Century Eggs - $0.41

Malaysian Chinese Hawkers – Lobak Stall

Since somebody’s being a lazy hobo (name starts with an e and ends with an rnest), I figured I’ll post the promised follow-up to the Balut post. Well not so much a follow-up as it is a related post and since I mentioned it there…. yeah you get the idea.

Century eggs. Very dark brown bordering on black, translucent, coral/snowflake patterns on the egg white (technically black), Dark grey-ish green yolk, again bordering on black.

Contrary to what Americans think of it, and that it is actually a 100 year old egg, it is not. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I did see at least 3 different and separate occurrences of this, one being Fear Factor. If that is indeed what you are thinking, give yourself some time now and think that through and you’ll see why that is impossible. I’ll give you some keywords to help the with the thought process : hatch, rot.

Century eggs are actually preserved eggs, the process of which include ash, clay, salt, lime and rice straw, lasting for several weeks to several months (Source: Wikipedia). The egg has a very strong ammonia smell to it, which brings us to popular misconception #2, and that is that the eggs have been marinated in horse urine. They haven’t.

But it does have a very strong taste to it, and the ammonia smell plays a big part in that. Once I bought some and steamed it (it’s always served hard boiled), it wasn’t ready yet but somehow the genius in me decided to give it a try. The egg-white was barely taking form. It was like jello, breaking form on contact. Because it was still steaming hot, when I took a bite the ammonia scent whiffed up my nose and I started tearing. All in good fun, I still ate it all. The yolk is the best part, having a custardy texture to it if cooked right and tasting/smelling like sweet and salty sulfur.

I don’t know if there are any health benefits to eating this, I’m guessing there are none. Popular dishes that have century eggs as an ingredient include the Century Egg and Lean Pork porridge which is mostly available during Dim Sum breakfasts.

There’s also the Penang Lobak (hence the suggestion to find this at the Lobak stall in any Chinese hawker), a mixture of fried tofu and other stuff (these eggs included) cut up into pieces and eaten with sweet sauce. I don’t normally eat Lobak, hence this post focusing only on century eggs rather than Lobak.

(Ed: I wrote this MONTHS ago and never posted it. I figured there was no point to it since this blog was dying. But *someone* promised to stop spending so much time on the Xbox 360 and post more, so here’s to keeping that promise, hobo.)