Sunday, February 22, 2009

Hard boiled wonderland and the end of the world

The South China reported on Friday that fake eggs, reputedly from Hubei province, have been discovered in Macau (I prefer the term artificial ova myself). Mrs Wong bought them at market; after being cooked the yolk was just like rubber (not just a problem with her technique then?). Locals buying them from street vendors in Xiamen found the yolks bounced when cooked.

Mrs Wong of Macau, meanwhile, with admirable fortitude, ate six eggs that "tasted strange". Since she gritted her teeth and ate the evidence, it might never be possible to determine what the ersatz eggs were made of.

6 comments:

Claire said...

I detect a fairly rich source of humour here...might be worth drawing the attention of the BBC to it. I would suggest the Guardian but its website is too po-faced [restraining myself from having a rant].

LottieP said...

Indeed, not least in the choice of post title. The one I went with in the heat of the moment is weak, but I could also have had "Ova easy" and "Poached". A prize for any better suggestions (but no yolks/jokes please).

The really extraordinary thing is why anyone would go to the trouble of creating a fake egg when you could just buy a hen.

Anonymous said...

They had 'Chinese fake eggs' on the news over here at about the time the contaminated baby milk scandal broke. According to the reports, these eggs are supposed to be highly toxic and could possibly kill you....

LottieP said...

And here's a Pimp That Snack style picture showing the fake eggs being made. This site also reveals that cost is the driving factor - at 0.55 yuan/kg, where the market price for real eggs is 5.6 yuan/kg, the margins to be made are clearly huge. (No indication, though, of what the actual cost of producing real eggs is - that they are inflated at market comes as no surprise, but I still maintain that it can't be more expensive simply to ask your hen to lay eggs.)

Claire said...

They won't do it. Hens these days are in unions, and their work comes under the strict auspices of the Hens (And Other Egg Laying Animals) Working Time Eggulations. I'm not surprised prices have gone up.

LottieP said...

Eggulations. Ouch!

In response I have changed the original title of this post ("Eggs act") to a homage to Murakami (I'm reading this book at the moment). And note I've avoided any of the other possible variants of "Fried", "Scrambled" etc...