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Bird flu has made buying chicken eggs completely unpredictable! Prices fluctuate: they go up and then down again; store shelves are sometimes empty! Are there any other types of eggs you can recommend? I heard that one ostrich egg is enough to make an omelet for the whole family. — Anonymous, New York
Eight years ago, in the carefree days when chicken eggs were pennies on the dollar and everyone was happy, I went into a fugue state and bought an emu egg for twenty-five dollars at a Brooklyn Whole Foods. It was a few days before I was hosting a Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment for a dozen and a half disparate relatives, and I was in a near-manic state of shopping, organizing the refrigerator, and planning the oven sequence. An emu egg—an eight-inch, two-pound oval with a vibrant turquoise shell delicately spotted with pale green—seemed like just the right absurd finishing touch to an already insane undertaking. One emu egg is equivalent to about a dozen chicken eggs: Should I bake a pound cake? Make a gallon of hollandaise sauce? A deviled egg the size of a Ritz? Ultimately, simplicity won out when one of my cousins wisely suggested saving the egg for brunch the day after Thanksgiving. Hard-boiled and sliced, it would be perfect for stuffing a bagel—a breakfast sandwich made with a touch of humor.
Cooking an emu egg was a fun little experiment that I will probably never try again. Did you know that it takes about an hour and a half to hard boil an emu egg? Did you know that the yolk of a hard-boiled egg is a greenish-white tint? And that the white of an egg that has undergone the same process does not become opaque, but retains a sort of snowy, translucent texture? Now I know all this. The taste was great, once we all got over the uncanny valley of something that was and wasn’t, just a really, really big regular egg.
I tell this story not to discourage you from considering alternative eggs, but to demonstrate that egginess is not a universally interchangeable quality, and that eggs from other bird species vary in more than just size. I have sometimes wondered if the emu egg would have been more fun if I had been more ambitious and chosen something like a creamy, spring-onion scramble or an elaborately decorated soft-boiled egg, with a bowl of cereal as an egg cup and a battalion of toast soldiers. More recently, driven by nostalgia and a desire for emotional compensation—and, to answer your question, a desire to reduce my reliance on the beleaguered chicken egg—I actually looked up the price of emu eggs and was shocked to learn that they cost more than sixty dollars apiece! Indeed, egg prices have risen across the Aves class due to inflation. So I don't recommend considering alternative eggs as a practical solution – especially now that the price of chicken eggs seems to be starting to fall. But just like that? Absolutely.
We’re nearing the end of the emu’s laying season at the moment, but the emu’s cousin, the ostrich, typically begins laying eggs in the warmer months of spring and throughout the summer. Ostrich eggs are about twice the size of emu eggs and have white shells; you can buy them online right now for between $50 and $299.99. Honestly, I think there’s just as much drama and a lot more fun to be had on a smaller scale. Quail eggs are surprisingly cute, with brown speckles on the shell. Each one is about a third the size of a chicken egg. Unlike their giant cousins, quail eggs are in fairly steady demand from restaurants and other upscale establishments, so they’re relatively easy to find. Surprisingly, some grocery stores in New York City tend to carry them—and not just the fancy markets! My local grocery store has them, too! — sit on the shelf next to the chicken eggs in clear plastic boxes of eighteen, usually for about five dollars. Here, again, the best way is to skip the eggs in the cake batter and beat them into a meringue. (Can you imagine the tedium of separating all those tiny yolks?) You want to serve them in a way that highlights their fun, wonderful smallness. I like to poach quail eggs — boil them for about three minutes, then shock them with ice water to stop the cooking process, which makes them easy to peel and preserves the tenderness of the yolk. Serve them simply, halved lengthwise, a million of them on a plate — the Argos of yellow eyes — with a little salt and hot sauce on the side.
I also love duck and goose eggs: they are marvels of flavorful, fatty yolks and are easy to find in Asian supermarkets. Ready
Sourse: newyorker.com
