BBQ Mudskipper, Goat Testicle, Baby Pigeon

After another legendary night at do-it-yourself The Antidote, we went for 4am munchies at Joon's favorite do-it-yourself BBQ place on Tianping Lu near Guangyang Lu. Thanks to Wee Ling for the excellent pics, and to Mr. Cold Castle for helping us order the weird stuff.

We started with an order of mudskippers. There was a debate because the mudskippers had no eyes and no leg-fins, so they looked like any old little fish. But Mr. Cold Castle grilled the waitress until she demonstrated how the mudskipper looked like before leaving the kitchen. Here's what the mudskipper looks like alive:



Cute! Here's the mudskipper being eaten by a fierce carnivorous predator:



Even cuter! These were pretty good. Reminded me of sardines, but more subtle, not salty, because they're fresh-water amphibians. But not at all like frogs, my other favorite tasty amphibian.

Then we ordered some baby birds. Baby pigeons, we were told. I wish someone would explain the appeal of eating these. Do they taste much better as babies? Isn't this inefficient, when the bird could grow bigger and provide more meat and eggs?



The baby pigeons were skinned and served raw, but fully intact except the beak and feet claws, which are taken off for easier consumption -- so much more civilized this way! They were OK. The chewy crunchy texture as you bite into the head is not enjoyable as it's too much in between crunch and chew, and there's just not much flavor. Maybe I BBQ'd it too long?

Then Mr. Cold Castle (picture below) surprised us with an order of goat gonads, er, sheep testicles, er, mutton nuts. Well whatever you call them, they were big and mushy.



I'm not sure how these are prepared. They were like slices of big sausages ... eh, but don't get confused, because they were not the sausage-like part of the animal, they're the testicles. I expected them to be more firm. Despite the mushy texture, these were pretty good. Actually the best item of the meal.

Don't Serve Weird Meat To Foreign Friends

Browsing through this week's Chinese news, I found a few articles about the new social education program the Shanghai government is starting up in preparation for the World Expo 2010. They're going to offer public lessons on manners and etiquette -- how not to hack spit all over the place, how not to smoke on public elevators (we hope!), how to yield for pedestrians (yeah right), and how to greet foreigners visiting Shanghai. The last one caught our attention. We're used to being called "lao wai" daily, as we walk down the street. "Hallo !! Lao wai !!" Lao wai means "old foreigner," and even though my friends here insist it's a term of endearment, hearing it 50 times a day "lao wai !! heheh .. Hallo !!" can become a bit nerve-racking. So the government is going to discourage this behavior, in hopes that Shanghai will appear to be a more mature, cultured, cosmopolitan city, as it prepares to host the World Expo. Yeah, I know, World Expo ... they still have those?



So how is this related to Weird Meat? Well, it seems that one of the items they're going to address is how Chinese hosts should not serve foreign guests "offal and fish with bones." [SH-8days magazine, March 2006] Now I'm all for encouraging the 20 million civilians here to wait in line at the subway ticket booth, but some things are sacred and shouldn't be changed. Public pajama wearing doesn't bother me, and should be left alone -- it's charming, and it's a person's own business what they want to wear. But messing with a culture's foodways like this is just wrong. If a foreigner doesn't like offal and fish on the bone, that's the foreigner's problem. I'm a foreigner, and I want to appreciate the culture's foodways as they are, not a dumbed-down tourist version.

A better effort could be to discourage consumption of shark's fin soup, or the poaching of endangered species. A far more important PR exercise! But I say, eat the offal. Don't waste this perfectly good meat. Stop the anti-weird propoganda!

If they'd only learn how to cook it...

I Have Big Eggs

(Double duck eggs from Yangzhou, China)

The other day my friend Coco came through with an interesting weird meat oddity from her hometown Yangzhou. There's a town near Yangzhou called Gaoyou and a lake near there called Gaoyou Lake. And at this lake there are weird ducks.

Well, they're not really weird, they're just free-range and healthy. That's cool. I wish all ducks were like this.

They're called "Gaoyou maya," which means "sparrow-duck" because their feathers are reminiscent of sparrow bird feathers. Quite attractive, I believe.

It's their eggs that are weird. They're big like goose eggs. (Here's a photo of 2 of these big duck eggs, next to a brown chicken egg)...



The yolks are a bright orange-red color, and an unusually high proportion of them are double-yolked. The double-yolked eggs are prized so they've set up an industry that finds these double-eggs with x-ray equipment. That way the lucky consumer is guaranteed a double-yolk upon demand.

Why are they double-yolked? The assumption is because of their exercise routine and their diet. These athletic ducks dive deep for the abundant and clean fresh-water shellfish found in the region.



We cracked open 3 of these large eggs, and each of them had two yolks. Would-be future twins? Two-headed ducks? We cooked the first egg (eh, should this be plural?) sunny-side up. It tasted like a chicken egg but more dense and flavorful. Good with salt, pepper and chili sauce. Then we scrambled the next one (eh, two?) with a cucumber. And the third double-egg was, well, a little too weird. The yolks were kind of hard and the egg white part was very watery. So we sent that one to duck heaven without eating it.

Thanks to Coco for sourcing this double duck egg. I've been encouraging her to list "Weird Meat Research Assistant" on her resume. Good idea, right?

Recent find: Four yolks in Guangdong egg

Nanjing Chicken Embryo, Duck Blood, Bull Penis

Nanjing chicken embryo, duck blood, bull penis ... well isn't that a mouthful? Yes, and a delicious one. Last weekend I took the train to Nanjing, just a few hours up river from WeirdMeat's Shanghai headquarters. My good friend Coco introduced me to her good friend Nono, and thanks to Coco, because Nono turned out to be the perfect guide to Nanjing.

Nono took us to Nanjing Da Pai Dang, a very nice, but not too expensive, Nanjing specialty restaurant on the Hunan pedestrian street. It was a food explorer's dream. Literally hundreds of small dishes to choose from, each with real samples to look at instead of having to read the menu. Clean and modern, but classically decorated. We were greeted by kind elderly men in traditional dress, and seated by shy giggling waitresses who went to great lengths to ask me if I needed a fork. They could not believe I, a foreigner, could possibly handle two sticks to eat my food with. I amazed and charmed with my unorthodox but capable chopstick skills.

So here's what we ate! I'd heard about a Nanjing specialty that is similar to the Philippine balut, and the Cambodian duck embryo, but the difference in Nanjing is that they're chicken egg embryos, not ducks.



Nono carefully explained there are two types in Nanjing -- the dead ones, and the live ones. That didn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and I doubt the Supreme Court could handle it either, so I demanded a better translation. The "dead" ones are called "wang ji dan" and apparently they are D.O.A. before they're cooked. The "live" ones are called "huo zhu zi" and they're younger and fresher. The wang jidan are perhaps seasonal, and more difficult to hunt down, so we only got to try the huo zhuzi. They're chicken eggs so they're smaller than the duck embryos I'd had in other countries, and their flavor is more subtle. They are delicious, but not as thrilling as the SouthEast Asian ones. But you use the same salt-pepper-spice mix to flavor them. I had 3 of these. They each had tiny little chicken heads, less than an week old, so no feathers. I'd say about 12% chicken, 88% egg. BTW, what is that hard circle part on the bottom -- future bones? I'm told that Nanjing girls are crazy for them. If Nanjing girls are crazy for weird meat, that's cool with me.



After that we tried the duck blood soup (ya shui tang). This looks and tastes like dark purple-brown jello firm tofu, in a spicy broth. I'd seen something similar in Guangdong (Canton), but I was told that was pig blood. Nono confirmed this, and called Guangdong "the fountainhead of weird meat". Yes, indeed. The duck blood was also very good, full of bloody flavor and soaking up the spicy broth.

We ate all kinds of other good local dishes, and drank the local beer, which of course, was much much better than anything brewed in Shanghai. Before we left, I took another look at the offerings, and found "black bone chicken soup with bull penis (wu ji niu bian tang)." Had to try that one! The black meat silky chicken is a popular health tonic around China, which I've had many times. And in the bowl was a small cut of a bull's penis. It was a soft rubbery little thing that looked like calamari, with little half slices cut into it to make it more pliable and soak up flavor. I believe this was a small, circular cut of the bull's penis.



This penis was soft and tender like a fresh noodle, and captured the flavor of the soup nicely. Speaking of male cows, one of the waiters came up and told me I looked like ... the coach for the Chicago Bulls NBA team. OK. That's a new one.



On my second return, I tried a "quail on a stick". It's a whole quail. On a skewer. I'd had some quail at a French restaurant in Shanghai last week, and I'm finding that quail is my new favorite bird. Dark, gamey meat that goes well with red wine. Anyone know what kind of wine goes well with penis?