Do you see this? Why am I showing you an egg? Well, it is in fact a duck egg. How did I come across such an item? Very exclusive purveyor as a matter of fact. That purveyor being my friend. Yea, he has two pet ducks, and despite numerous offers, I am his only client. In fact, I just received a shipment of four dozen!
The quality of this ingredient excites me, for I am receiving egg quality that few restaurants can hope for. These eggs are 100% organic (though not certified), cage free, and100% void of added chemicals or hormones. Most importantly, they are fresh out of the ducks!
So how did these eggs stack up against the common chicken egg? The duck egg is slightly bigger, about the size of extra-large chicken eggs, with a very large yolk. It is subsequently richer than the chicken egg. Maybe this reflects the quality of the egg, but the yolk had a depth of flavor not attained with chicken eggs. I cooked it sunny side up once, then scrambled. The downside of duck eggs is that they have less water, so the white dries out more quickly. This was evident in the sunny side up egg. I then cooked it, as if I was going to make it over easy, but I poked the yolk with a fork, and spread it out across the egg. The results were far superior. The rich yolk flavor was distributed throughout the potentially dry white, and it tasted phenomenal. The scrambled egg was much richer, and had a more complex flavor than that of a scrambled chicken egg.
5 comments:
Hi Nick – I've just seen your blog for the first time. I thought I was young when I started food blogging as an 18-year-old catering college student, but you have really trumped me.
Your writing is exceptionally good for someone of your age and more interesting than a lot of bloggers out there who are old enough to be your parents.
Although I enjoyed reading about your lunch at Per Se, I was really impressed by this current post because a lot of people wouldn't write about cooking an egg. I have, more than once as I recall (including one about poaching egg in cling film). I really like the way you have experimented and eventually found the process that brings out the complex flavours of duck egg, as you comment. And I like your appreciation of local, fresh produce.
If I'm reading you right and you are about to start a stage with Matthew Levin at Lacroix at the Rittenhouse then you are doing exactly what I did. My dad encouraged me to "start at the top", i.e. as high up the ladder as I could get, and always have ambition to go higher.
It sounds like you are going to go a long way in this business. I will be linking to you in my blog so I can keep an eye on your progress.
I had a fresh ostrich egg once-- it was tougher than a normal egg, but still pretty good.
Even though I can't cook to save my life and therefore probably can't fully appreciate this blog, it seems like you're a great cook and your pictures of mac-and-cheese and chocolate chip cookies are making me hungry.
I also have to say it is cool to see someone else my age blogging about something other than how much they hate their parents or how no one appreciates their emo poetry (no offense to all of the emo poetry writers out there...)
Good luck with everything :)
hi, i have pet ducks, muscovy, and use their eggs for baking (i won't bake without duck eggs now) i also scramble and hard boil them (chopped over salad)
i just love duck eggs for those uses, plus the ducks are wonderful pets.
i also have chickens, buff orpingtons, and they lay a nice sized brown egg.
i love that people are starting to discover duck eggs they really are wonderful
vi
Emu Eggs are currently available at the Fair Food Farmstand at Reading Terminal Market.
Everytime someone mentions duck eggs, I can only visualize the duck-egg curry my Mum makes (one of my favourites, of course...its the bright orange yolk that gets me everytime! (Never mind the higher cholesterol factor :-D)
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