Project Gastronome, Day 5: Century Eggs

UPDATE: If you are reading my blog because of the story on CNN, welcome!  I invite you to read this post, too, as it will give a little more explanation about my trying the century eggs.

I'm starting to think that I should maybe have called this series Project Asian Grocery Store, because this is my third item that I picked up at the Far East Supermarket (with two more coming next week).  I can't help it!  There was such an exotic variety of strange and new foods there!  I went in looking for two specific things (both of which I'll be eating next week), and walked out with an armload of others.  I'm a textbook example of an impulse buyer.

Actually, today's item was exactly that - an impulse buy.  I was scanning the shelves after picking some other things, and when I saw century eggs, I knew that I had to try them for Project Gastronome.  At the time, my line of thinking went something like, "No way!  That will make such a great blog entry!"  What didn't enter my head at the time is that I would actually have to eat them.  My first clue to what this experience was going to be like should have been the cashier's reaction, an incredulous "Do you like these?"

Perhaps I should back up for a second and tell you some more about tonight's food.  From Wikipedia:

Century egg, also known as preserved egg, hundred-year egg, thousand-year egg, thousand-year-old egg, and millennium egg (or Pidan in Mandarin), is a Chinese cuisine ingredient made by preserving duck, chicken or quail eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice hulls for several weeks to several months, depending on the method of processing. Through the process, the yolk becomes a dark green to grey colour, with a creamy consistency and an odor of sulphur and ammonia, while the white becomes a dark brown, transparent jelly with little flavor.

Here's a picture...

There are some culinary discoveries that make perfect sense to me.  Imagine the first caveman who held meat over a fire and realized that it was delicious!  Or think of the first person who said, "These plants smell good.  I'm going to try grinding them up and putting them on my food."  These are innovations that make sense!  The same can not be said of a person who woke up one day and thought, "I've got more eggs than I can use right now, so I'm going to encase some of them in clay and bury them for a few months."  As the start date for this project grew nearer, this was the single item that I most dreaded eating.  Just look at that picture - the egg white is brown and translucent!

I have read that the best way to approach eating century eggs is to think of it as a big piece of cheese.  You wouldn't just pick up a block of cheddar and take a huge bite out of it, you'd slice it or shred it and eat it with something.  Still, I wanted to experience this thing.  I decided to go at it both ways, by taking a bite out of one, and by slicing one and having it with crackers.

Peeling it only added to the dread.  There is a strong ammonia smell, much like animal urine.  Strangely, it still felt exactly like an ordinary hard boiled egg.  I took a bite, and...

As it turns out, my initial dread was well founded.  Put simply, this was THE STUPIDEST MOTHERFUCKING THING I HAVE EVER PUT IN MY MOUTH, and that includes a night of ill-advised experimentation in college.  Again to my surprise, the texture was exactly like that of a hard boiled egg, but the taste...  You know what?  Just watch the video.

It tasted like a hard boiled egg that had been boiled in pee.  Amazingly, there was practically no aftertaste once I had it out of my mouth, which was the one positive thing about this experience.

That's it for the foods this week, folks.  I'm going to cleanse my palate over the weekend and start again on Monday, except the theme will no longer be Animal, it will be Vegetable.  Just because I'm not eating anything this weekend, though, is no reason for you to stop checking - tomorrow I will be posting details of how YOU can take part in a very special Look What Danny Made! live event!

Project Gastronome, Day 4: Toasted Leafcutter Ants

I try, as much as I can, to be an objective and level-headed guy, and not to be swept along by the hysteria of our age.  One fear that I have always lived with, though, no matter how many counterarguments I hear, is that we are headed for a Malthusian catastrophe.  In case you napped through high school economics, Thomas Malthus is best known for his theories on overpopulation and resource depletion.  In other words, too many people, not enough food/room/supplies.  Without steering this blog in too dark of a direction, signs of this are already starting to crop up, as parts of the world enter food crises and we enter the era of peak oil.  (Incidentally, this is also why I'm perfectly cool with the idea of the world ending in 2012, although I don't believe it will.  At least we'll all go out together before we all start to starve, and I won't be the only person not to see how future seasons of "Dexter" play out.)

What does this have to do with Project Gastronome?  The future of food is sustainable food.  Better get ready to eat some bugs, my friends.  (Click that link and read it after you read this.  It's a pretty interesting article.)  Tonight, I'm going to pop open a can of ants in anticipation of having the last laugh when our world devolves into Mad Max or The Road.

Of course, a guy as big as me can't just go into the backyard and capture some ants to eat.  The task itself would be simple enough, but I'm a hungry guy.  I need the Hungry Man dinner of the ant world.  I need Atta laevigata, the largest ants int he world!  You may know them better by their Spanish name, "hormigas culonas," which translates into "ants with big asses."  I am not making that up.

It turns out that there are some benefits to eating the humble hormigas culonas.  They are high in protein and low in fat.  They are a delicacy in South America.  And they are thought to be an aphrodisiac, which is why they are a common wedding gift, and which is also why I made sure to eat them on a night when Courtney wasn't scheduled to work, IFYOUKNOWWHATIMEANANDITHINKYOUDO.

Gently shaking the can made a sound like a can of nuts.  Not dense nuts like peanuts, but something smaller and more airy, like pine nuts or shelled sunflower seeds.  Opening the can let off a smell that I can't really classify as pleasant or unpleasant, just unique.

The can was so light, I thought it would have been about half full, but it's just that ants don't weigh much.  That was one full can of ants.  Big ants.  Big, dead ants.

I poured some into a soup mug, and got Blake, who's been asking me all day long what we'd be eating tonight.  Just for your reference, here's one next to a ruler, so that you can get an idea of their size.

The experience of eating these raised several questions.  First, how could something so light and insubstantial take so long to chew up and swallow?  Seriously, once it was in my mouth it felt like it was in there forever.  Second, how do I describe the taste of something that tastes wholly unlike anything I have ever had before?  The texture was kind of like extra crispy bacon, but not the kind that breaks down nicely in your mouth, the kind that you have to chew and chew to make it go down your throat.  The taste was someplace between "nutty" and "burnt sawdust."

I'll let the video tell the rest of the story.

Project Gastronome, Day 3: Jellyfish

Another day, another discovery from the Far East Supermarket!  I honestly had no idea until a little over a week ago that there was such a thing as edible jellyfish.  I'm sure that some research could tell me more, but I have so many questions.  Are these jellyfish some kind of subspecies that doesn't have stingers?  Do they have stingers, but there's some process that renders them safe?  Are they like mushrooms, in that you should never eat ones you have found in the wild, unless they have been confirmed as safe by an expert?  How do you humanely slaughter a jellyfish?  Are they kosher?  (Actually, a quick trip to Wikipedia confirms that they are not.)

Here is what I do know.  Nancy, the really friendly proprietor of Far East, told me to put back the package of jellyfish that I originally brought to the counter, and showed me the kind that I should get instead.  "First kind is too much work.  You must soak it for three days to remove the sand and seawater.  This kind is ready to eat."  So next time you hear somebody badmouth Lubbock, TX for not being cosmopolitan enough, you just tell that sonofabitch that we have more than one brand of edible jellyfish available to purchase and let them chew on that for a while.

Actually, chewing on something for a while is the perfect preparation for eating a package of jellyfish.

Nancy also told me that jellyfish is really good for you.  She was so nice that I didn't even tell her that I wondered if it was good for you in the sense that whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

We had leftovers for dinner tonight, which gave me the perfect opportunity to eat one of my Project Gastronome foods without having to wait for the kids to be in bed and out of the way.  Courtney reheated some macaroni for Ava and Jack, some jambalaya and half a slice of pizza for Blake, and I checked the instructions on the back of my package of jellyfish.  Here's what the package looked like.

Somehow, I neglected to take a photo of the contents of the package, but there were four smaller packets inside.  One contained the jellyfish, and the other three were flavorings.  My first thought was how very much this looked like pre-cooked Ramen noodles.  One of the packets even looked exactly like the flavoring packet that comes with Ramen.  The other two were filled with sesame oil and soy sauce.  The instructions were pretty straightforward - put the jellyfish in a bowl, pour the seasonings on top and eat.  Simple enough!

Blake saw the package and said, "Hey, that's from China!"  Yeah, how did you know that?  "Because the letters are up and down, and one of them looks like a sideways K.  Also, that other one looks like a little house."

Before I'd even eaten a bite, this was different than the last two nights.  There was no smell.  With the pigs feet and eels, just opening them released a powerful scent.  I opened the jellyfish, expecting some sort of fishy smell, but instead smelled nothing.  Nothing.  The food had no scent at all.  I added the flavorings and took the bowl to the table, along with the ever-reliable Sriracha Rooster Sauce, which makes all things better.

First bite, first impression, it really was a lot like Ramen in taste, too, just much chewier and kind of crunchy.  It was crunchewy.  Jellyfish is a flavorless, odorless, crunchewy meal.  That sounds like a put-down, but it's not.  If somebody handed you a bowl of this without telling you what it was, you would think it was just a different kind of noodle.

Let's go to the tape.

Project Gastronome, Day 2: Braised Eel

When I was in the planning stages for Project Gastronome, there were a couple of things that I had pretty firmly decided I wanted to include (and which you will get to read about soon), but I knew that I'd never find them at the grocery store.  Luckily, Texas Tech's sizeable community of international students means that Lubbock has not one, but three Asian markets.  What I didn't plan on when I visited one, though, was that it would end up being a treasure trove of other potential menu items, which is how I ended up with tonight's course, braised eels.

When I walked into the Far East Supermarket on 34th Street, I only saw one person in there, a very attractive Asian girl in her mid-20s.  I asked her if she could help me find something, but she told me that she didn't actually work there, and that the shopkeeper was in the back at the moment.  So now I was not only wondering if they carried what I was looking for, but also wondering if this girl thought I was a racist for just automatically assuming that an Asian person standing near the counter must work there.  It's difficult having a brain full of white liberal guilt sometimes, y'all.

Anyway, while I slunk off between some shelves and waited for the proprietor to return, I saw this can, and knew that I had to try it for Project Gastronome.

Nancy, the very friendly shopkeeper, returned to the counter, and I struck up some conversation with her.  She had a pretty big selection of those Chinese waving kitties on the shelf.  You know, the ones that look like this:

I told her how much Ava would love one of them, and that I'd have to bring her back sometime to let her pick one.  We talked about kids, and she told me about her own children, and then she gave me some serving suggestions for my purchases.  I'll be sharing more of them as we get to some of the other foods.  I asked if I needed to cook the eel meat, and she pointed to the word "braised" on the can.  "It's braised - already cooked in its own juices.  You just open it and eat it like you would with sardines."  Well, of course.

Opening the can didn't really fill me with confidence.  It looked and smelled a lot like canned cat food.  Here's what it looked like in the can, with a Batman action figure thrown in because it makes me laugh.  I noticed that the meat was cut into tiny filets; it really was like a can of sardines.

I'm only two nights into this project, and already I'm learning an important lesson.  Plate your food and eat it as soon as possible.  The longer you stare it down and let the smell of it fill your room and your nostrils, the more you're going to psych yourself out.

Because here's the thing - once I sat down with it and took a bite, it was really good!  I'm guessing that preparation is a big part in determining the edibility of eels, because I could very easily see another cooking method not having as much success.  These were packed in some kind of soy/garlic/ginger sauce that really made them tasty, though.  The only downside is the aftertaste - nearly two hours after eating this, and multiple glasses of water later, I still have the flavor of it in my mouth.

In the video, I struggled a little to think of how to describe the texture, but I think I've finally got it.  Imagine that a snake went on vacation to the beach and had an affair with a fish while she was there.  Months later, she gives birth to the unholy snake/fish offspring that is the result of their union.  Actually, considering that an eel is essentially a snake that lives in the water, that kind of works.

And now, without further ado, I give you the tasting!  (I have to apologize for the background noise - the dryer was running in the utility room.)

BONUS -
This was too funny not to share.  Last night, after eating pigs feet, I took the leftovers out to the dumpster and then had to fix the latch on the gate when I came back in.  I had no idea that Blake knew how to work the video camera.  Flip video cameras should use this in their commercials - they are easy enough for a kindergartener to pick up and figure out!  Anyway, here's the footage.

Project Gastronome, Day 1: Pickled Pigs Feet

I'm beginning Project Gastronome by looking towards our friends with fins, feathers, and fur. This week's menu items are all from the animal kingdom.

I decided to start the month with an item that I've walked by in the supermarket for years, something I've always been kind of both horrified and fascinated by - pickled pigs feet.  It's not like I have any qualms about pork.  I love pork!  Dude, I've even tried and enjoyed chitlins.  I'm just fine with the swine.  As on so many other occasions, my feelings can best be captured by a clip from The Simpsons.



Why this trepidation?  I think it comes down to two things.

1. They are pickled - I love pickles, too!  Dill, sweet, bread 'n butter, pickled okra, kimchi, sauerkraut - all are favorites.  But do you notice what they all have in common?  They are all vegetables.  I just don't think that pickling is a process that should be done to meat.

2. They are feet - Ask Courtney how many foot massages I have given her during our marriage.  (I'll save you the call.  The answer is EWWWWW.)

Time to confront this fear.  Here is the jar, pre-opening.  Perhaps you are reminded, as I was, of museums that display medical oddities like preserved fetuses in jars.

I need to make this more palatable.  Mind over matter.  Voila!  Still life with pigs feet.

Here is what they looked like once they were poured out.

OK, time to stop stalling and start eating.  You get to watch this next part in glorious video!

---

And that would be that, except that then this happened...

What I Like About You, CNN.com

This is only the second in my very infrequently recurring series of posts called "What I Like About You."  As I mentioned in the first one, "The point of What I Like About You is to examine something that I do not like and find that one good thing about it."

We live in a strange media sphere right now, where the main purpose of every single news source seems to be to tell us how awful every single other news source is.  NPR is biased because some guy said something about teabaggers and Fox is biased because they only hire potential Republican presidential candidates as commentators anymore and everybody is biased against Sarah Palin because she tells us so in her Facebook posts and the network news is biased because sometimes they ask questions that politicians don't have answers to.  (Yes, that was a run-on sentence, but it was for effect.  I was mimicing the onslaught of blather, because I am motherfucking ARTISTIC.)  Everything that everyone of them says is awful, except for the channel that you are currently watching.

This brings me to CNN.com.  To be fair, I actually do like CNN.com, though not as much as I used to, before they started filling half the page with entertainment, dieting, and travel news instead of, well, actual news.  Here's a screenshot of the center section of the site when I visited the page for an after-lunch news fix today.

I know it's too small to be readable - go ahead and click on the picture to blow it up.  Do you see a very common thread in more than a fifth of their headlines?  Can you tell which lazy crutch CNN's editors fall back on when they need a tagline for one of their stories?  Do you think that CNN believes adding question marks to a lede will entice readers to click for more?

Today, CNN.com, what I like about you is that you make me feel I could be an editor for a major online news source, even without ever having spent a day in journalism school.  All I'd have to do is phrase things in the form of questions to look clever - right?

Project Gastronome: A Month-Long April Fools Joke on Myself

It's spring!  Days are getting warmer, the kids are getting more restless, and I'm ready to kick off another project.  Project Horror and Project Valentine have both been a lot of fun.  Still, I wanted my next one to be something a little more active than just sitting in front of the TV for two hours each night.

I found inspiration on one of my favorite blogs, The Sneeze, which has a recurring feature called Steve, Don't Eat It!, in which he eats various inadvisable things.  I've been thinking a lot about what goes into my mouth lately - I've lost nearly 25 pounds since January (with more to go), partly by keeping a food log.  Now, I wouldn't expect you to be interested in what I ate for lunch today, but if I was to eat something unusual every day...

And so, for the month of April, I am launching Project Gastronome, in which I will be trying a new, unusual, or awful food every weekday and writing about it here.  I've set down a few guidelines for myself:

• This isn't a volume or speed eating project.
• Courtney and I gave up dining out for Lent, so all foods must either be purchased at the store or online, and will be prepared at home.
• Any food can be covered up to the point where it becomes edible.  Although some of these foods will, by necessity, need preparation, I'm going to do my best to stay true to the spirit of the food.
• We're traveling for weddings a few weekends this month, so I'm only going to be doing this on weekdays.

If you've read my other projects, you know that I like to split things up into blocks.  The themes for Project Gastronome will be:

• April 4-8: Animal
• April 11-15: Vegetable
• April 18-22: Potable
• April 25-29: Questionable

First entry will be on Monday!  Also, keep reading - in a few days, I'll be announcing a way that YOU, my devoted audience, can be part of a Look What Danny Made! live interactive event.