When I first saw the can of quail eggs, I was a little put off. It had never really occurred to me to eat the eggs of any bird besides a chicken. Upon a little further thought, however, this distinction is really extremely arbitrary, and given how many chicken eggs I eat, I should have no problem eating quail eggs. These eggs are actually very popular in the Philippines, served hard boiled and then deep fried in a colored, flour dough. I decided to make this simple dish, called Kwek Kwek, to enjoy my quail eggs, since they were already hard boiled in the can.
The process was easy enough: I just coated the eggs in the dough and threw them in some hot vegetable oil1. The little dough balls were actually quite delicious. Fried things do tend to be, and I can’t say I could taste anything particularly quail-y, but they made for a very tasty snack. I can see why they are so popular among Filipino street vendors2.
Eating these miniature eggs raised a question for me that I’m surprised I had never thought about before. Why do we eat exclusively chicken eggs? I suppose it has a lot to do with the chicken’s long history in domestication. Still, apparently there are other species whose eggs we are able to harvest. I wonder what effect a larger market for quail eggs would have on the chicken egg industry. Is it possible that a wider variety of laying birds could mean less intense production of any one kind? I’m thinking about the difference between intense monoculture of plants versus the organic multi-crop system. Perhaps egg producers actively keep quail eggs out of the American market, considering the ones I bought were Japanese.
While the smallness of quail eggs makes the Kwek Kwek a great bite-sized snack, there is no reason I can’t use chicken eggs in the future, so I’m glad to have this simple, scrumptious recipe in my repertoire. I can’t take the name, though. Maybe I’ll call them Kluk Kluk.
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