The Republic of Eggs

A week or two ago, me and several of my cohorts were trying to ascertain the average number of eggs eaten by a Taiwanese person in a week. Of course this is a fools errand if there ever was one but we were in consensus that the majority of people eat at least an egg a day. In the past this would have been considered a direct route to high cholesterol, heart disease, and premature death, but like so many of the proclamations from the high priests of health, the evil of eggs has apparently been greatly eggzagerated.

Eggs find there way into almost all Taiwanese meals in some form or another. They are the secret key ingredient in good fried rice or fried noodles. If you haven't tried it, order up a meatless egg fried rice (dan chao fan) and you'll probably agree that there is little lacking in the dish. In Chongqing I found a late night food stall that served dan chao fan with nothing but eggs, rice, oil, and salt. It was clean and satisfying and I returned on many occasions.

A traditional lunch box (bian dan) is not complete without egg of some sort, usually half a tea egg (lu dan) or scrambled eggs mixed with ground pork. Gong fu mien is a great 'dry' (gan) style noodle dish with an added tea egg. For soups, hot and sour soup (suan la tang) is invariably thickened with egg, and egg drop soup (dan hua tang) is a great, simple and light accompaniment to a meal. Any decent hot pot will come with a raw egg. Try cracking it into the pot and letting it cook for about 30 seconds before mixing it up with your chop sticks, this thickens up the soup with the runny yolk while also giving you some tasty egg morsels at the bottom. For breakfast, the Dan Bing--a light, crepe-like pancake wrapped around an omelette--is an old standby. Although the sweet, garlic-heavy hoisin sauce they squeeze on top is a little much.


For egg heavy dishes, various omelettes are avialable in most banquet style (xiao cai) restaurants. A traditional Taiwanese dish is the radish omelette (luo bo jian). This dish evovled as a way for poor families to stretch a single egg into a full dish. The shredded radish blends seamlessly with the egg to create the illusion. As mentioned in Part one of The Tainan Oyster Masquerade, the oyster omelette drowned in ketchup sauce (uh ah jian), is a specialty of Taichung. This is pretty much a wrong turn down nasty street, and I'll leave it at that. Tomato fried eggs (fan chie chao dan) is a standard throughout China. Personally I feel this is one of the least successful egg dishes, as the wateriness of the fried tomato adds an unpleasant soggy, stringy feel to the eggs. Much better is shrimp and pea scrambled eggs (xia ci, he lan dou, chao dan). In terms of taste and texture, shrimp and eggs are a match made in heaven. 

For preserved eggs, the infamous 100 year egg (pi dan) is an excellent pungent and astringent addition to rice porridge (zhou). My favorite writer on Chinese food, Fuchsia Dunlop, gives an excellent account of the history of pi dan as well as descriptions of the various other types of preserved eggs to be found in Chinese cooking.  I was disappointed though that her article failed to concur with the story I had been told of the origin of these eggs; that the original method of preparation involved pickling in horse urine. Perhaps she felt this historical colour was a little too exotic for her delicate readership. We at The Hungry Donkeys though are of course happy to pick up the slack (we live for this shit). Read more on the history and preparation of 100 year eggs, including the story of horse piss, at wikipedia.