When I was a kid (10) I overheard this line on then-fuzzed-out Cinemax:
“He braises it in sugar and marinates it in a lemon wine sauce.”
It wasn’t on a cooking show, it was some kind of drama or thriller. Does anyone know what movie or TV show this quote comes from?
Feel free to maintain your privacy, but it might be helpful to reveal what year you were ten.
“It braises it in sugar then marinates it in a lemon-wine sauce!”
Then serves with fava beans and a good Chianti.
That’s what I was thinking when I first read it too!
Then it rubs the lotion on itself.
How do you braise something in sugar? 
Are you sure the line is correct? Can you remember or tell us anything else about the film - subject, other things said, what the fuzzy lines looked like? I mean, I’m a lot older than you but I’m hard pressed to precisely quote something someone said to me 2 days ago, let alone 8 years.
Hmm. Also not sure on the quote’s source. It’s also not…um…likely, in a culinary sense. You’d marinate something *before *braising it, and braising means cooking slowly in a closed pot with a little liquid, like broth or water or wine. I suppose you could add sugar to the liquid you were braising with, but “braise with sugar” is a strange way of phrasing it.
The Silence of the Lambs’ line is “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver. With some fava beans and a nice chianti.” Lector never shares his recipe, though.
Wait a sec. Apparently there’s something used in Asian cuisine called Yellow Rock Sugar that’s used in braises and sauces. Makes sense - their sauces are generally sweeter than European sauces. Could this help us narrow it down to an Asian themed movie? Or provide us with a red herring?
Mmmm… braised red herring!
Add some scrambled eggs and bacon and you have a Red Herring McGuffin.
Interestingly, there is such a thing as lemon wine.
Would Cinemax have ever run Manhunter in 1996? The original movie version of Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, this may also have had Hannibal Lecter talking about his culinary technique.
Pure speculation, I know, and probably off the mark.
In my cookbook, *braise * is a verb.
so right, but yet, so wrong
Google “braises with sugar” (without the quotes) and see what comes up. Quite a bit, actually. There is a little liquid left after cooking (actually, more than you started with as the meat releases fat and water) and most of the time that’s used in the final presentation. I would probably call it a “sauce” or a “gravy” but apparently lots of folks use “braise” as a noun, either to mean this liquid or the dish as a whole. I suppose that what this site meant in it’s definition of Yellow rock sugar.
Well I’ll be darned, you learn something new everyday; braise for the goose is braise for the gander, I guess.
I also had an immediate Lecter/Gumb vibe.
Woe is us! L
Hijack… Movie title- Forrest Gumb.
(sort of) poacthed eggs and cheese, actually.