It Came From Chinatown...

One of the interesting side effects of the ICFC project is that, occasionally, the product that I try will accidentally ruin all other products of it's kind for me forever. Examples: The Grass Jelly made me never want to walk barefoot across a freshly-mowed lawn again, the dried lily flowers made me immediate suspicious of all plants, and, of course, the durian made me want to destroy all the things in the world that are or ever have been alive. I mean sometimes things are fine... the Satay Jelly Fish was nasty, but I feel no residual ill-will towards marine life... but mostly, yeah, we're just shutting the lights off, one food sub-group at a time.

This week's thing that I'll never be able to eat again without contemplating a loaded gun? Eggs! The perp... Canned Quail Eggs:



Incidentally, when I finally get around to making It Came From Chinatown: The Record, that picture is going to be our album cover. It's going to be bigger than Sgt. Pepper's, and that's a guarantee. Now I've just got to learn to play an instrument. And have talent. Anyway, we're talking about canned quail eggs, here, not my eventual musical stardom (it's going to happen, man... someday). Here's a good look at the can:



This might be a result of my having spent way too many long, lonely nights watching science fiction and horror movies, but those eggs look mighty threatening. Like they're about to hatch, releasing forth from their albumen-soaked innards a horrific creature that's going to rip apart a bunch of perky, gratuitously naked teens. Not helping matters, this:



We're on a far-away planet and we're exploring a cave and there, off in a corner, is a deep trench filled with the eggs of a pants-shittingly terrifying creature and they're moving around like something is trying to break free and OH MY GOD, HERE COMES THE MOTHER.... AAAAIIIIIIEEEEE!!!!!

Ahem... yes, well... anyway, here's a good shot of one of the little fuckers next to a regular, non-frightening, chicken egg. Note the size difference. Also, we cut one of the canned eggs in half to show you what fresh hell is lurking on it's inside:



The white part of the quail egg was rubbery and slick, like a dodgeball that's been dipped in olive oil. The yellow stuff was creamy to the touch, like a thick lotion; it was also the only part of the egg, egg-soaking liquid, and the can that gave off an odor. It smelled... unsurprisingly... like old eggs. Which you can assume means that I'm about to really start questioning the decisions I've made in my life up until this point. Here we go:

Okay, so here's the weird thing: This is the first food I've ever had that was both without a taste and horrible tasting. More on that in a second, but let me first say this... I really like hard-boiled eggs. They're tasty and it's fun to peel them and if you mix them up with a bunch of mustard and other junk, you get a lovely egg salad. Picnic food! That being said, hard-boiled eggs are good only if you eat them within a couple of days of their cooking. Letting them hang around for a while is a bad idea. And, hey, you know what else is a bad idea? Canning them and letting them rest on a shelf in some Chinatown grocery store since, by my guess, the early days of the Reagan administration. Gaze upon the displeased face of C-dog:

Let me guide you through the flavors (such as they are) as they make themselves known: The immediate thing that you notice is an overwhelming blandness, which tastes sort of like you're being suffocated by a beige pillow. There's an undefinable nothingness to them, and it's rubbery too; biting into a canned quail egg is, at first, like chewing on an inner tube. Then you hit the creamy center, which as it turns out is where all the flavor has been hiding. Needless to say, it should have stayed hidden. This is where the smell of old eggs comes to die. The third flavor, however, is the most disturbing... after a couple of chews, your entire mouth tastes like metal, like you've been deep-throating a roll of tin foil. Obviously this comes from the eggs being in a can, but... damn... how long does your product have to be in there to take on the taste of it's packaging? I'm going to stick by my original "Reagan administration" guesstimate, but I wouldn't rule out Carter or even Nixon at this point.

Now, in thinking about the concept of canned quail eggs, I was forced to ask myself the question, "Just what in the hell would you can them in, liquid-wise?" Something murky, yellowish, and unfathomably evil, no doubt. Which naturally lead me to a follow-up: "What would the egg liquid taste like on it's own?" Let's find out:

Remember: Everything I do, I do it for you:

Yikes. That metallic taste I mentioned? Yeah, the liquid is that times fifty to the power of three. And it's slightly salty, as well as stale, brackish and thick. It's probably what it would be like to drink a robot's blood. Kids, I mean this, never drink the canning liquid used to package quail eggs. Doing so only leads to heartbreak, a loss of faith in humanity, and, more than likely, some sort of horrible, metal-based cancer.

So, the overall verdict on canned quail eggs?

Note how coated my tongue is. That can't be good. Although I will say this about the whole experience: It was nice to find something in Chinatown that didn't taste like a dead animal for once. Not that the "old eggs and the material in which they were packaged" flavor combo was desirable in the least. Still, though... it was a nice/gross change of pace.

See y'all next week!!!