Mama K

Reflective Statement

By Matthew Hart (http://thecaptainunderpantsconspiracy.tumblr.com/)

I found this project exciting as I had to do something which I had never done before and I ever thought i would do. Never in a million years did I think I was going to eat lamb brains or even brain for the matter.

I was placed in Group 6 with Amanda, Aaron, Matt V and Kento and was given the Practical role. I think our team worked well together as we all bought new and unique ideas to the table in an interdisciplinary way of what we were going to present for this assessment. We came up for the idea of the project being food based after one lesson where we were all hungry for the up and coming lunch. Then we listed food which we have not eaten or cooked before and brains were the lucky choice.

Being the practical person, I was originally nervous that I was going to cook everyone's meal as i cannot cook for the life of me but I was relieved when everyone in my group was going to cook their own dish. My research consisted of looking at the physical structure of the lamb brain and relating it to other meats to see what would be the best way of cooking it. The brain was quite crumbly so i boiled it to keep it together better for any further cooking. Frying seemed to be the most efficient way of making tasty brain nuggets so i went with that.

Being the Practical person, I felt obliged to edit and create the video presentation for the class this morning as it was a part of my role to the group. I'm really proud of my group for even tasting the brain monstrosities that we created and for having a little taste (even you Matt V). It was awesome to see the interdisciplinary methods and ideas from all of us when creating our meals.

i think I could have done a bit more research than I did but I found it quite difficult to find information online about eating brain (apart from the wide range of recipes). But I did find a bit of information about the overall structure of the lamb brain compared to other meats for the purpose of digestion.

A Piece of Mind

by Mama-K

Reflective Statement

by Atomic Sloth

This assignment was a lot of fun. For me, it was a challenge to focus on the process, rather than the outcome, as I am normally inclined to do.

Being given the role of theorist was also something that I initially struggled with. Research is something that I can do, but don’t particularly enjoy. I prefer the qualitative or practical role. However, I took on the challenge with gusto, and I’m glad I did, as I have learned so much about looking outside the box and finding the unexpected.

We as a group tried to work within the interdisciplinary framework. What I discovered is that it is not easy integrating many different viewpoints, especially in a gastronomical sense. I think that my theoretical views were the hardest to incorporate, as I was seeking something more than taste and texture from my little lambs brain.

But I believe that I managed to stick to my role more than my fellow team members. Our subject meant that it was hard for most of them to stay in character and explore the cooking of the brain from the point of view they had been prescribed, simply because they couldn’t get past the grossness of having to consume such an unpalatable piece of meat.

Having so many other intense projects on at the same time meant that it was hard to find quality time with my group members. However, all things considered I think we did a good job in discovering new knowledge in an area previously unknown to all of us.

Brain Signals

by Atomic Sloth

Mama K came, cooked and tasted the delectable brain. Four out of five members of our group decided that frying was the way to go, and focused on achieving something that was palatable to the tastebuds.

I was the only one who ventured to seek something more from this experiment. I wanted to extract the knowledge and vitality from my tiny lambs brain, and pass it on to the consumer.

As mentioned in my previous posts, I intended to halve the brain, juicing one part and adding red food colour to make it more appealing. The other half I was to steam and dye an exciting yellow. However, on the day, my eyes wandered, and landed on my rarely used teapot.

Lambs brains are tiny. And to chop it into two seemed to make little sense. I also feared that, if I was to dismember the brain, I may unwittingly wipe away the complete compendium of knowledge and life force that it contains.

Thus, I added my brain from my sacrificial lamb into the teapot sieve, which fit perfectly as as if it was made for this very purpose.

I theorised that, if steaming edibles was suppose to keep all the goodness in as it stews in its own juices, then soaking the knowledge and vitality in a pot of hot water should do the same. 

But first, I injected the brain with yellow food colouring to make it look more inviting to taste. The brain didn’t swell as I expected it to, which makes me wonder if it was unable to take on any new content, as it was now a brain without a host to help it process new things.

As I plopped my now yellow brain into the teapot, I remembered my research on improving taste, and the concept of umami. So to my steeping mixture, I added a handful of anchovies, which is a harbinger of this unique gustatory dimension.

LIFE AFTER DEATH

My team members all expressed the opinion that what I was doing was “way out there” - whatever that means. And, as I suspect most theorists experience in their lifetimes, I feel that my concept was not taken seriously, and that I was seen as being “out there” for being “out there’s” sake.

But let’s take a step back. What happens to us when we die? We’ve all heard of the fact that energy consists of atoms and that these atoms never cease existing. Therefore, doesn’t that mean that we live on in some way or form?

Biocentrism is the “notion that life does not end when the body dies and can last forever.” (Lemind, 2013).

A theory devised by scientist Robert Lanza (n.d.), Lemind (2013) explains that “the theory implies that death simply does not exist. It is an illusion which arises in the minds of people. It exists because people identify themselves with their body. They believe that the body is going to perish, sooner or later, thinking that their consciousness will disappear too. In fact, consciousness exists outside of constraints of time and space. It is able to be anywhere: in the human body and outside of it. That fits well with the basic postulates of quantum mechanics, according to which a certain particle can be present anywhere and an event can happen in several, sometimes countless, ways.”

So once something dies and they are released of the illusions that the mind creates, one could argue that the consciousness still exists within the remains, and elsewhere, and therefore could be extracted and passed onto others. The fact that the brain, or any other remains, do not cease to be made from the very DNA that is unique to that individual or being, also gives thought that we do exist beyond the living, breathing versions of our self.

Thus, through steeping the brain in water, the lambs consciousness and life force must transfer into the liquid, which then can be ingested and taken on by a new physical host.

RESULTS

After brewing the tiny brain and the accompanying anchovies for 10 minutes, I used a turkey baster to transfer the liquid containing the four legged creatures life force onto a baking dish lined with paper towels.

When time came to taste each others attempt at preparing brains, my dish stood out as being the most unconventional.

After tasting all the other dishes - in which it was decided that the crumbed dishes won hands down for taste - we came to my experiment. Everyone received a small tear of paper towel to suck on, and absorb the life and knowledge of my lamb.

Consensus was that it tasted of nothing, smelt funky and most wouldn’t be moved to try it again.

I would like to contend that my peers were all too focused on the gastronomic value of the lamb, and not on the energy or effect that my little slices of lamb spirit may of had on their bodies and mind. 

For I certainly noticed a difference. Within minutes I became more tired than I had ever been in my life. I couldn’t stop yawning, and all I wanted to do was faint and sleep under the covers of my warm bed. 

I believe that the spirit of the very young lamb entered my soul, and made me yearn for the safety and security of my bed, just as the lamb would have yearned for its mother.

I don’t believe that the methods used by the others to cook the brain would have retained any of the lambs consciousness, as the over cooking would have killed it, or at least reduced it to the point of being impure and unrecognisable.

REFERENCES

Lanza, R. (n.d.). Does death exist? new theory says ‘no’. Retrieved from http://www.robertlanza.com/does-death-exist-new-theory-says-no-2/

Outcome analysis 

by Matthew Tarchutkin

Here I am after trying baby lamb brains, or should I say merely tasting them, alive to tell the story and analyse what went wrong and what didn’t.

First of all, we chose an interdisciplinary framework and decided to mix disciplines such as biology, philosophy, general ethics and culinary arts, obviously. Why? Interdisciply approach seems to be challenging enough to confront our beliefs yet not too hard to explore (like transdisciplinary), so we can’t even finish the project. It seems like the most obvious choice when taking pros and cons into account.

Set-up, cooking, probing

We decided to go an ala-Mythbusters way of setting up our 1-episode-long show.

Throwing out ideas, discussing them

Doing stuff, commenting along the way so the viewer wouldn’t lose track of where we’re at

Reflecting on the outcome

This sequence has proven to be successful over the years in a number of Tvs and online shows: “How it’s made”, “MKR”, “Pimp my ride”, “Junkyard Wars” and such. So it’s only logical to adopt it for our own show, which we successfully did.

Amanda kindly provided us with 2 cameras: GoPro for the time-lapse and a DSLR for everything else. It gave us a perfect opportunity to shoot those short commentaries during the cooking process.

First we explored ideas of either cooking together or separately, we stopped on the latter because then everyone would be able to realise their vision of a perfect brain-dish plus it would allow us to approach the same object from various sides, 5, to be precise.

We have also briefly discussed ethical issues of eating animal brains and though it doesn’t seem to be much different from eating regular meat (coming from the same source), I was not a fan of this activity, unlike everybody else. As I said it’s just an another part of an animal and, logically, if I don’t have any problems with eating meat, I shouldn’t have any with eating brains either. But logic is not the only thing coming into play when discussing such questions. So I broke down why I wouldn’t want to try animal brains and, on the other hand, why I probably should:

It looks disgusting

Notion of zombies eating brains in popular culture

Squishy meat repels me

Brain’s are nutritious

A new unique food I’ve never tried

What if I’ll like them?

Those points might not be very strong but that’s only because the conscious choice of trying brains or not was driven by emotions: just a thought of eating someone’s brains is not particularly appealing to me. But then again, this is a very experimental project, I might as well do it.

During the cooking process itself, I noticed that the cooking ways we discussed previously greatly differed from what was actually happening, I suspect it happens in most situations where there’s no previous experience with the subject. During the process, I was constantly questioning the members of my team as to why they were doing what they were doing in order to understand their reasoning. I was also paying attention to the tools they were using, the most used ones were pots and pans, since the majority of us decided to either boil or fry the brains (due to its resemblance to meat); also there seemed to be a great gap in cooking skills between older and younger members of the team, which is to be expected - but it didn’t seem to affect the outcome much since pretty conventional ways of cooking were chosen.

Amanda and I decided to go the experimental way and cook the brains they’re usually not meant to be cooked or mix some obscure ingredients together, in my case. Those ways could be explained and examined but not logically explained in a normal dish-cooking situation but since it’s a project with an aim of finding out something we don’t know and explore relationships between unusual things, we did exactly that.

I decided to make a dessert, through soaking brains in the coconut cream and later simmering the mass with custard. That’s not the most conventional way to make a dessert even if the brains are not included, but just for the sake of an experiment it had to be done.

Final outcome

We ended up with Matt H. and Aaron’s boiled and fried dishes, conveniently accompanied by a splash of Tobasco sauce; Kento’s omelette; Amanda’s paper towel blotters and my vomit-inducing mixture of brains and custard. The kicker is we had to try all of it.

Since I haven’t expressed a particular interest in trying our cooked-with-love brain dishes, I bit off a tiny bit, and that was more than enough for me to give a verdict to similar future cooking activities: never again.

But emotions aside, brains definitely have a potential of being a great dish, like anything else, if cooked properly and not by a bunch of people who did it as an experiment to gain ‘knowledge’. Half of the dishes looked great, since they were prepared using pretty straightforward methods and the other half was prepared with experimentation in mind.

References:

Post brain eating post

by Aaron Cleland

I ate brains for science, actually I did it for the quality of the experience.

We all met up at Amanda’s house to combine our knowledge and cook our brains.

I read about eating brains and discovered there is a big difference of opinion about whether they are good to eat or not. Some people love them, some people can’t stand them, for example Matt T.

I questioned him on his total dislike before even trying them and his response was a common one. It was the thought of eating brains not really anything to do with brains actually tasting bad. Even though the others in our group could not think of any reason to dislike them, no one including myself found any pleasure in the ‘thought’ of eating brains.

Zombie movies don’t help with this thought nor do ancient beliefs and rituals that make the eating of things like brains, an unusual act.

From my previous research I had built up an idea of what brains must taste like based on other people’s description of the flavour and texture. I imagined the smell to be quite off putting but it was not the case in reality.

Numerous people online commented on how lovely and creamy brains were. This didn’t make sense to me as I have never associated any type of meat with creamy, but I now understand what they meant. I do not think anyone could have described this aspect of how brains taste without trying it for myself.

We chose to explore cooking and eating brains from an interdisciplinary framework. We each contributed food items to put with the brains and supplied utensils to prepare and cook the brains in different ways based on our roles and group discussion.

I chose to soak in vinegar then crumb half of mine, then the rest went into a curry made from coconut milk and turmeric. Both these options I thought would taste amazing and would not put anyone off trying them for the first time. I thought that cooking them in a familiar way would help people to associate it with food they know tastes good and feel good about, even though they were still eating brains. Most people enjoy crispy fried chicken and a curry right?

After discussing with others about the ingredients they bought and why, I decided to alter what I was using. Kento had some lemon and parsley that I thought would add a zing to my dish and Amanda had parmesan that I thought would work nicely mixed with my panko breadcrumbs.

I liked being able to discuss options and ideas with others and in my opinion it made for a much better outcome when this occured.

At times I think we worked more cross-disciplinary but after cooking together experimentally and tasting brains cooked in different ways, we all discovered that there was nothing wrong with the taste of brains, it was all about the thought of eating brains that just made us feel a bit weird.

By Matthew Hart (http://thecaptainunderpantsconspiracy.tumblr.com/)

(Plats Principaux is the french term for the main course... im going with the french meal structure as titles for these posts btw)

So this morning, MAMA K all arrived at Amanda’s place for the magnificent feast with all our ingredients and equipment to bring these lamb brains back to life. We all started off with a discussion about our methods in preparing and cooking the brain with the ingredients there. I talked about how the physical properties of the lamb brain would suit slicing and serving it as fried brain bits.

We all took turns of preparing and cooking our brain dishes. I boiled my brain in salted water for a couple minutes and then sliced it into smaller bite size pieces for easier consumption. 

After I cracked open an egg and whisked it together with pepper and parsley. I dipped the brain into this and straight into a bath of breadcrumbs before chucking it into a hot pan for a couple minutes. I really enjoyed the whole cooking process especially with something I have not eaten before.

by Aaron Cleland I was surprised to see that the main reason for eating brains is that you are a zombie!

Why have brains got such a bad reputation and not eaten very often in our country. Do they really taste that bad?

Nutritionally, brains are described as superfoods of the animal world, Mercola, D. (2013) but seem to be avoided by our culture.

Even amongst our group there was some mixed responses to the thought of eating brains. Logically the brains of the lamb shouldn’t be any different to eat than the other meat from the lamb but for some people it is. What is it about eating brains that is so bad?

We found brains were remarkably hard to source for our brain eating experiment. I was told by a few butchers that they were not that common and might be hard to find. Most are exported overseas to places like France where they “will fry and sautee them with lemon and parsley, poach them and put them in terrines.”. Womans Weekly. (n.d.)

Comments from people that have actually eaten brains are positive. They comment on how creamy and delicious they are. “Mild and sweet with a creamy texture, brains can be served hot or cold.” Louisa Carter(n.d.)

Friday will see us do our cooking and eating. It’s hard to imagine how it will go and how they will taste once we have dealt to them.

REFERENCES

Mercola, D. (2013). The Health Benefits of Consuming Organ Meats.   Retrieved October 15, 2015, from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/12/30/eating-organ-meats.aspx

Womans Weekly. (n.d.). Cooking Lambs Brains.   Retrieved October 15, 2015, from http://www.nzwomansweekly.co.nz/food/nanas-pantry/cooking-lambs-brains/

By Kento Osborne

I was given the Quantative role, and i was really trying hard to think of a way to come up with the right ingredients with this kind of mind set.

I didn’t what kind of stats or facts that would help me decide this, so i decided to make my own stats. I googled brain recipes and manged to find 15 recipes. From these recipes i make a tally of ingredients that show up in these recipes. These gave me the necessary stats to find what ingredients to bring.

looking at the stats i saw that salt and flour show up the most in these recipes. But i assumed that Amanda would have salt and flour and also butter, milk and pepper. That left crumbs, lemon and eggs. However from reading Matt’s blog post i found that we would be bringing crumbs. So i decided to bring parsley, lemons and eggs.

http://m.nzwomansweekly.co.nz/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nzwomansweekly.co.nz%2Ffood%2Fnanas-pantry%2Fcooking-lambs-brains%2F&utm_referrer=#3087

http://m.goodfood.com.au/good-food/cook/recipe/parmesancrumbed-lambs-brains-20111019-29uvp.html

http://www.food.com/recipe/fried-lamb-brains-440335

http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2011/05/deep-fried-brains-recipe.html

http://www.deandeluca.com/recipes/recipe_cuban-style_deep-fried_calfs_brains_with_cumin_and_lime_sesos_fritos.aspx

http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/6531/crumbed-brains.aspx

http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/crumbed-lambs-brains-horseradish-mayonnaise

http://matadornetwork.com/life/five-recipes-that-require-brains/

By Matthew Hart (http://thecaptainunderpantsconspiracy.tumblr.com/)

My part in this Integrative practice assignment, I was given the physical role so over this past week I have been conjuring ideas about my methods to cook this lamb brain in a sensible and physically appropriate way.

I have thought about the different ways of cooking the brain and I have come to two main conclusions; frying or boiling the brain. The physical form of the brain could be fried to make for some nice fritters or potentially some schnitzel. The brain meat could also be made into some form of a dumpling to be boiled or steamed. I think I will plan for frying the lamb brain as they actual ‘meat’ may be better suited for it.

On friday, We planned as a group to bring three ingredients and a cooking utensil to add to the brain for when we cook. I will bring ingredients and materials which help the process of frying so a spatula would possibly be quite helpful for cooking it in a frying pan.

by Matthew Tarchutkin

From an analytical point of view, a brain is a complex structure, so a similar complex approach should be applied when iterating brain’s structure in any way, including cooking.

Cooking, in general, is relatively easy, putting it simply, most of the time you either freeze or heat food up. Brains and meat can be put in the same food category, since both of them are animals’ parts and, logically, both must be heated up to be enjoyable. Therefore, continuing this logic, utensils used for cooking meat can also be used for brains - this fact could greatly simplify the tool search for Friday’s cooking session, but since we have a rule of not reading each other’s posts, it doesn't (I assume people will read it anyway, since when following rules is popular?).

The 10 Most Useful Kitchen Tools for Cooking Meat article (Georgiapellegrini.com , 2012) provides an extensive set of utensils from which I’ve selected, in my opinion, the most appropriate ones:

Cast-iron skillet - one of the most versatile cooking tools out there suited for everything, brains is no exception

Large plastic brining bags - marinating does wonders for meats.

Cheesecloth - an easy one, if we marinate it, I assume we'll need to strain it afterwards.

Other ‘normal’ kitchen utensils such as knives and a cutting board are expected, no need to list them. As for the other tools on the list, say, meat thermometer - it won’t be needed, since we don’t know anything about cooking brains, so how are we supposed to know what temperature is ideal for them? Meat mullet won’t be any use either, since no one wants to smash the brains, they’re already pretty squishy.

Furthermore, I must say it’s hard analysing relationships between project parts since there’s nothing to analyse, yet. We decided to be absolutely discreet in our “3 products and a tool” choice for Friday’s dish, therefore I physically can’t give much input on it. On the other hand, when they'll be reviled I could provide an in-depth review and analyse group members’ reasoning behind those choices.

As of now, I could say that mystery in our work adds a lot to the project - we want to find something previously unknown and I believe the most logical way would be to utilise randomness, since if knew what everyone would do, there won’t be any room for discovery left, as simple as that.

References:

On The Tip Of My Tongue

by Atomic Sloth 

Mulling the idea of juicing the brain to extract the essence and knowledge from it, I suddenly thought that drinking down the sludgy result, no matter what colour it may be, might literally be a bit hard to swallow. As we want to share our results with the rest of the class, what better way is there to distribute this elixir of youth and vitality than to offer it in the easy to swallow form of a tab?

Just like LSD, or the principles of homeotherapy - which is “treatment with a substance similar to the causative agent of the disease” (Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing, as cited in Medical Dictionary n.d.), one would not be too wrong to assume that a little will go a long way. To repair our minds, we can treat it by consuming the mind of another.

REFERENCES