A "Witness" To Cooking Testicles

So...testicles, not perhaps the first cut that jumps to mind when planning dinner. That said, testicles are a surprising cut of meat that should not be underrated. It is more the "creepy" factor that inhibits the use of this cut for consumption than the actual taste. Some of you out there might be hunters who like to use all parts or you might be fond of Rocky Mountain oysters  or some of you might even regale in a testicle festival or the fine recipes of the testicle cookbook. Whatever your level of testicle consumption, they are worth trying either for the first time or again and again. I recently endeavoured to try this cut of meat and was pleasantly surprised.

Voyaging out to meet my local butcher at his regular stall in the local fresh market I set about to purchase a bag of testicles. The whole outing seemed to shout of the oddity or rather odyssey of cooking this cut. I attempted to purchase these parts originally on a sunny Saturday morning only to be told that testicles are a Monday cut, for whatever reason. So waiting with baited breath until monday I finally obtained the desired testicles. It was a heavily rainy morning, which made the whole outing all the more "Conrad-esque" and very memorable. I met my butcher friend at 8 AM before heading to work. The whole encounter was quite interesting and funny in part. I arrived to find a plate overflowing with testicles in the meat cupboard. I requested two testicles. My friend the butcher intimated to me that he would sell me the whole plate of balls for the same price of two. Taking this as a good faith deal I ended up with a shopping bag full of 8 bull balls. The humour in the whole encounter came when my friend the butcher was packing the testicles up for me to take away. As you can imagine the testicles of cows are rather large, that is until the butcher hit upon an abnormally small testicle, which he held up for me inspection laughingly saying "the little one!" It was both an odd and mostly hilarious moment.

So sack of testicles in hand I headed for home. Now that I had more testicles than I originally needed for myself and my roommate I endeavoured to cook these fellows in two ways. I was going to make an "appetizer" of breaded testicles followed by a main course of "kashmiri testicle curry." I set out to get cooking with my roommate, an Englishman with a true to form heart from the age of exploration, willing to eat anything once if only to have "explored" that culinary unknown on the food map.

Testicles require a little delicate preparation, but once you get going it is nothing. What you need to do first is make a small lengthwise slit along the outer membrane. Once slit you can essentially squeeze the inner testicle membrane out of this thick outer casing, exposing the membrane covered inner section. Now that you have this first layer exposed you essentially need to repeat the step and make yet another slit lengthwise along the membrane. This time the inner organ will not slip out nearly as easily but rather requires that you either carefully use a paring knife to remove the membrane or what I recommend is running your fingers under the membrane breaking all the little tendrils of soft tissue that fuse this layer to the inner organ meat. This perhaps sounds unappetizing but is in fact easy to do and not as offensive to undertake as it may sound. After this step you will have what you are after, the inner organ meat, which is somewhat "gooey" and looks roughly like a skinless chicken breast. Discard the outer membranes and cut off the "tube" end, which will be obvious when you are preparing the testicles. For those of you wondering "won't it be messy?" No, you will not be getting oozing semen or urine or anything of this sort, just in case anyone was wondering. In fact testicles smell less odorous then kidney and are easier to prepare.

Now that you have the organ meat you can set about cooking as you like. For myself I sliced the meat lengthwise, ran it through beaten egg and breading.  For the breading I used breadcrumbs, chili powder, salt, black pepper and a pinch of ground mint to give it a little zest. Once you have breaded these pieces you can pan fry them as you see fit (just like I reported in the previous brain post). Testicles take a little longer to cook than panfried brain. Allow about 3 minutes per side to cook through. Keep an eye on the pan though as cooking times will vary widely, so just be careful.

As for the Kashmiri testicle curry preparation just simply swap in the testicles for chicken in whichever recipe you choose to follow. Cube the testicle meat into preferred sizes and then you can add it straight to the pot to cook through with the sauce. If you do not like adding raw meat to your curry sauces you can always pan fry the testicle meat first and then add it to the Kashmiri chicken sauce. The Kashmiri chicken that I went with was as follows:

Ingredients
1 tbsp. garlic
1 tbsp. ginger
1-2 chilies
1 large onion
~500 ml. coconut milk
shredded coconut
dried apricots
cashews
raisins
1 tbsp. ghee or butter or oil
garam masala
turmeric
salt
black pepper
honey
1-2 tbsp. jaggery (if you don't have jaggery just use brown sugar)
1-2 tsp. brown sugar
~250 grams of plain yogurt

Steps
1.) before starting to cook anything you want to make a ginger-garlic-chili paste. Chop these items as fine as you can (it does not have to be SUPER fine). Then place the items together in a bowl and blend using a hand held blender. Or if you do not own a hand blender you can simply mash the mix into a paste or use a mortar and pestle--this just simply takes longer but gets the same result.

2.) in a frying pan heat your ghee or butter or oil. Once liquid add your chopped onion and fry until translucent. To this mix add the ginger-garlic-chili paste, garam masala, turmeric and fry for 1-2 minutes longer.

3.) to this frying mix add the coconut milk, salt, honey and jaggery stir the mix and allow to simmer for a minute.

4.) once all mixed together you can add the testicle meat.

5.) at this point you are faced with a preference choice. You can either add the yogurt, raisins, cashews and shredded coconut and allow the whole mix to simmer. Or you can allow the mix to simmer about 10 minutes and then add these items. Both ways work it is simply a matter of how you like your Kashmiri chicken. If you want your dried fruit to puff up and become softer then add it earlier. If you want it to remain harder then add it later.

6.) Once the dish has simmered for ~20 mins. you can add the brown sugar and black pepper. The brown sugar is not essential as you will already have jaggery, I just like the dish sweat. The black pepper can go in at this time so that it retains its pepper flavour and is not "cooked off" due to long simmering.

Serve this over rice or couscous and if you can get it naan, the ultimate best! You can alter this recipe widely. You can use whatever kind of dried fruit you prefer or even fresh fruit (such as pineapple) and lychees. Kashmiri chicken is a great sweet curry dish, I hope you like it as much as I do. The testicle blends nicely as it adapts the flavours nicely and is fork tender after simmering.

In the end this was a very very good meal. Testicle was surprisingly one of the best meat cuts I have ever had. The meat is tender and light, flaky and smooth to eat. It lacks the general "offal" flavour of other organ meats. Testicle, I found, is most comparable to pork medallions in shape and texture, though actually softer than regular pork medallions. My "try anything once" British roommate was even quite fond of the meal and we both agreed that it was a foodstuff that we would readily have again.

Testicles are quite diverse and can honestly be used in place of chicken or pork in a lot of recipes. This cut of meet it especially preferred for stews and long slow simmered dishes. So give 'em a shot and I hope you enjoy eating testicles as much as I did!

A Real Cerebral Experience

If you have read the other posts on this blog you have probably gathered that there is a lot of "variety meat" dishes discussed. This will not always be the way, but for the time being that is what has taken my interest of writing about. 

One dish, or rather meat variety, that has intrigued me is the use of brains. You see this part of the animal used in all kinds of dishes all around the world. Yet despite this there still remains within me a slight hair raising reaction at the notion of eating brains. Perhaps it is the ghost of Kuru or the more recent fear of BSE-CJD. But despite these concerns--well mostly just BSE-CJD in my case...but perhaps not yours, it depends I suppose--brains are widely used and are overall safe to eat (though still use caution!). Brains are high in many beneficial vitamins and minerals and are the cause of great fanfare among many culinary enthusiasts. Another part of what sparks my interest is that this delicate part is not readily available at home and thus the opportunity to buy brains with ready ease as well as eat in them restaurants of course sparked my interest in trying this dish. It was thus the other night that I finally, as I have thought about this for a while, took it upon myself to try and cook veal brain at home. This endeavour was filliped by my recent good fortune of stumbling across a nice Egyptian cookbook (Nagwa Elfayoumi, 2012. “Feasts for a Pharaoh: Traditional Egyptian  Cuisine with a Modern, Healthy Touch,” www.feastsforapharaoh.com), which provided a recipe, so I jumped both feet in. The recipe I followed from this book is reiterated below for those who might also like to try their hand at cooking brains. 

Poached and Pan-Fried Brains (Mokh Maslouq)-Serves 2-3

1 Lbs. calf brains

1 tablespoon vinegar or salt

1 small onion, chopped

4-5 cardamom pods, split

salt and pepper

2 medium eggs

¾ cup breadcrumbs

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg, marjoram or thyme

1/3 cup sunflower oil

1 tablespoon butter (optional)

juice of 1 medium lemon or lime

1.) Cover the brains by 1 inch with cold water. Add vinegar or salt and let stand for 1 hour

2.) Remove the brains from the water and rinse gently, but thoroughly, trim the white part off the ends and remove any large veins and blood clots etc...

3.)  Put the brains in a pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil. Maintain at a lively simmer for 7-8 mins. And remove any scum that accumulates on the surface.

4.) Add the onion, cardamom pods, and salt. Let bubble over a medium high flame for 15-20 minutes

5.) Drain the brains and let them cool in the pan. Lift them gently to plate and chill for 30 mins. to 1 hour

6.)  Beat the 2 eggs with 2 teaspoons of water in a deep dish or a bowl. Place breadcrumbs on a flate plate and mix with the nutmeg, and season with salt and pepper.

7.) When the brains have chilled, remove the dark veins and slice them. Dip the slices in the egg and dredge in bread crumbs. Fry in hot oil, and a little butter if you like, for about 3 mins. on each side or until golden brown.

8.) Top with squeezed lemon 

This same preparation also works very well with sweetbreads. You simple need to substitute in a step of placing the poached sweetbreads under weight in the fridge for a few hours to firm them up before cutting to fry. This step of placing a weight on the sweetbreads to "firm up" SHOULD NOT be followed for brains as you will just get a big mashed pile of brain in your container!!!--they are even more delicate than they look! 

On one other preparation note, you can soak the brains in vinegar/salted water in the fridge for several hours or even over night changing the water and salt a few times. This simply helps to remove more of the blood from the brains and make them a little less potent. I have also read of the possibility of peeling the outer membrane and surface blood vessels from the brain after the poaching step. I did not really try to do this, but in the stage where I removed sliced the brains it was quite evident that you would have to be very nimble and careful to really successfully peel a brain. Though if you are not opposed to more chunks than slices in your fry-up this would surly be fine.

In the end I have come to the conclusion that I am not a huge fan of brain as a meal. There is something about it that just lacks what I would like in this kind of preparation. I read once of cooked brains described as "savoury marshmallows" and I think this pretty much hits the nail on the head and is the reason I am not a big fan. Brain is very delicate and liquid and hence lacks the "chew ability" of other meats breaded and fried. I could see brain very well adapted to some sort of spread as it has a great characteristic for this but for bread crumb covered pan fry dishes, it is just OK in my books. The flavour is rich and definitely unique. 

So that said, despite my lack of overall enthusiasm for of this foodstuff, I would likely try it again in another preparation form, just to see if my appreciation of brain is changed by different preparation method. I hope that others give brains a taste as well, if even just once.

Huck