Hot Brains And Blood

We are meeting up with the Beijing Boys for our last dinner together tonight. Being rush hour and getting a cab was impossible, we decide to get a bus to the restaurant instead. Like the London Buses, the stops are all announced (in both Mandarin and English) so it was easier to work out where we were – the only thing was, we were actually heading to the wrong branch of this restaurant. Crap!

Realising we were a bit out of town, we got off the bus and got a cab back into the city and to the correct branch, and sat down for our evening feast of hot pot. As we are slightly late, Ricky had already ordered most of the food, and the dishes that we were to cook in the soup started arriving almost as soon as we'd sat down. 

The first of the delights to be popped into the soup was ducks blood – a brown blancmange textured sludge that I didn’t really want to eat. It was pretty tasteless actually, which was a plus, but it had the consistency of soft tofu, which I really didn’t like at all and had to eat quickly to avoid actually feeling the texture.

Other items were less of a challenge (actually, delicious) and were solid in form – meats and vegetables etc.

And then the pig brains came out. They sat there on the plate looking all bloody and disgusting and then Ricky plopped them into the soup, waited until they were bobbing to the top to know they were cooked and then fished one out, cut off half and gave to me.

Erm… not sure actually. Oh well, in for a penny, as they say... So I pulled a bit of the cerebrum off with my chopsticks and put it in my mouth: it had the consistency of a runny soft boiled egg and after the third bite, I gagged – gulping some of the not so disgusting soya milk (which had the same consistency of kaolin and morphine - gag). As we were the guests, I didn’t want to demand a beer, but to be honest, I really could have done with one at this point!

Bleugh!