i will confess to a slight concern for my physical well being here. these eggs were not when i purchased them, nor have they at any point afterward, been refrigerated. my logic for not doing so upon return from the store was that if the proprietors of the international market didn't see fit to cool them, who am i to disagree? my feeling (my sincere hope at this point, i should say) is that the roasting and salting process has somehow preserved them in a way that will increase their shelf life. that being said, it has been a few weeks since i brought them home, so i figure if i don't get down to business pretty soon there's no way they're still going to be good. okay, time to open the package and inspect.
well. this is interesting, and a little unexpected. they're individually vacuum sealed, and they appear to still have the shells on. i don't know what i was imagining. this gives me some measure of hope for their continued preservation. but how to open them without destroying the shell? let's try the garden variety small pocket knife.
okay. so what you have here is basically a run of the mill egg, about the size and weight of a chicken egg (maybe a LITTLE heavier), slightly gamier in smell than your usual egg from the store, but duck by and large is gamier than chicken, so that's more or less in line with what i was expecting. now, the question becomes, how to open it without making a humongous mess? i guess we'll just try peeling it like a hard-boiled egg. let's see.
so the attempt was successful, even if the results look more than a little foul. i'm kind of having a problem with the physical appearance of this thing, it really sort of looks way too much like balut for my liking, but thankfully i don't have to eat it with my eyes. okay, time to stop messing around. let's see what this thing tastes like.
oh. oh man. oh that is bad. oh dear god that is just nasty and awful. it's so... salty. and gamey. and... it's not rotten, it's definitely not rancid or anything, i mean it's definitely preserved, but... that tastes really bad.
here's the problem, or at least some of it. a lot of what makes foods unpalatable is the texture. this was one of my central problems with durian, is the texture, just the physical feeling of the thing in your mouth, induces as many gags as the taste and the smell do, if not more. this thing is just dry and crumbly and salty and awful and nasty in the middle. the white of it is much like a chicken egg, very soft and juicy and more or less lacking in flavor, but the yolk is all dark and nasty and super super gamey and salty and just awful and gross. dear merciful heavens i need something wash this down with
i never thought i'd have occasion to say this, but thank god for 40oz bottles of busch beer
ick. here's a close up shot of the wrongness. i don't know if the evil comes through via picture, but however bad it looks, it tastes way, way worse than it looks. i am honestly not sure if i can get another bite down, i gagged pretty hard on the first one. oh well. this is what i do, right? let's have at it.
oh ick. ick gack gack uk uk uk. need beer immediately.
apologies for all the gratuitous pictures of me drinking, but good lord, trust me, if you had to choke down this nonsense you would too. it's... not QUITE as bad the second bite in, if only for the fact that you kind of know what you're getting into (and know to immediately chase the egg with a swallow of beer, much like you would chase a shot of bottom shelf tequila) but it's still just god awful. man... how can i describe this? there's such a long finish of salt and gamey flavor, along with this texture that's kind of like... if you've ever had home made bread or cookies or muffins that just didn't come out, like they were overcooked or just whatever, and they basically fell apart into this dry, inedible conglomeration of clumps of grain, that's basically what the inside yolk texture of these eggs are like. it's truly foul.
okay, well that's one egg down. i am in no way intending to eat the entire package - sorry, i couldn't eat four normal cooked chicken eggs in one sitting - but i would be remiss if i didn't take one more hack at it. from the outside i thought this little slip of paper was a small packet of the silica gel desiccant they include in like shoes and whatnot to absorb moisture, but it turns out it's just a small slip that i have to assume is some sort of inspection notice like you find on the inside of garments sometimes, like "inspected by number 313" or something, except this is in some asian language i can't read, but i'm just going to assume that's what it is, some sort of quality assurance memento, which assuages my fear about the relative spoiled-ness of these eggs more than a little.
so now, egg number two, in its presealed package, but instead of just robotically choking down another one with no variation, we're going to change it up a little bit and try some of the hot sauce my boss brought back from his recent trip to belize and was kind enough to kick me down a couple bottles of, just as a way to spice things up. before we do that, though...
here's what this foul little bastard looks like. i didn't do quite as good of a job peeling this one as i did the first one, and i didn't do a very good job with the first one, so... yeah. looks pretty nasty.
here's what we'll be trying on top of it. apologies, by the way, for the relatively poor quality of the pictures, i've had some interruptions in my usual technological routine and am making do with whatever supplies are at hand. anyway, down to business.
here's what i'll be eating. good god, i cannot believe i am about to try this again.
UK UK UK UK UK. GACK. it actually tastes worse than the last one. how is that even possible?
OOOH and it's spicy! all i've succeeded in doing is making a very unpleasant food item even less so by cranking up the scoville units quite a bit! ugh oh oh oh
help me beer!
that was just so sickeningly, profoundly foul. that may have been the second worst thing i have ever eaten, after durian. it's one thing to know that it's coming, and have some sort of preconceived notion about what it's going to taste like, but your body doesn't process any of that, it just knows what's nasty and what isn't, and this definitely falls on the far side of the "nasty/not nasty" scale.
all right. almost done. gotta finish. let's throw down some of this other hot sauce on it, it's got carrots in it or something, maybe it'll mask the flavor.
we have decided to err on the "lots of sauce" side this time. it couldn't be any worse than the last bite... could it?
you know what? that's not exactly awful! there's a certain PUNCH to it at first taste, just like every other bite, and maybe it's because i'm kind of used to it by now, or maybe it's because i've knocked down the greater balance of this huge bottle of beer, but i'm not entirely pained by that particular bite. the flavored hot sauce definitely does wonders for the whole concoction, as does that fact that this bite was definitely more white and less yolk. i'm still choking it down with a fair amount of effort, don't get me wrong, but as far as tastes of a nasty food go, this isn't the worst.
by and large i couldn't exactly recommend the roasted salted duck eggs as a culinary experience, in fact actually i'd have to say it's one of the worst things i've ever eaten, but like many other obscure asian delights, it's at least interestingly bad. some bad food (most bad american food anyway) is just bad, bad all the way through, and does nothing but make you regret ever placing it anywhere in the vicinity of your mouth (see: gas station hot dogs) but the eggs were at least bad in a compelling way, even if the end result of that compulsion was gagging and vomit.
to reward myself after that bataan death march of nastiness i picked up some green tea ice cream, something i hear is delicious but have never had the chance to taste.
it looks kind of like packaging foam and has a slightly unfriendly smell. but several people whose taste i trust (for no good reason really) swear by it, so let's see what we get.
WELL! that tastes REMARKABLY like green tea! in fact it tastes exactly like green tea, in a way that's almost offputtingly authentic. it's not bad, not by any stretch of the imagination, in fact i kind of like it, but i'm realizing that as an american with an american palate, when something (especially ice cream, for some reason) advertises itself as "flavored" i expect it to taste like the suggestion of whatever it's supposed to be "flavored" like instead of the thing itself. yogurt, ice cream, candy, you name it. if it says "strawberry" you, as an american, know to expect that weird chemical generic "STRAWBERRY FLAVORING COMPOUND #67" taste instead of the taste of actual strawberries. this actually tastes like green tea, which is rather nice, if you like green tea, which i do. let's give it another shot
yeah, this is delish. it's got the right texture and consistency, it's cute and bite sized like a little asian hagen daz thing, and most thankfully of all it cleanses the palate rather nicely after the horror that was my previous course. A++++, would eat again.
okay, that's it. survived another round. be back later with more nasty crap. you love it, don't lie.
d
