SC - Thousand Year Old Eggs

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Jasper Fieth wrote:

> We were one of the brave groups who weathered the monsoons of Three
> Kings... milady Anastacia, milady Pipa, and I were the ones guilty of the
> first meal of the day, to be served to Clan Firefall. We served Finnish
> Berry Pudding, Finnish Stollen, Apple Butter, eggs-to-order, and 1000 year
> old eggs.

Just out of curiosity...not trying to be critical here, but...WHAT IN
HEAVEN'S NAME WERE THOUSAND YEAR OLD EGGS DOING COMBINED WITH THOSE
OTHER FOODS? Are we talking about a particular type of Chinese preserved
duck eggs, or is there something else called 1000 year old eggs, that
I've never heard of?
 
> The 1000 year olds were not a roaring success at first -- no one really
> knew what they were, and various cracks about what was IN 1000 year old
> eggs abounded. Then some brave souls decided to try a few. Of the four
> dozen we did, about two and a half vanished before I decided to prevent
> salmonella from appearing and performed the lesser banishing ritual of
> Oscar the Grouch (ie -- tossed them into the trash)

A shame, since salmonella won't spontaneously appear in eggs that aren't
already infected  with them, and even if they are infected, but aren't
full of toxins yet, cooking them fully will kill it. Ducks are immune to
salmonella anyway. 
 
> "Why are these 1000 year old eggs and those 200 year old ones?"
> "Because those were thrown into the tea at 5:30 and we had to leave at 6."

OK. I think I understand now. I'm assuming these were hardboiled chicken
eggs, made into marbled tea eggs. Gotcha. Still not quite sure why you
didn't do something European like pickling them or buttering them,
though, given the other foods present.

Thousand-year-old eggs, BTW, are actually almost always duck eggs
(sometimes goose), preserved in a "mud" made from some kind of ash,
which is smeared on the egg shell and allowed to dry until it looks like
a really big charcoal briquet. After two or three months, you wash off
the ash, to discover that the alkalai in the ash has penetrated the
shell and denatured the proteins of the egg, "cooking" it  pretty much
as the lime juice does the raw seafood in seviche . TYO eggs, when
shelled, are dark amber to black on the outside (the "white") with a
dark greenish-gray yolk, perhaps with streaks of yellow. The yolk is
still slightly soft in the middle.

The commonest ways to eat them are with fresh bean curd, chopped into a
sort of salad, with chopped ginger, scallions, white pepper, light soy
sauce and toasted sesame oil, wrapped in a lettuce leaf like a spring
roll, or else you can chop them up and stir them, along with some
seasoned ground pork, into simmering jook or rice porridge.

For most Westerners, they might be considered an acquired taste. As for
tea eggs, since they generally are just lightly seasoned (and colored)
hard-boiled eggs, I don't see what the problem would be, unless you have
some really intolerant eaters. I wonder how people would have reacted if
you had just called them tea eggs. That might have turned the tide in
their favor, somewhat.

Adamantius
______________________________________
Phil & Susan Troy
troy at asan.com
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