The unborn - the bizarre food!

I keep in my mind to write about this delicacy few months ago, but only now I feel "Right time!"

I wonder why?
Whenever talking about this "unborn", embryo duck egg or balut, most people outside of Vietnam associated it with Philippines!
Probably it's super popular traditional street food in our neighboring country!

But in Vietnam, especially in Sài gòn, it's not a street food. More than that!
It's a food of pavements. It's a food of love & passion and... too much ?
Ok, stop!  

Many of us, still remember a melodrama with famous actress Kim Cương.
She used to sell "hột vịt lộn" in that play! She was simply brilliant in that role.

I have an old friend. She adores hột vịt lộn!
Her husband, one special day- mid of Feb., bought for her a dozen of it. Romantic!
She finished everything in just one evening. Awesome!

Back to me! My first experience with this embryo duck egg when I was already teenager!
Scared, hesitated in the beginning. But then everything was ok. More than ok! Even good!
With one condition: I can eat only from the shell.
Never display a whole naked egg on a plate!
I can lose my appetite!

In Sài gòn, we eat hột vịt lộn traditionally with salt & pepper, Vietnamese mint leaves (rau răm) but in Hà nội - additional shreds of ginger!

And for certain people, they may prefer bigger or smaller "embryo". "Con lớn" (literally means big duck baby) or "con nhỏ" (small duck baby!) as we say in Vietnamese when we order!
Bigger could horrify you as the duck baby is more visible with eyes, black feather...
Smaller is nicer, at least to me, as the major part - the egg yolk!

Nowadays everyone's taste seems more sophisticated, more demanding.
I first tried not long ago, hột vịt lộn xào me (stir fried in tamarind sauce) and I heard about deep fried, crispy on the outside, butter flavor hột vịt lộn as another popular dish!

I don't know since when we have hột vịt lộn stir-fried in tamarind sauce! Maybe in the future we will have hột vịt lộn served as appetizer in class restaurants, as many other street foods entered haute cuisine, creating the new waves in our food culture!

But I feel whatever we add to this widely popular "bizarre" dish, how we prepare it, many people still prefer to have it in traditional way. Mint. Black pepper. Salt.
Probably they can feel, only in this way, the original taste which already exits in mind of many generations!

It would be interesting to share with you an episode from Bizarre Foods in the Philippines broadcast on Travel channel. With my favorite host Andrew Zimmern. It's about the balut (hột vịt lộn) in our neighboring country! Please enjoy! Thanks h888lucky for uploading!