Mr. L and I are sushi lovers, though he more than I. He tends to order strange things like Tobiko with Quail Eggs. I tend to stick to things like Super Albacore or San Diego Rolls. But as much as possible we head to our local sushi joints for a meal.
Since the place I get my nails done is in San Jose's Japantown (I go to the Sakura Nail Bar, a great place to get a mani-pedi), Mr. L and I have lots of places to choose from when it comes to Japanese food. We've also become fond of the little Japanese grocery store that's in the area. The Nijiya Market is barely bigger than my living room but it's packed full of all sorts of interesting items. I love going in and walking down each isle looking at the wonderful fresh sashimi, strange shaped vegetables, fresh noodles and boxed goods. I could get lost in the candy isle since the boxes they are packaged in have such vibrant colors and cool designs.
Our last trip to the market resulted in our buying a little carton of fresh quail eggs. Since Mr. L had just had some Tobiko with Quail Egg for dinner we thought we might try to fry up some little eggs for the next days breakfast. We also picked up a package of 'beef prime short ribs karubi". I think the beef is normally put on skewers and grilled but it had great marbling and a sort of "steak and egg" breakfast came to mind.
Cracking open the quail eggs and getting them into the pan wasn't the easiest thing to accomplish. The first couple just kinda broke into the pan (which didn't bother me much since I like my eggs cooked over-hard anyway), but Mr. L wanted his eggs over easy. I ran to my computer and tried to find something online about frying up these little eggs but it seems most folks either hard boil or poach them (which I want to try sometime). I did read that if you used a sharp heavy knife and gave the little eggs a quick whack in the middle, it might help open them a bit better and it seemed to work okay when Mr. L tried this. As you can see by the photo he was able to perfect his "over-easy" technique. The eggs tasted great...they were so tiny and cute on the plate. I think of them like little silver dollar pancakes, little disks you just put in your mouth hole. I envision a breakfast at some point with quail eggs, silver dollar pancakes, tiny english muffins, a mini-muffin tin sized serving of hash browns and...well...do they even make tiny bacon????
The quail eggs and the wonderful Karubi (the meat was very tender) made for an interesting and tasty weekend breakfast!
Oh those look so adorable and very yummy!
Posted by: Jan | July 23, 2008 at 03:50 PM
Hmmm. I don't know about quail eggs, but we LOVE sushi too! Next time we get to the west coast...if ever...LOL, we will all go out together for some good sushi!
Posted by: Shannon | July 23, 2008 at 04:42 PM
Oh, how cute!!! But tiny bacon ... you're crazy now Mrs. L!
Posted by: Louise | July 23, 2008 at 06:57 PM
i never knew quail eggs were so difficult to crack--nicely researched! i have a strange obsession with anything in a miniature form, so i'm very intrigued by these little buggers. :)
Posted by: grace | July 24, 2008 at 02:56 AM
Shannon - we have a ton of sushi places we can go too...you guys must come visit again!
Louise - Well, yeah, tiny bacon probably wouldn't be enough bacon for me :)
Grace - If you can find them they are too cute! Seriously, can you see little deviled eggs???
Posted by: Mrs. L | July 24, 2008 at 11:53 AM