Salty Duck Eggs

After 21 days "on the salt", the eggs were the same as they had never been salted. As my Chinese pal agreed the method below is the correct procedure to make salty duck eggs, I cannot understand what went wrong. I ate one of the eggs, poured over hot rice. It had no bad flavor or taste. It had no "off" smell. I am not sick days later from eating it. Sorry.



Chinese cooks do wonderful things with eggs. Duck, as both eggs and flesh is one of my favorite foods.

Duck eggs are quite expensive compared with hen eggs. A dozen hen eggs is under $3.00 (Feb. 2015 prices), while duck eggs range from 65¢ to $1.50 each. And the $1.50 is by the dozen.

While shopping in Chinatown, I found 5 for $4.00. Expensive, but I'll eat an egg for lunch with some other ingredient and that's going to be a fine meal.

Pleasant Aroma

The duck eggs I have seen come wrapped in a nylon mesh bag. This is far from ideal for transporting them, so I took an empty egg crate into Chinatown and transferred the duck eggs into it. The styrofoam container can hold 5 duck eggs with sufficient space in between the eggs to prevent damage. So my expensive ingredient got home safely.

INSTRUCTIONS

for Salted Duck Eggs

Ingredients and Batterie de Cuisine

duck eggs

liquor of at least 50% or 100 proof

salt

plastic wrap

bowls as necessary

If the eggs have dust or minor debris on them, wash and dry your eggs. In a small bowl, just big enough to hold the egg, put the liquor. In another bowl put the salt. Quantities here are dependent on the size of your bowls or containers. I have a plastic Tupperware storage "jar". I filled it with about 4 fl. ozs. of liquor. In a larger stainless steel bowl, I put about half a cup of fine salt.

Cut a piece of plastic film at least 8 inches long. You can adjust the length after you wrap the first egg. Roll the egg around in the liquor for 10 seconds and then in the salt. Be certain that the entire eggs is moistened with the alcohol. We are sterilizing the surface of the shell. Transfer the egg to the sheet of plastic wrap and put it in a bowl. Repeat with all the duck eggs. Place the bowl in the sun for half a day in summer and a full day in winter. The eggs need some sun to feel the salt.

Now comes the scary part and if you are squeamish about authentically made food, and have read this before starting on making the salty eggs, QUIT NOW!

After the eggs have had a sunbath, put them into the egg crate and set it in a cool, dry place. I'm leaving mine outdoors on the patio, where the squirrels and birds cannot get to them. The eggs must now age for 4 weeks (30 days). Every week, the eggs must be (to use the old technical culinary word) overhauled. In plain English, turn the eggs over so that the top is on the bottom. This helps the salt penetrate evenly. DO NOT REFRIGERATE. Eggs in the refrigerator will have their moisture removed.

At the end of four weeks, remove the plastic wrap. No need to remove the salt from the shell. Put the eggs in a pot covering them by two inches of water. Bring the pot to a boil. When the water boils, immediately remove from the heat, cover and rest for 17 minutes. Remove the eggs from the pot and allow to cool to room temperature. Now the cooked eggs can be refrigerated.

Use within two weeks.

LIttle Ma's Recipe Corner

I love Chinese food. Sometimes, when I think about Chinese food my thoughts run this way: There has been for the better part of my life, approximately 1 billion Chinamen. And even when I was a youth, that great number of people at at least one meal a day. By 2008, as I write this, the likelihood of the Chinese population eating more than one meal a day is good. So, for approximations sake, that is 1 billion 200 million hungry folks eating twice a day or 16 billion 800 million meals a week. Is it any wonder that the Chinese have had to eat all available ingredients. Is it any wonder that the creativity of Chinese cuisine is so outstandingly varied.

And towards that end, I share:

China Vista
http://www.chinavista.com

yet, for simplicities sake:

Welcome to Little Ma's Recipe Corner
http://www.topren.net/travel/culture/cuisine/recipes.html

which is where the recipes are. Some of the recipes list ingredient names which I cannot translate or which are not available in the United States. Sometimes, the instructions are hard to comprehend. I will give a few recipe samples to tease the palate.

Hunan Dishes

Unrobed Eels
Materials:
300g eels
50g soaked slices of bamboo shoots
25g fragrant mushrooms
50g fresh green peppers
25g coriander
1. Preparations: Skin and bone the eels, scald and slice.
2. Put the slices into a mixture of egg white, cornstarch and seasonings, stir-fry in 50% heated oil.
3. Slice bamboo shoots, fragrant mushrooms and green peppers, stir-fry in 80% heated oil, add the sliced eels and cooking wine, toss a few times.

Unrobed most like means skinned. Fragrant mushrooms means shitake mushrooms: "In Chinese, it is called xiānggū (香菇, literally "fragrant mushroom")." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiitake. And coriander is what we in the West, commonly refer to as Cilantro leaves. Seasonings would be five spice powder, or roasted and ground Szechuan pepper.

The quantities called for in this recipe would be enough for three people, if there were two or three more courses.


Another Hunan dish:

Red Peppers Stuffed with Pork

500g red and green peppers
300g pork mince
15g prawns
15g mushrooms soaking in water
1 egg
50 garlic

1. Preparations: Rinse and finely chop the prawns and mushrooms, add to the minced pork, then add eggs, MSG and salt stir together with cornstarch to make a filling.
2. Cut off the ends of the peppers, remove the seeds, stuff with filling, seal the ends with dissolved cornstarch, deep-fry till 80% done and remove.
3. Put the peppers into a bowl with the ends done [down?], sprinkle garlic cloves over them and steam till done, drain off the soup stock, turn the bowl upside down on a plate.
4. Add seasonings [five spice powder?] to the soup stock, bring to the boil, thicken, pour over the peppers.

Seal the ends with dissolved cornstarch I take to mean, reserve the tops of the bell peppers. Stuff the peppers, and using the cornstarch as a glue, glue the tops back on the peppers.

As for the "deep-fry until 80% done", that is very hard for me to guess. The recipe doesn't say whether the pork mince is previously cooked, which is important. If the pork is cooked the 80% is probably 4 to 6 minutes. Otherwise if raw pork, 8 to 10 minutes. While the peppers are in the hot oil, bring a steamer up to steaming hot. The bell peppers used are tiny by comparison with American bell peppers. I've never seed such small peppers in Chinatown here in Los Angeles.



Sichuan Dishes
1 duck (500g)
150g pork shreds
25g pickled chilli shreds

Preparations

1. Clean and scald the duck, then wipe dry; coat the skin with sugar solution, leave to dry.
2. Stir-fry pork shreds in a wok, add thick chilli bean sauce, mustard greens, pickled chilli shreds, five spices powder (prickly ash, star aniseed, sinnamon, clove, fennel), cool.
3. Put the pork shreds into the duck and seal up the duck's anus, stew till done, take out, remove the pork shreds, and mustard greens.
4. Cut the duck into slices, place on a plate together with pork shreds, mustard greens, pancakes and sauce.

Pickled chiles are available at Asian markets. Typically red in color, they come in a brine. Using gloves, remove some from their jar, and shred them lengthwise. For the pork shreds, use any cut of pork, but remove all the fat first. As the recipe call for 500g(rams) of duck, that would be a very small duck. One pound is 450 grams. Serve with mu shu wrappers and Chinese Sweet & Sour sauces.