Eat This Blog Photo Essay: Spicy Duck … What???
Posted on 18 March 2008 under Asian, Eat This Blog, Gifts, Photos
This post was almost complete when the second bleed mentioned in my previous post began on March 9th. I apologize to Jaden for taking so long on this one!
Above are some spicy duck giblets. Scary-looking little beasties, aren’t they? Rather gelatinous as our wonderful Asian friend in Florida told us. We were a bit afraid of the “spicy” bit as we’re fully aware of just how spicy Asian food can be. But these weren’t spicy whatsoever. In fact they were pretty darn good, reminding us of a good smoked duck breast … but maybe dipped in a rather tasty version of the gel packed between Spam and the Spam can.
Back on January 17th I’d posted that Jaden of SteamyKitchen.com had sent along a lovely package of snacks:
More after the jump …
Yesterday, Adam and I decided to go ahead and dig into these creatures. And what excellent creatures they were! Not a bad pouch in the bunch. They all look a bit funky, but they’re all tasty enough to where we’d welcome the opportunity to have more.
The chicken claw looked for all the world as though E.T. was giving us the finger.
Again, rather gelatinous, but more of an issue were the tiny bones, particularly throughout the smaller ends of the individual segments. Still, getting past dealing with those bones we found the meat on the claw to be rich and flavorful. A comment from Mary about where that claw might possible have been had us all thinking all the wrong thoughts, but as we’ve had chicken soup with claws added for flavor we didn’t think on the subject for too long.
Adam took a moment in my office to provide a bit of scale as to the size of the packages.
Opening the duck neck, I wondered if they’d mislabeled a duck rectum.
Of course, I have to thank the Discovery Channel show Dirty Jobs for my knowing what a duck’s rectum looks like …
The neck is fairly narrow, smaller than but not unlike the chicken necks I also use as flavoring for chicken soup.
The bones are, again, rather tiny but we’re a little more used to dealing with this particular type of bone. This is a rather rich meat, even more flavorful than the giblets we ate at the beginning.
Finally, there was the duck tongue, probably the most unique of the snacks once we got it out of the pouch.
Yup. Looks nasty. Jaden was in a chat window while we were doing this and I made sure to tell her this looked like one of the cats had pooped on the plate.
11-year-old Ryan decided Adam and I were having too much fun and asked to have some of this. As he already likes eel, oysters and other items that may be odd for most 11-year-olds (his favorite vegetable is raw broccoli) I gave him a third of this tongue, knowing he’d have an honest opinion. He said it tasted like a cross between fried beef liver and baked chicken, with a texture like squid. This was a pretty accurate description.
Having worked at Toyota for a few years I can tell you some Asian snacks are more than scary. They’re downright painful! However, the ones Jaden sent along have turned out to be quite good indeed. I’m going to have to start looking for a good Asian market in Toledo.
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18 March 2008 @ 5:15 pm Posted by Leslie
You are quite adventurous to give it a try. Glad to hear it wasn’t as scary as it looks! But then again, I’m sure many of the things we enjoy on a regular basis look pretty scary to anyone not used to them as well…. In fact, I love smoked oysters on occasion, but can’t get over the fact that they look like little ears. >;-p
20 March 2008 @ 9:28 pm Posted by Dave
Smoked oysters are great, aren’t they? I’m getting more and more interested in trying odder things. Maybe I shouldn’t say that out loud …
22 March 2008 @ 1:49 pm Posted by steamy kitchen