fry up now!
 
Very interesting indeed. I grew up on fried pork brains and scrambled eggs - do you know how hard they are to find even here. Brican, that plate looks outstanding and I don't need the bread! Of course when I mention fried pork brains, the SO just cringes!!!!!
 
I am back from that great Aussie tradition of the summer break on the coast. Ate a stupid amount of oysters & other seafood ,went fishing drank to much you get the idea. My neighbour sold 800 dozen oysters on the 24th December in a town of 1200 people + tourists!

Not a lot of call for pig brains in that neck of the woods! Now that I  am back in Australia's largest city I will get on it.Give me a day or 2 to sort things out. 
 
No brains on my first trip to Chinatown for a drought breaking "real" Chinese meal.BUT I did find ears which I remember posting about somewhere once before.

When I say real I mean the big city chinese not the stuck in a chow mein time warp stuff I ate down the coast.

Anyway the original article was by Janice Leung in Gourmet magazine here, I have an out line & a plan I just need pigs brains.How hard can that be
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Here it was lambs brains,used to come 6 to a tub in the butchers but you just dont see it much anymore.They were dipped in egg & breadcrumbs & fried.You see it in some restaurants that are part of the nose to tail school. I think a lot of our offal gets shipped O/S Europe or Asia.

Pig brains proving a little difficult to find heading to chinese side of town shortly.
 
When I was a kid, my Portuguese Grandfather would eat a large (1 1/4"dia) black sausage with pine nuts, raisins, and small cubes of fork fat in it. I was sliced 1/2" thick and fried till crispy on both sides. Does that ring a bell with anyone?
 
Got it covered. Linguica theres an Italian version that old folks talk about. I understand it to be from the south,Calabria /Sicily made as a sausage or a torte (cake) . Arab influences in Sicily & other parts of Europe explains the pine nuts & raisins. 

There are 46,000 people in a line of 3 suburbs just over the way from me who list Portugal as their birthplace you can add Brazilians to that number. The people from Brazil not the people with the waxing.
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The butcher shops have the black sausage,I will rummage around when I head up there for chorizo. Only the old folks buy it.

The torte is called sanguinaccio & is actually a desert!Go figure. Gone out of fashion with the Italians here bit tricky in our climate.

I have a bunch of recipes for black pudding from a french cookbook called Pork & sons its about 3 generations of butchers who specialize in pork in a town called Saint -Ageve a mountain town.Its a great book.

If you want to see something let me know,maybe black pudding with autumn fruits  & calvados or as a tart with apple,potato & fennel .

HOT here now record breaking 46c yesterday so it wont be for a while,more a cool climate dish.
 
Got it covered. Linguica theres an Italian version that old folks talk about. I understand it to be from the south,Calabria /Sicily made as a sausage or a torte (cake) . Arab influences in Sicily & other parts of Europe explains the pine nuts & raisins. 

There are 46,000 people in a line of 3 suburbs just over the way from me who list Portugal as their birthplace you can add Brazilians to that number. The people from Brazil not the people with the waxing.
laugh1.gif


The butcher shops have the black sausage,I will rummage around when I head up there for chorizo. Only the old folks buy it.

The torte is called sanguinaccio & is actually a desert!Go figure. Gone out of fashion with the Italians here bit tricky in our climate.

I have a bunch of recipes for black pudding from a french cookbook called Pork & sons its about 3 generations of butchers who specialize in pork in a town called Saint -Ageve a mountain town.Its a great book.

If you want to see something let me know,maybe black pudding with autumn fruits  & calvados or as a tart with apple,potato & fennel .

HOT here now record breaking 46c yesterday so it wont be for a while,more a cool climate dish.
Thanks Moikel, that makes perfect sense, I vaguely remember Grandpa referring to it as "blood pudding" but the only thing even close to it around here is "blood sausage" which does not have pine nuts or raisins. After I learned the ingredients I wouldn't eat it for about 30 years. Tried blood sausage a few years ago, not too bad.
 
My family didnt eat it when I was young .But later on I saw people having different versions like Brican did in that mega breakfast plate,mostly people with a British /Irish background.

I figure its like a lot of things theres regional versions & variations.Again its all about wasting nothing but the squeal when you butcher a pig.

I will ask the portuguese butcher about the raisins/pine nuts version next time I am up there.
 
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