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

[Stefan li Rous]

Talking about Chinese New Year's foods and Chinese Egg Salad,  
Adamantius commented:
<<< So, the alleged "real" manner of doing this, if your culinary
traditions are from Toysan in Kwangtung province, instead of
Shanghai, is to cut the bean curd and preserved duck eggs (these are
the black "thousand-year" eggs, not the salted duck eggs) ...>>>

This past weekend my wife and I went to see a new Oriental market  
which has opened a few miles from our house. The main reason we were  
going was to pick up some of the woven, plastic mats for Gulf Wars,  
which we were told would be better than the sheet of plastic covered  
with several woven cloth oriental rugs, we have been using to cover  
the floor of the pavilion. Unlike the previous Oriental markets which  
have been here in Austin and are usually pretty small, this one was a  
large as most of the regular grocery stores. It is in the center of  
an entire shopping center oriented toward Asian commerce.  
Unfortunately, it didn't occur to us until we were over there that  
this was the Chinese New Year. The place was a mad house. We finally  
found a parking space, in stop and go line up of cars, not very close  
at all to the grocery we were going there for.

After buying 4 of the mats (not cheap. $22 each) we spent some time  
looking around the store. Lots of interesting items, although for  
most of them, even if they had English lettering on them and many  
didn't, I had no idea how I would use them. I found a large jar of  
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.

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, 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 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.

Thanks,
   Stefan
--------
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris           Austin, Texas           
StefanliRous at austin.rr.com
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****