Jurchen/Manchurian recipe, c. AD1000-1200

Take a sheep's head, and boil it until the meat is thoroughly soft. Pick off the meat by hand, into pieces. Put meat and stock aside, separately. Mix fat-tailed sheep fat and sesame oil in a metal pan, and fry washed glutinous rice in it. [I think that Korean/Japanese-style short-grained rice would be a good match.] Add the sheep head stock, and cook until the rice is softened to a pulp. Put the meat into bowls (for eating), and fill them up with the rice-gruel.

From E. N. Anderson, The Food of China, Yale University Press 1988, who took them from H. Franke, Zentralasiatische Studien 7:1-186.

Timo > wrote in
:

> Jurchen/Manchurian recipe, c. AD1000-1200
>
> Take a sheep's head, and boil it until the meat is thoroughly
soft.
> Pick off the meat by hand, into pieces. Put meat and stock
aside,
> separately. Mix fat-tailed sheep fat and sesame oil in a metal
pan,
> and fry washed glutinous rice in it. [I think that
> Korean/Japanese-style short-grained rice would be a good match.]
Add
> the sheep head stock, and cook until the rice is softened to a
pulp.
> Put the meat into bowls (for eating), and fill them up with the
> rice-gruel.
>
> From E. N. Anderson, The Food of China, Yale University Press
1988,
> who took them from H. Franke, Zentralasiatische Studien 7:1-186.
>

Yummy! I think I remember a sale on sheep's heads in the most
recent flyer from my supermarket.

Reminds me of when my wife and I honeymooned in Athens. We walked
into a very upscale restaurant and as the waiter was leading us to
a table, we passed a very high-class looking couple dressed in
very nice evening wear dipping into a sheep's head on a platter in
between them, eating the brains with a spoon. I was OK with it,
but my wife's dinner tab wasn't very expensive that night...

On Saturday, 6 April 2013 19:30:11 UTC+10, Alan Holbrook wrote:
>
> Yummy! I think I remember a sale on sheep's heads in the most
> recent flyer from my supermarket.

I think other bony parts of sheep would make a suitable substitute. Fat-tailed sheep tail fat would be the harder thing to replace. Well, one can always just use whatever lamb fat, but fat-tailed sheep tail fat connoisseurs would say that is no substitute at all.

I'm tempted to try a simplified (i.e., non-head) version of this.

> Reminds me of when my wife and I honeymooned in Athens. We walked
> into a very upscale restaurant and as the waiter was leading us to
> a table, we passed a very high-class looking couple dressed in
> very nice evening wear dipping into a sheep's head on a platter in
> between them, eating the brains with a spoon. I was OK with it,
> but my wife's dinner tab wasn't very expensive that night...

I was in Japan, and there was a large drinking party going on at two tables.. They were picking the meat off huge tuna heads, one per table. IIRC, these were really cheap, like $10-$15, about 50% more than a grilled squid, and less than fancy mains.

On 4/6/2013 5:30 AM, Alan Holbrook wrote:

> Reminds me of when my wife and I honeymooned in Athens. We walked
> into a very upscale restaurant and as the waiter was leading us to
> a table, we passed a very high-class looking couple dressed in
> very nice evening wear dipping into a sheep's head on a platter in
> between them, eating the brains with a spoon. I was OK with it,
> but my wife's dinner tab wasn't very expensive that night...

Heehee! I can imagine! It would put off my appetite to see people
eating brains with a spoon, or really any way they want to eat it. I'm
just not an adventurous eater in that regard. I've never seen it
anywhere before but just thinking about it makes me wonder if it has an
off smell? It seems like it would stink (to me).

--
CAPSLOCK–Preventing Login Since 1980.

On 4/5/2013 5:48 PM, Timo wrote:
> Jurchen/Manchurian recipe, c. AD1000-1200
>
> Take a sheep's head, and boil it until the meat is thoroughly soft. Pick off the meat by hand, into pieces. Put meat and stock aside, separately. Mix fat-tailed sheep fat and sesame oil in a metal pan, and fry washed glutinous rice in it. [I think that Korean/Japanese-style short-grained rice would be a good match.] Add the sheep head stock, and cook until the rice is softened to a pulp. Put the meat into bowls (for eating), and fill them up with the rice-gruel.
>
> From E. N. Anderson, The Food of China, Yale University Press 1988, who took them from H. Franke, Zentralasiatische Studien 7:1-186.
>


I have seen people munching on one of these in Scandinavian films.
Evidently it's a great treat in those parts but I don't like my food
looking at me while I'm eating it.