Century Eggs

Ok, so we're getting better at posting more about Hong Kong. Katie has had a couple of posts recently, so now I figured I'd write about some of the food here, this one focusing on the bizarre and disgusting.

This brings me to the Century Egg. The first time I heard about this crazy food was at a dinner with my manager from Japan and another co-worker who is a Hong Kong native. We were at an authentic Chinese Restaurant, and before we ordered they brought out 2 eggs cut in half that looked hard boiled, except for the minor detail that the were BLACK! The yolk was a dark, opaque black and the egg "white" was a transparent shiny black. At this point, both my colleagues sang the praises of the century egg, how delicious the were, how they had such unique taste, etc. It was all love for century egg.

Now I'm all for trying new foods. Since moving here, I've had chicken feet, cuttle fish balls (this is cuttle fish rolled into balls, not actual fish balls), frog legs, abalone, and more things that I can't remember at the moment. I try to keep an open mind about this stuff and have even grown to like some of it. But now on to the century egg.

IT WAS GOD AWFUL.

It tasted like eating a rotten egg with an aftertaste of ass. Sitting with my two local colleagues, talking up this delicacy while I sat there with a sick look on my face. It was one of those moments where I really wondered what I was doing in Asia. Whatever happened to having a work dinner at a steakhouse? You know, when you're excited to go on a "work" meal because you can try a new place or go somewhere you wouldn't go on your own (in a good way). Upon further questioning on this bizarre food, I learned that regular eggs are buried under ground for decades? in some sort of clay pots.

When I got home that night and talked to Katie about it, we started raising all these questions that I still don't know the answer to: How was this food discovered in the first place? Who found a 40 year old egg with dirt all over it, opened it up, saw it was black, and said "yeah, gimme some of that!", Who buries the eggs knowing that they likely won't be around when the eggs are "ready"? How do they remember where they put them? How does anyone think it tastes good?

The following weekend, while walking around with Mitch and Erin (our cousins on Katie's side) at a wet market (see the pics from the Crabby Katie to get an idea of what a wet market looks like) I saw an older chinese guy selling a huge basket of century eggs. Ever since that dinner I had been talking about them incessantly so I was determined to show Katie, Mitch, and Erin exactly what I had been talking about.

So I gave the older Chinese guy my 2 Hong Kong Dollars (about 25 cents) and grabbed a century egg. Throughout the post are the pictures of me taking the thing apart.

By far the highlight of the demonstration was when I squeezed the egg and some black sludge shit came spurting out.

Yum yum, gimme some!

Remember when the yolk was the best part?

Here is the black sludge shit on the sidewalk, where we left it for someone to step in or for some random dog to lick up.