Blogger wouldn't let me post all my scintillating egg photos in one post, so here's the second half:
Of course, the test of any poached egg is the yolk, so here’s a close-up trio:
The pheasant egg, despite a good size, was the most disappointing in color (boring pale yellow) and taste (absolutely tasteless).
Here’s the chicken egg, which was my favorite overall. Nice orange color (probably from that free-range, grain-fed chicken doing chicken aerobics or something), good body and, well, it tasted like an egg, nothing shocking, but still better than tasting like nothing. Also important: the proportion of yolk to soup, which I thought was just right.
And the duck egg... I liked the color, which seemed to deepen during poaching, and the shape, but damn, it was just too much yolk. It seemed like half a cup of just yolk. The taste was very rich, though I can’t say whether it was because of the yolk’s qualities or its sheer volume.
The winner, then, would be the chicken egg, which incidentally cost half as much as the pheasant and a third of the duck.
Though perhaps the real winner was Wiley. I ate the soup from all three bowls (hey, it’s damn good, and the way I make it, good for you) and the chicken egg, but after tasting the other eggs, I decided to let my furry sous chef in on the tasting. He gobbled them down indiscriminately and then cried until I let him lick the soup pot (don’t worry... I don’t do that in the real kitchen. But hey, I’ve got hell-hot water and anti-bacterial soap. And trust me, the plates you’ve eaten off of in restaurants have probably had worse things than a dog’s tongue run across them).
This weekend, I continue the experiment with that classic indicator of an egg’s quality: a good fry.
And yes, despite eating raw or undercooked parts from five different animals in a 36 hour period, Wiley and I were both just fine.
2 comments:
MMMMM, eggs! Nothing goes better on top of chilequiles. Or enchiladas. Hungry now.
I've lost your email. Please send!!
Wow, duck eggs... Eggs are a particularly interesting subject for me these days. I've just gotten involved as a volunteer with a start-up organic cooperative egg farm, so I'll be working with chickens, starting about two weeks from now. The really cool thing is that if it takes off, it has the potential to expand into any number of directions, and I'm already thinking about eventually floating the idea of raising some ducks! Of course we must walk before we run, but it's an exciting idea nonetheless. I'm sure someone's got duck eggs at our farmers' market, I'll have to keep an eye out.
Now get on your bike and do some hill work...
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