Culinary Adventures Episode 3: Brain Food

Two nights ago, a group of us wandered out late at night in search of cheap food.  There happened to be a local market across the street.  Very much NOT a foreigner hangout.  When you go to these places, you just have to not look down if you want to be eating anytime soon.  I saw what I thought was a bowl of noodle soup being served to a local, so I pointed to it and said, "D'oat k'near". Same.  While waiting for our food, Sylvie who was so hungry she couldn't wait, ran across the street to a vendor selling what she thought were hard-boiled eggs.  As she sat down, she cracked the eggshell on the table, peeled the top and her head suddenly reeled back with a look of disgust on her face.  Markus leaned over to take a look and the same expression appeared on his face.  I knew what that look meant.  She had accidentally bought a couple of balut - a fertilized nearly hatched fetal chicken (or possibly duck).  For the next half hour, it sat on a dish untouched - a perfectly formed fetal chicken/duck, heretofore named "Chuck". (Get it??  Haha.)

About 15 minutes later our food came.  My dish turned out to be a bowl of rice porridge rather than noodles because obviously I didn't look carefully enough at our neighbor's bowl.  I ordered it with pork and I *think* there was pork in there.  But in addition to the meat, I was able to identify liver and one other organ that I didn't recognize immediately.  Then I realized what it was.  Brain.  Pig brain?  Wheww.  It took me about 10 minutes to work up the courage, but I finally just popped it in my mouth, quickly chewed and chased it with half a bottle of water.  Done.  Not completely inedible, but not really something I'd order again either.

Finishing my meal, I picked up Chuck.  I picked a bit of the yolk and tasted it - no different than a regular egg yolk.  Then we proceeded to dissect Chuck and identified all the parts.  Feathers, feet, wing, head (and brain of course), and internal organs - all present and accounted for.  Eventually we finished our meal, but the Chuck sat in my bowl, partially dissected.  I stared at it for a few minutes and thought to myself - Millions of people throughout SE Asia eat this everyday and love it.  It's not poisonous, and there's not going to be any dangerous disease it could be carrying.  Really, there's no reason NOT to eat it.  Wasting perfectly good food in this part of the world would be rude.  Sacrilegious even. 

A Cambodian family sitting at the next table watched me staring at the egg.  The young mother grinned and called out across the table to me in Khmer.  I like to think that she was daring me.  I looked back at her.  Back at the egg.  Finally, I picked up my chopsticks and turned to Sara, "Get your camera out."  After the flash went off, I popped the whole thing into my mouth and started chewing.  I waited for some uncontrollable reaction, but it never happened and it really did taste...pretty good!  The only difficult part came when I bit down on something hard and which was presumably the beak.  But that passed within a second or two.  Then I chased it with the remainder of my water.  I looked over at the Cambodian family who were now cheering and gave them a big grin and two thumbs up.  "Ch'ng an", I said triumphantly.  Delicious.