[Sca-cooks] Chinese duck eggs and other items at our oriental market

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Feb 20, 2007, at 11:48 PM, Stefan li Rous wrote:

> powdered galangale and a bag of dried shallots. There were also
> various pastries on a table near the front of the store. Not knowing
> what any of them were, I was hesitant to buy any, but an Anglo women
> mentioned that the round, two inch diameter ball, covered with some
> kind of white seed, was filled with a sweet paste, so I decided to
> try that. It was interesting, although by the time I ate it later
> that day the cream had separated from the pastry leaving a vacuum
> around the filling. Don't know, maybe it is supposed to be that way.

This sounds like it might have been one of those glutinous rice  
pastries filled with sweet bean paste or sesame paste, rolled in  
sesame seeds and fried. The air pocket develops not from shrinkage of  
the filling so much as steam buildup in frying.

>
> They also had bags of frozen eels, so I bought one of those with the
> idea of trying out some of the medieval eel recipes in the future.
>
> Now the part that ties in to Adamantius' comments. I saw several
> different duck eggs there. Salted duck eggs,

These are rather heavily brined for a couple of weeks, during which  
time the yolk becomes semi-solid and the raw white remains largely  
unchanged, apart from tasting rather salty. They're used as a garnish  
for various steamed meat patties (think of an inch-high, round,  
steamed meat loaf) by the Cantonese, or the yolks are removed and put  
into pastries such as moon cakes.

Preserved duck eggs are probably the ones preserved in ash, commonly  
known as "ancient" or Hundred-year or Thousand-year eggs. Mostly  
they're marketed after aging about three weeks. Inside the shell, the  
egg "cooks" in the non-neutral pH of the ash, leaving a firm  
"white" (which has turned a dark, almost black, amber) and a semi- 
solid, almost jelly-like yolk. They don't taste of salt the way the  
salted eggs do, but they;re very rich and a little on the sulfurous  
side. Not for everybody. We like them chopped and added to hot rice  
porridge along with seasoned, ground pork, which you stir in to the  
boiling porridge to cook.

> preserved duck eggs and
> cooked duck eggs. How do these differ and how would I use them? One
> or more of these I guess you could eat as they are, or perhaps use
> them in an egg salad such as Adamantius mentions above. However, I
> don't particularly care for egg salad. So can anyone describe each of
> these eggs and how I might best sample them?

I have no idea what cooked duck eggs are, unless they're simply that.  
Like hard-boiled eggs from a duck. Crack and eat them with salt?
>
> I also bought a pair of packages of different chinese sausages.
> Unfortunately, they were in the refrigerator case in the store but
> they got hidden at home and didn't get put into the refrigerator
> until several hours later. I don't know if they would be safe to eat
> or not. They were in hermetically sealed shrink-wrap plastic.

Lop cheung are pretty indestructible, almost like jerky. Not only are  
the packs sealed, but they don't have mush moisture at all, being  
cured with salt, sugar, and grain alcohol, usually. Steam them over a  
pot of rice (just lay them on top of the rice after most of the water  
has cooked away, and the fat and juices drip down and flavor the rice  
as they reheat), slice and frizzle up in an omelette, or use as a  
meat for fried rice.

Adamantius





"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread, you have to say, let them eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

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