I want to start off by saying, “I get it. Brains are one of those things that foodie (I hate that word...) douchebags can say they’ve eaten because it’s hardcore”.
Let me dispel that myth. Foodies are not hardcore. There is nothing hardcore or exotic about eating something that tastes really good, and there’s nothing worthwhile about eating something that tastes like shit and saying your palate is refined enough to find the miracle in it. If a tapir’s penis could be made to taste like buffalo angel wings, everyone would happily eat it and I doubt presentation would be much of a concern. On the other hand, the only way you’re going to gag down a local delicacy of rotten milk curds is if they are a prized ingredient costing seven months salary of the starving, impoverished family that is looking at you with glassy, hopeful eyes, simply because you are a guest in their hovel. And their skeleton children are watching. Secretly hoping there's some flavor left on the bottom of the bowl after you're done.
That does not make you “adventurous”, and I’ve always nursed an animosity towards fat white American television personalities who travel the globe looking for those foods so they can patronize the locals by obviously lying about how it tastes, and then spitting it out once they’ve got enough shots of the family to lock down a commercial spot.
But to the point—
I’ve cooked brains and I’ve eaten them. They’re actually pretty hard to find these days because most serious butchers don’t want to deal with any possible cross-contamination regarding mad cow disease. And by that I mean anthrax, one of two cow byproducts that can be powdered and stored in tins for long periods of time so as to be shipped to people who are living in their current circumstances because of nationwide political failure.
Frankly, it's an extremely outside chance that would ever happen—on par with getting sick from eating a runny egg yolk— the crucial difference being that anthrax will dissolve your brain instead of the contents of your lower intestines. I won’t lie, it gets annoying to the point of offering a bribe when calls to several butchers who you know damned well could get you a fetus say they don’t order brains. However, to be fair to their commercial comfort zone, the symptomatic hurking about like a shell shocked WWI veteran associated with anthrax is only caused by a fetus when people try to grow it to adulthood rather than butchering it before it’s weaned for the delicate sweetbreads.
I suppose deep down that, despite the nuisance of sourcing brains, I don't really want to die from eating anthrax beef even if it's a filet for my last night on death row. On the other hand, if one does have to go, it’s still better than nibbling a part of anthrax-free snout you picked off an ill-advisedly ordered head of veal in rural France during a hiking tour, and then having to be restrained from killing le chef de la merde who served it up.
To answer your question, "yes...".
Fortunately, there is no such thing as mad lamb disease, so you’ve got a good chance of finding their little thinkers. They’re about the size of a young kangaroo’s scrotum—which I know because the dirty little things lay around in the fairways of Anglesea Golf Club in Australia sunning themselves like unconscious heroin-addicted bulldogs— and that un-erasable kangaroo imagery is one of the many reasons—which I will be coming to in the next installment— why one lamb brain per person is plenty. In a lifetime.
If you absolutely must satisfy some part of you that often sends people to their death up Annapurna, your best bet is a nearby Indian grocery store. I had no idea what to expect, but I was assured they had them. When I walked in and told the guy at the meat counter that I was the one who called about the lamb brains, I was rewarded with the single greatest apology I, or possibly anyone or thing, has ever received since the simian brain evolved Broca’s area, which I have eaten.
As soon as I said “lamb brains”, his face fell. He looked at me pathetically and said:
“Oh no, sir, I’m terribly sorry! We only have goat brains.”
Now read that same sentence again but with a ridiculously stereotypical Indian accent and your space ship is beginning to tangentially graze the event horizon of the singularity of experience through which I alone have passed.
What’s even better is that there’s basically no difference other than a little size, oddly in favor of the sheep. Although baby sheep and goats create their tiny minds from milk that yields a vast array of cheeses, if you know anyone on the planet who can tell the difference flavor-wise between lamb brains and goat brains that person is a psychopath and a cannibal who needs to be locked away. You can get either one, and nobody will know the difference.
Particularly if you tell them they are eating brains. Once you say that you could garnish it with dog hair and you wouldn’t be asking more of their adventurousness. You see, the oddest part about eating a brain is that 98% of the revulsion exists in our own brains. When staring at one of these things on the plate your mind is fencing on an Olympic level with eating a miniature version of itself. Sure, they aren’t identical, but the wrinkly, lobed organ before you is close enough to be identifiable even when you cut it into small pieces. If you’ve ever eaten lengua tacos and gagged a little because you found a piece that had tastebuds, multiply that by ten million for a chunk of frontal lobe. There is no disguising it, and to see one little fold is to envision the entire thing.
Thanks for that, your-own-brain. No, I actually mean that. Your brain is trying to be a good wingman and stop you from eating something that, like your drunk ass going home with someone of similar physical consistency, will evoke the phrase "once was enough". It's not snails, but, well, you'll see.