Grocery Ninja: Thousand-Year-Old Eggs and the Horse Urine Myth
The Grocery Ninja leaves no aisle unexplored, no jar unopened, no produce untasted. Creep along with her below, and read her past market missions here.
Photographs from FotoosVanRobin on Flickr
My mom’s visiting this week, and I’ve noticed something: Every time my Russian housemate asks about one of the more pungent foods she’s eating, Mom will cock her head to one side, and after much deliberation, respond, “It’s like cheese.” Since a great bulk of what she’s eating most decidedly does not taste like cheese, I’ve puzzled over why her mind leaps to associate the punchier flavors in the Asian larder with it. My theory: For Mom, cheese is one of the most confrontational foods she’s had to share a table with. Hence, in her world, “tastes like cheese” is a most apt descriptor—a Western segue to a Chinese reckoning.
Which, of course, leaves you a tad leery about what I’m about to introduce, doesn’t it?
With all the frenzy over eggs this past Easter weekend, I thought it apropos to share the granddaddy of them all: thousand-year-old eggs. Also called century eggs, these are chicken or duck eggs that have been cured in a mix of clay, ash, salt, lime, and rice husks over a period of weeks or even months. The resulting preserved egg, with its quivery, translucent, amber colored (almost black) “white,” and Chernobyl sunset yolk, has been described as “cheeselike.”
