Cooking With Frank: Zombies & Brains...Oh My

It’s no secret we love Zombies…or rather hate them, depending on your view. Ever play Rise of Nightmares? It's one of our favourite XBox games...

We are a fan of The Zombie Apocolypse theory, and the humour surrounding religion & zombieism. Not sure exactly what we are talking about? New to the Zombie Apocalypse? Check out our blog entry from Easter to get a better idea, at least one side of it.

We wanted to inject a little humour this weekend into the blog so we dug up an Epic Meal Time episode for you.

Epic Meal Time, by the way, on normal non-zombie days, is a disgusting gluttonous YouTube show that celebrates meat, drinking, and high calories, most notably bacon... which is in almost every episode. They aired the first time on YouTube a year ago on Monday (October 17th) actually. We first heard about it from our friend The Pup (for those of you who've been here on the blog awhile, and know who he is, we have not seen him since the spring:-/)

Anywho, this Epic Meal Time is about brains…with zombies, of course.

This episode, on the home front, obviously promted The Boyfriend to ask if we had ever eaten brains.

You know the answer.

We wish.

We’re no slouch when it comes to the internal organs of animals (a collective of meats commonly referred to as "offal")…we don’t like kidneys much, or most liver, the slightly grainy texture doesn’t please our palate so well…the only exception being a nice liver pate (there are several varieties) or terrine; however, we have eaten, and enjoy eating, poultry gizzards (yum), animal hearts (beef, chicken/turkey, rabbit, goat), beef tongue, and almost any assortment of the animal most of general society would consider … unpleasant. (more info here: http://www.foodsubs.com/Meatvar.html). 
So why not brains?

We’ve come close though. We’ve eaten sweetbreads, which is a thymus gland of calves or lambs, and can be used interchangeably in recipes that call for brains. Fava beans & a nice Chianti would, in fact, a la Silence of the Lambs, be a lovely accompaniment to either brains, or sweetbreads ...but not human brains (ick...*wink*) or maybe brains sauteed in some butter and garlic on a nice multi-grain toast point lightly spread with a seasoned fava bean spread. Although fava beans take a long time to prepared from a non canned state, but would likely make a nice hummus-type spread.

Sweetbreads have a texture very much siliar to animal fat, and are slightly creamy, and depending on how they are prepared are actually quite good (as indicated above)…just as we imagine brains to be. 

We’re not strange, if that’s what you are thinking (okay, maybe we are a little) but we’re also a trained cook, and as such have a duty (we feel) to explore as much of food as possible...ALSO, we grew up poor on a subsistence farm in the early 80's...waste not, want not.

Anyway. If that didn’t gross you out maybe this Epic Meal Time episode will…(honestly this is NOT their best episode, but it is humourous). They made some dishes using brains, looks like a casserole, some deep fried brains, brain sandwich...made us pretty hungry, actually.

Mmmm....brains...

Brains not your thing, really?
How about other stuff? How about bone marrow? Tail? 
Interested in culinary exploration?

There is a restaurant in London that is on our wish list to visit, it's called St. Johns ...check out the menu: http://www.stjohnrestaurant.com/menu/supper/ - they've got glorious things like 'Pig's Head, Radish & Whitebeans' and 'Ox Liver & Beetroot' among other things.

Fergus Henderson, most notably, has written a couple of glorious cookbooks on using every part of the animal (The Whole Beat: Nose to Tail Eating & Beyond Nose to Tail: More Omnivorous Recipes for the Adventurous Cook).

Check out Chris Cosentio (http://www.foodnetwork.com/chris-cosentino/bio/index.html), a Food Network cook known for his use of offal (organ meats), who also has a blog/website called Offal Good (http://www.offalgood.com/) where he takes a no-nonsense approach to meat. What can we say, we love the honest approach.

...And if none of any of it gross you out we can probably come up with some other ways to do it.

Hopefully what it did in today's entry was entertain you AND open up your mind (*giggles*) to the possibilities of food exploration.

Now...we have to go have some lunch.