Using up Quail Eggs

Recently the oriental markets have started selling quail eggs 18 in a plastic box instead of a dozen.

I bought some and used half for the Keller "bacon and egg" dish -- which is cute, you serve a single poached or soft boiled egg in a silver spoon with tiny cooked bacon, a cooked brunoise, and a sauce of beurre monté. Breakfast in one intense mouthful.

But now I have 9 more eggs and it seems WRONG to stir them up into an omelet or something. This morning my son and his wife were visiting (they spent the night) and so I did this:

http://www.mrbreakfast.com/superdisplay ... ipeid=2705

I don't have a source for brioche bread and didn't have time to make my own -- but I used a semolina batard, sliced on the bias and served with the crust. I cut about a 1 inch hole near the end of each slice and buttered some tin foil on a baking pan made for my toaster oven. Position the holey toast on the buttered tinfoil covered pan, and carefully open the large end of a quail egg and put the raw yolk into the hole. Toast until yolk is just set (which can be tricky). Then -- what Eric Ripert does is to curl up a piece of lox on the end of the toast, and balance a single chive on that. For me and Louise, I laid a strip of lox on the toast so that the yolk was peeking out at one end, and tore up some chives and sprinkled over the whole thing. Then I cut up a ripe avocado into little strips and balanced an avocado strip on each toast.

This was so good that when Joanna (d.i.l.) got up late I did the same thing but left out the salmon. She said she loved it.

What do you with quail eggs that preserves their "quailiness"?

That prep looks nice. I usually just devil them and put either caviar or a slice of truffle on top.

I'm doing a dinner later this month and am using quail as the alpha and omega - both in Provencal theme. I'll start with half bolied quail eggs topped with some tapenade and capers with bubbly and end with roast quail with herbes de Provence and juniper berries with claret.

Hopefully answering the age old question of which came first.....

Thanks Bill, I have seen somewhat similar preps online -- deviling keeps the "cuteness" of the eggs apparent. Half boiled is soft boiled, yes?

It was kind of surprisingly fun and easy to handle the tiny yolks and get them into the holes. When my d.i.l. got up I had made several toasts so I had a lot of whites in a bowl -- I opened one more quail egg and made a "sunnyside up" fried egg with a very BROAD white and a happy little yolk in the center.

I've also used them as tiny fried egg accents to top a dish that would otherwise be swamped by a full sized egg.

I have no recipe in mind but my imagination desperately wants to serve a handful of soft-boiled quail eggs on hot pasta in a cream sauce. Pass the black pepper or white truffle.

Hard boil them and peel, maybe cut in half. Build little skewers of egg, a cube of ham, and a bit of toasted bread. Serve to Mrs. Benedict with a hollandaise dipping sauce.

Hard boil and peel. Wrap in sausage, maybe dip in bread crumbs, and cook till crisp. World's Tiniest Scotch Eggs.

This is fun.

Jeff, impressive, you came up with several of the recipes in the URL below plus ideas (the pasta one) that aren't on the rather extensive list. They also came up with tiny Scotch eggs.

http://healthierquaileggs.com/recipes.php?pg=4

If you want to play with quail eggs, my theory is you should go get some and try them out!! It's not as if they are an expensive ingredient. Most people don't use them probably because they don't know where the nearby Chinese grocery is...

Or they are intimidated that nothing is in English there.

BTW if you see a nice package of 4 duck eggs, beware, they are salted and pickled!! But they don't do that to quail eggs.

.Quail eggs make nice Scotch eggs for apps, cocktail party food etc, vary the outer coat for variety. MInced prawn/shrimp makes a nice change from the regular meat outer.

First -- I bought a bowl just for serving Keller Toast. With a little attention I realized I could put the baguette back together after oiling, salting, and toasting the slices. I like the way this looks.

K_toast.jpg

This is cut on the bias but is not Keller toast, just regular toast -- not immediately obvious but the lower 2 pieces have a one inch dia. hole into which a quail egg was put before toasting. There is a sprinkling of home grown chives to make a tiny "nest" for each egg yolk. At top is the "wide" sunnyside up egg. This was breakfast for Joanna my daughter in law. I had decided that the lox was not really necessary along with the egg and avocado.

quail.jpg

Nice presentation, Frank. The avocado is a nice touch that I wouldn't have thought of. Personally, I like to serve just hard boiled quail eggs in a nice bowl that can showcase the beauty of the eggshell, with an assortment of specialty salts. I am always surprised at the number of people who have never seen quail eggs and think they are rock candy!

Jo Ann, I wouldn't have thought of doing that, it's simple and it's beautiful.

It struck me as a little "cruel and unusual" to make people peel the shell off quail eggs, because I have had a lot of trouble with that. But then I realized that I generally soft boil the egg so I have to be extra careful not to break the egg and let the yolk spill out, whereas you can get a little rough with a fully boiled egg. So it should work just fine. Maybe what I would do is devil half of them, like Bill said, and serve half with the shells, which would make it obvious what they were.

Just a little additional note -- when reading about deviling quail eggs, I read a tip -- hard boil one or two hen eggs. It is pretty hard to work with half a dozen tiny quail egg yolks, and you might as well devil the yolks in a quantity that is easier to work with. Then you can pipe or spoon the deviled yolk mixture back into the tiny hardboiled quail egg whites. Simple and maybe obvious but it had not occurred to me. The flavors are close enough to identical anyway...

[Jenise]

Last night, deviled quail eggs were served as an amuse bouche at a dinner we attended. The yolks were combined with foie gras and scooped into the eggs in tiny quenelles. Even I ate one--delicious!

Make tobiko nigiri? I tried to make poached quail eggs in wonton skins once (kind of like a soup dumpling) but that's didn't work too well.

Inspired by your thread, I am using quail eggs as an appetizer, an amuse bouches, for a dinner I am doing next weekend.

They will be served with a 1989 Champagne, and will come 3 ways, all hard boiled:

- halved and topped with black olive paste

- halved and topped with truffle spread

- whole and coated with za'atar (a middle Eastern spice made up of sumac, oregano, marjoram, oregano and roasted sesame seeds)

I'll let you know how it works out.

I decided to do an 'alpha - omega' theme - the main course will be roasted quail with juniper and herbes de Provence. Start the dinner with the eggs and end with the source of the eggs!

Sounds great, Bill.

Last night we had eggs of sturgeon, quail, hen, and duck in the various courses.

Champagne with everything. 1st -- freshly opened oysters on half shell. 2nd -- a bit of duck rillette with Keller toast, the duck rillette fresh off the plane, bought in Burgundy by my neighbors. 3rd -- fresh toast with quail egg yolk imbedded, topped with creme fraiche and ossetra caviar (Russian farmed). 4th -- the Kylie Kwong salad with medium soft boiled duck egg, thick slice of lobster tail, foie gras (paté), mâche, and tender beans in an oil and vinegar dressing. 5th -- the mushroom soup from "The Splendid Table", light and brothy. Finally Louise's dessert, a pie made from Meyer lemon juice. Very tasty meal.