As anybody who has ever eaten my food or seen my recipes can attest to, I am not a nutritionist. I just love cooking and take whatever seems right at the time and make something up. Sometimes it is good and sometimes not good, but I never stop trying because cooking is fun! I was watching a cooking show on television last night and the chefs were using quail eggs to help a lady on a diet. One of them mentioned that only one a day gives the total daily protein need and if that is true it would be great to use on a diet. With the exception of eating them at a sushi house I never tried cooking them. For sure they are not exactly big but I could not resist this morning. So here we go! This package cost about US$1 so it they are pretty cheap, but the next time I will turn the pack upside down to make sure none are cracked. I found two bad ones when I got home. I put them in this dish so I could easily slip them into a wok of boiling water. Boil them for about four minutes and then... place them in a bowl of ice cold water so they stop cooking. And now all you have to do is buy some miniature cooking utensils to make mini deviled eggs. I wound up just adding some mayo and spices, mashed them all up and made a couple of sandwiches.
I had friends give me some quail eggs a while ago. Taste just like chicken. And if you let them ripen, this is what you get:
I posted elsewhere that the young woman holding those baby button quail is the daughter of a friend who owns a local greenhouse. He always has critters running around (chickens, ducks, quail, parakeets, cats) and sells fertilized eggs and hatchlings. (I goofed up in the Egg thread and said that fertilized Icelandic chicken eggs go for $40/each. They are $40/dozen. ) Anyway, his daughter (currently 21 years old) does critter repair. They had a quail that was egg-bound (not an uncommon thing in quail and chickens). The options were to leave it alone and it would certainly die, or go on the internet and figure out how to give it a chance. She soaked the bird in a warm Epsom salts bath to relax it and gently pushed the egg along every few minutes. She eventually got it out, and the bird lived.
Never look forward to that activity. Wet chickens are not my favorite thing to handle. But I applaud her success!
So you've done it? I gotta think that a little quail is not much of a mess. You can hold it in the palm of your hand rather than trying to keep it captured under your arm. Yesterday she was slicing open some boil or infection on a rooster's leg, digging out whatever it was, cleaning the wound, then bandaging it...for the second time. I believe his other leg needs to be done as well. Regarding the quails: I forget where my friend got them. He has maybe 2 dozen hatched, along with some baby ducks. Both he and his daughter go to auctions and think nothing of picking up a spare critter and bringing it back to his business, where they pretty much free-range with each other. I believe the quail are kept inside due to their size and the predators (fox, hawks, etc.) They'll all lay anywhere, even inside his store. You gotta pay attention when they're acting funny.