Duck gizzards, pig ears, thousand-year eggs: all delicacies that China Blue co-owner Xian Zhang grew up eating in Shanghai, but that he says he’d never consider serving at his restaurant. That’s why, last week, he hosted a “Weird Chinese Food” dinner to spotlight them. Of course, in this age of offal acceptance, many of the dishes were hits. “I had about a dozen dishes on the menu, and what we did was put a cup next to each dish, and asked people to drop in dried fava beans if they liked it,” he says. “Most of them got very good reviews — even the pig intestines! The best review.” In the interest of broadening our horizons, we asked Zhang to walk us through a few of the specials that he served.
“The thousand-year egg is a preserved duck egg. You boil it, and let it sit for a month or two. It changes the texture of the egg yolk, and it comes out to be almost translucent and soft. The color changes. People think it’s weird, but it’s not! It has a nice aroma to it. The texture is softer than a hard-boiled egg.”
“The thousand-year egg is a preserved duck egg. You boil it, and let it sit for a month or two. It changes the texture of the egg yolk, and it comes out to be almost translucent and soft. The color changes. People think it’s weird, but it’s not! It has a nice aroma to it. The texture is softer than a hard-boiled egg.”
“Because of the nose-to-tail movement, things like tongue and gizzards are catching on, but they’re still off-center,” he says. “Those are the kind of dishes that are weird for the American palate.”
“This was a last-minute addition to the menu. The chef didn’t tell me it was snow peas! It didn’t look like peas, so I didn’t get it. In China, we eat a lot of snow peas. It’s very popular.”
“This was a last-minute addition to the menu. The chef didn’t tell me it was snow peas! It didn’t look like peas, so I didn’t get it. In China, we eat a lot of snow peas. It’s very popular.”
“There’s one thing I haven’t had the courage to eat: balut — a half-hatched egg. You open the egg, and there’s a little chicken inside. But next time I see it, I’ll give it a shot.”
