Jook with Turkey and Preserved Eggs

Copyright 2006 by Cooking With The Single Guy

Ingredients:

1 cup short-grain Japanese white rice
2 cup cooked turkey pieces with bone (or chicken pieces)
2 cans of chicken broth (14 oz. can)
1/2 cup unsalted, shelled peanuts (no skin)
2 preserved duck eggs
1 T peanut oil
1 T soy sauce
2 stalks green onion
salt

In a medium saucepan, warm oil over medium high heat. Add rice and toast for about a minute. Add soy sauce, followed by chicken broth, turkey meat with bones, and peanuts. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a medium simmer. Slow cook for about an hour until the rice has a creamy soup texture. Stir often during cooking process, adding about a 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup of water whenever the jook looks thick or dry. When jook is done, remove any big bones where the meat has fallen off. Salt to taste. Cut duck eggs into quarters and add to jook. Garnish with julienned strips of green onion.

TIPS: Japanese white rice sold for sushi is the best choice to make jook because of the creamy texture when slow cooked. Do not rinse the rice to avoid washing away too much of its creaminess. It’s easy to burn the bottom of your pan with the rice mixture so stir often and add water to maintain moisture in your jook during the cooking process. If you like, you can use additional broth instead of water.

PRESERVED FOR 1,000 YEARS: The preserved duck eggs served with jook in Chinese restaurants are called pei dan (pronounced PAY-dahn in Cantonese). I told my friends in college when I made jook with these eggs that they were known as 1,000-year-old eggs. They teased me, of course, because they thought I was eating a really old, bad-smelling egg. The fermenting of the eggs (more like 100 days instead of 1,000 years) creates, to me, this beautiful amber-colored gel around a green marble-like yolk. The taste is distinctive that’s hard to described. Pei dan is definitely an acquired taste. It’s typically sold in packets of six individually wrapped eggs at Chinatown grocery stores or Asian markets.