We've passed the stand a dozen times and inspected its meat no less than that. Despite Annie's warning not to eat meat in Delhi the bloody, mushy sheep's brain that rests in that pan like a tray of brownies keeps calling out to us. It may be fresh, it may not...how does one tell when brain has passed its prime? The place (read - stall on side of road) is crowded: a good sign. However, we have not seen any one person actually consume the brain before us. Still, with Leigh's interest and Genna's encouragement we decide that it is only appropriate that we consume the craziest thing we can find. Order up.
When he pulls the lobes from the pan we are shocked by how much they looked like ridged pink globules of mucus. He sit on the pan and promptly minces it to look somewhat like gooey ground beef. To this he adds red stuff, green stuff, yellow stuff and a dash of some other stuff. And while everything else the man cooks takes less than two minutes, our special order seems to require similarly special preparation.
When the hippocampus (Rob, correct me if you will) reaches the desired doneness (looks rare to me) the still partial liquid is scooped over the wok's edge and into our foil bowl. The man splunked two miniature spoons like those tasters you get at Baskin Robbins into our cranial feast and handed it over. With apprehension we each dove in. Spicy, liquidy, solidy, brainy...deliciousness. But it needs something.
We spend the next 10 minutes, tin of steaming brain in hand, looking for the perfect compatriates to this incomplete meal. Down one alley we travel until we find the chapati maker scooping hot rounds from the tandoori. Up another alley we find the man with the final touch: curd. Our picnic is complete.
Back at our confusing Korean filled "hotel", we dig into our loosely compiled dinner. A crazy brainy burrito topped with paneer and onion...how cerebral. A cup of chai and a few cookies from the bakery today and our culinary extravaganza is complete...for today.
In other news, we are back in Delhi soon to head to Agra and Varanasi. We do our best to evade the Indian men trying to sell us rickshaw after bracelet after cigarettes after their first born child. We drink tea in teal walled homes discovered down dead-ended alleys. We lie about our Indian experience to the tourist counters. And we strictly refuse to go to Rajasthan. Oh yes, and we will be loitering around this place for another month as Kenyans have yet to decided whether they would like to stop killing each other. Bummer. Oh well, India is bright, delicious and odiferous and there's much more of it to see, taste and smell.
1 comment:
Cerebral huh? :) The hippocampus is a great indicator if one prefers their brain medium rare, because it is located in telencephalon, near the surface of the brain. Another way to know your sheep brain is done is look at the lateral temporal regions, namely the rhinal sulcus, and stick your nose near the sheep brain to judge whether the steam is F-Emeril.
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