Making a plateful of eyeballs

By: Sophia Peaslee

The idea for “No Evil” came to me quite suddenly and out of nowhere: Coming up behind a well dressed woman sitting in a black void, a hand lifting a cover on the plate in front of her to reveal a dish full of eyeballs that she proceeds to eat.

I texted Daniel – “A short of a woman eating eyeballs.” and got back an immediate – “I’m in.”

The rest of the elements of what would eventually become “No Evil” fell into place fairly quickly and I jumped into making the various props and prosthetics needed for the project, but one key part remained a challenge: That plate full of eyeballs.

They had to be edible, they had to look realistic on camera, and it had to be possible to make one squirt when stabbed with a fork.

I started by taking a lot of inspiration from the work Janice Poon, an amazing food stylist, did on Hannibal. Looking at the different ways she made food look like body parts I decided to try making turkey crystal dumplings. Turkey, when steamed, becomes a nice pale color. The tapioca starch in the dumpling wrapers makes it come out slightly translucent. Seemed like the perfect jumping off point.

Turkey Crystal Dumplings:

INGREDIENTS
FOR THE CRYSTAL DUMPLING SKINS:

14 tablespoons wheat starch

3/4 cup tapioca starch

3 tablespoons cornstarch (plus more for kneading)

1 1/4 cups water

2 teaspoons vegetable oil

FOR THE TURKEY FILLING:

1/2 pound ground turkey

1/2 Fuji apple

1 egg

1 inch fresh ginger

2 green oninons sliced

2 tablespoons soy sauce

3 cloves fresh garlic

1/4 cup panko

1 tablespoon seasame oil

salt and pepper to taste

Instructions
MAKE THE DOUGH FOR THE WRAPPERS:

1. In a bowl, whisk together the wheat starch, tapioca starch, and cornstarch.
2. Bring the water and oil to a boil in a medium pot. Remove from heat.
3. Add a 1/3 of the starch mixture to the water and stir. until it forms translucent lumps. Add another third of the starch mixture and mix it for 1 minute until you get a paste-like consistency. Add the rest until it forms a dry looking dough.
4. Cover the pot tightly, and rest the dough for 5 minutes.
5. Dust a clean, dry work surface with cornstarch. Kneading the dough with the rubber spatula, folding it over repeatedly for 3 minutes.
6. Knead the dough by hand on the work surface until it is smooth and pliable, ~ 1 to 2 minutes.
7. Divide the dough into ~ 36 equal pieces. Dust with cornstarch and keep in a covered bowl while working.

MAKE THE FILLING:

1. Blend the apple, ginger, soy sauce, garlic and oil until smooth.
2. Mix the turkey with the blended apple, white parts of the green onion (save the green for the dipping sauce), panko and egg. If the mixture does not stick together add a second egg and if it is too wet add more panko.

MAKE THE DUMPLINGS:

1. Roll a piece of the dough flat, about 3inch diameter.
2. Place 1 tbsp of filling in the center.
3. Wrap, sealing the edges. For eyball attempt was made to make into a smooth ball.
4. Place in a bamboo steamer lined with perforated parchment paper. Steam the dumplings over boiling water at medium-high heat for about 6 minutes.
5. Serve with rice and favorite dumpling dipping sauce.

The dumpling color looked right and the result was actually quite delicious, high in protein and low in fat. Any leftover filling was baked into meatballs and came out of the airfryer tasting amazing.

However they were extremely hard to get into the right size and shape and were definetly not going to survive any handling for a film shoot. And while they did keep overnight, the amount of work that went into making the dough was not practical for what we needed.

Janice Poon often used rice paper to mimic skin, so I decided to try these dumplings again using the rice paper.

It was much easier to work with than the dumpling dough and the results were again pretty tasty, but the rice paper was quick to disolve and the color wasn’t right. However it looked great as the tissue that would be attached around the eyeballs.

So I had to go back to the drawing board.

Jello eyeballs are popular for halloween but tend to look cartoonish and the texture would not be right, however agar seemed promising.

Using 2 cups of water and 3 tablespoons of agar I brought that mixture to a boil. I mixed a small amount with food coloring in an attempt put the lenses and irises in and poured into some 1 inch spherical molds. Let set overnight.

Finally we seemed to be getting somewhere! The mixture was too translucent and my attempts at adding the eye details were a failure but shape/size/texture were all getting there. And the eyeballs were surprisingly easy to paint with food coloring. I adjusted the recipe, using coconut milk instead of water, adding sugar to make the whole experience a little more palatable and made them again.

Houston, we have eyeballs.

We did discover the the food coloring would continue to bleed into the rest of the eyeball over time, so if crispness of lines is important for you, paint your eyeballs fresh. Each eyeball was wrapped in rice paper soaked in cherry juice.

A quick sauce of cherry juice with sugar and spoonful of cornstarch was boiled up and became our blood for the plate. Throughout the shoot we painted the eyeballs with a light cornsyrup to get the glazed effect.

So all that was left was figuring out how to make the eyeball squirt when stabbed with a fork…

I attached a bike pump needle to a syringe and a hose that we could hide under the other eyeballs. Pushing the needle through to just under the surface of the eyeball, we were able to create an awesome squirting effect by pushing water through the syringe when a fork was stabbed into the eyeball. It worked better than expected but word of warning, the pump needle was easy to clog.

Check out the “No Evil” page to see more behind the scenes from this very fun project and find out where/when you might be able to watch it.

I leave you with the final recipe:

Realistic Agar Eyeballs:

INGREDIENTS
FOR THE EYEBALLS:

1 can coconut milk

3 tablespoons agar

3 tablespoons sugar

food coloring

corn syrup

FOR THE TISSUE:

rice paper

1/4 cup cherry juice or any red juice/food colored water

FOR THE SAUCE

1/2 cup cherry juice or any red juice/food colored water

2 tablesppons sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

INSTRUCTIONS Eyeballs

1. Bring the can of coconut milk and a can's worth of water to a simmer. Stir in agar and sugar. Keep heating until agar and sugar has completely disolved and liquid is thick.
2. Allow to cool enough to pour into 1 inch spherical ice molds.
3. Put in fridge to set. Should set within 2 hours but best results overnight.
4. Paint eye details with food coloring, colors may bleed/blow out start small. Use corn syrup to add a glossy finish.

Tissue

1. Soak rice paper in cherry juice for 3 minutes.
2. Cut rice paper into quarters. Wrap the eyeballs with the quarters.

Sauce

1. Bring juice and sugar to a simmer.
2. Make a slurry with cornstarch and cold water. Pour into simmering juice.
3. Keep simmering until mixture starts to thicken. Take off heat.