‘If it looks good, eat it’.*   

 

 

 

This is all about food. Anything that takes my fancy will appear here. There will be an emphasis on things that most people won’t eat.

I’m really good at eating, but I  have a lot to learn about cooking and food photography. I hope you’ll join me in my journey. 

 

 

 

*(Andrew Zimmern, Bizarre foods)

 

Preserved Duck Egg

Well, I’ve eaten salted duck eggs and balut (duck embryos in the egg), so preserved duck eggs were next.

These are also called century eggs or 100 year old eggs. The ingredients list on the packet says ‘calcium ,salt, tea leaves and water’. The eggs are wrapped in a layer of clay with the tea leaves on the outside.

 

 There are a lot of recipes on the internet for using these eggs, but I just wanted to eat them on their own.

If you decide to try these eggs, be warned, they have a strong smell of urine. The egg white becomes a translucent brown colour, and doesn’t have much flavour. The yolk is a deep greyish green, soft in the middle, and tastes like egg with maybe a hint of duck flavour. The yolk is very creamy, and left a quite delicious creamy aftertaste. 

 But it would take a while to get used to the smell, it’s not surprising that some people think they are preserved by soaking in horse urine.

Pork, tongue in cheek.

I have written here before about pig tongues and pig cheeks. I enjoyed them both separately, so it seemed like they should be good together. I started by slow cooking the tongue for several hours, until tender, and then peeling the skin off. The next day I rolled the tongue and some slices of cooking apple in the pig cheek. I would have liked to use a cheek with the skin on but unfortunately it seems to be impossible to buy them like that (unless I wanted 40kgs of them). I tied the roll up with string and roasted it for around 2 hours.

The cheek was not quite big enough to completely enclose the tongue and apple, so it wasn’t quite as neat a looking roll as I wanted. Pork cheeks are extremely fatty, and even though I had trimmed a lot of the fat off, there was still way too much fat on it for me. When I ate the roll hot, I was very disappointed, particularly with the tongue, which was quite dry and had a strong offal flavour. I decided not to throw the rest away, and tried it cold the next day. What a difference!  The subtle pork flavours where delicious and the tongue was much more like the pressed tongue I had made before. Overall, it was an interesting experiment, but I don’t think I’ll bother again.

maple bacon chip icecrean

When I made my first batch of maple bacon, I just knew I had to try it with ice cream. I cooked the bacon in the oven, removing excess fat a few times, until the bacon was crispy. I then dribbled maple sauce onto the bacon and cooked it  until the maple sauce was no longer runny on the bacon. The bacon was by that time very crispy and quite sweet, and was easy to crumble into little chips. I don’t have an ice cream machine, so I used my sister-in law’s recipe for home made ice cream (thanks Ngaire). I whipped 600ml of cream firm, then stirred through a tin of sweetened condensed milk. I then put it into the freezer until almost frozen and then stirred again to make sure the condensed milk wasn’t all at the bottom. Then add the bacon chips and freeze. Ice cream made this way is quite hard but sweet and creamy. The combination of the sweet ice cream with the crispy bits of salty/sweet bacon was different and delicious. With a little maple syrup dribbled over it, it was a really nice and unusual desert.

Chicken hearts

I’d had a pack of chicken hearts in the freezer for quite a while, so finally it was time to try them. They’re not much to look at, but a lot of the things I eat are worse looking than this. They had been prepared by the butcher, with the tops cut off, removing any veins, and some of the fat.

I found quite a few different ways to cook the hearts, but I was hungry, so I took the easy option, and just pan fried them in oil, with garlic, until they browned up nicely.

I think they look a lot nicer cooked than raw! And they are so good to eat. A little bit chewy cooked this way, but by no means tough, quite a nice texture really. They had that lovely chicken skin, fatty flavour that I love. I saved a few for the next day and ate them cold, and what a great snack they are. Delicious with a cold beer. It’s a pity that they are high in cholesterol, or I’d eat them often.

Salted Duck Eggs

Ever since I tried balut, I have intended trying salted duck eggs. So this week when I was pedalling by an Asian Grocery store here on the Sunshine Coast, I stopped, and fortunately they had a few in stock. They are mainly a Chinese dish apparently, but the eggs I bought were bright pink, which is from a dye they use in the Philippines to distinguish between salted and plain duck eggs. The eggs were already cooked, so it was just a case of removing the shells and eating.

As you can see from the photo, they look a bit different to ordinary cooked eggs. The egg white is a bit denser than normal, quite a pleasant texture, but very, very salty. The yolk has a quite a hard lump in the centre, but overall is creamier and heavier than a boiled yolk. It’s a bit salty, but not as bad as the white. It has just a hint of duck flavour, which I didn’t expect, but which I found delicious. I think overall these eggs are too salty to be eaten on their own like I did, but mixed with something that needs saltiness, maybe chopped up on a salad, they would be really good. I’ll have to do some research into recipes using these eggs.

Rolled pig’s spleen

This is a recipe from Fergus Henderson’s book ‘Nose To Tail Eating’, and is something I have wanted to try for quite some time, but I’ve had a lot of trouble getting hold of pig’s spleens. Finally, after waiting about 2 months, a butcher managed to get me some. I have never seen a spleen before, so I was a bit surprised at how long they are, the biggest one was over 45cm.

They had a layer of fat on one side which I cut off, you can see in the photo above where the fat was attached down the middle of the spleen. With the spleen laid flat, it was easy to place several sage leaves along it, then a couple of slices of smokey bacon with the rind removed were laid lengthwise on top. It was then easy to roll it all up and push through a skewer to hold it in the roll.

 

 The spleens were then placed in a casserole dish, covered with chicken stock and into a medium oven for 90 minutes. They were then left to cool in the stock before slicing and serving cold.

Anyone who likes liver will enjoy these as the taste is similar but not as strong. They are probably more like chicken than lamb liver, with maybe just a hint of pork flavour. I would have expected the bacon to overpower the spleens, but it didn’t. I think that is the genius of Fergus, he gets a fantastic balance of flavours. The amazing thing about the spleens is their texture, so soft and creamy, just like a really good pate.

 

Sydney rock oysters vs Pacific oysters

I’m not sure I have eaten Sydney rock oysters, certainly not in the last 10 years or so anyway. Here in Queensland, Pacific oysters are the commonly available variety. These are not a native oyster, but are extensively farmed, and are large and delicious. I have always eaten oysters ‘au naturel’ and have very pleasant memories of gathering them off rocks as a child and eating them fresh. I don’t know what variety they were, in New Zealand in the 60′s, possibly not Pacific oysters. But I digress…. Last week I had the opportunity to buy and try Pacific and Sydney Rock side by side and compare. I know a lot of New South Wales people claim that Sydney Rock Oysters are the best oysters in the world. Prices were similar per oyster, but the Pacific oysters (shown on the right) were almost twice the size.

The Pacific oyster was from Coffin Bay in South Australia, and as I bought them already opened, may have dehydratred and shrunk a little. Certainly for the size of the shell I expected a little more meat, but this is about quality, not quantity, right? I have to say, I wouldn’t mind at all being an oyster taste tester, I rarely buy them, and when I eat them I wonder why I don’t do it more often. I love oysters!!! So, to the taste comparison, Pacific oysters are beautiful, there is no argument from me on that, but I think the Sydney Rock oysters are a little sweeter. Not much in it, but I guess Sydney Rocks get my vote. So in the end it does get to quality vs quantity, and Pacific oysters are better value. And as for those people who say Sydney rock oysters are the worlds best?  Go try a fresh Bluff oyster from NZ!!!