Quail testicle chawanmushi or HOW I MET POULTRY TESTICLES

In Australia where I've lived for most of my life, it's illegal for poultry to be sold with the offal inside. The first time I had the privilege of being able to access beautiful birds with heads and insides, I'd just moved to Madrid and bought a beautiful duck from one of my most favourite people now, Higinio at Hermanos Gomez Ortiz with the intention of learning how to break down poultry to make yakitori, as inspired by Michael who also let me creep watch him break down several birds at his incredible house yakitori night. I was all set for a chill Sunday afternoon when I stuck my hand up the bird's uh.. cavity and IT WAS FULL OF INSIDE BITS. To be honest, even in Australia, I'd never really worked with poultry so well, as usual, it was start at the hardest bit first day for me haha. 

As a benefit of being able to access such incredible poultry here, I came across a lot of parts I'd never really seen before taken directly from the animal - hearts, livers, ovaries, testicles. 

When the rooster testicles started appearing in my stories, I had a conversation on insta about rooster testicle custard as served at Seventh Son Restaurant (basically a mix of rooster testicles, eggs set into a light custard then deep fried) and I was severely intrigued. I immediately ordered the classic Chinese cookbook referenced here (not sold in Madrid so had to ship to the US and rely on the amazing Chini to hold it for me until I could pick it up in person and bring it back home and trawled as many references to it as possible. Sadly, all the comments referred to the perfect cooking of this requiring skill and experience, of which I have (and usually have) neither. 

Chawanmushi is something I've made to death over the years thanks to Dan Hong's perfect recipe here so when Higinio messaged me and asked me if I wanted "CORN FED QUAIL TESTICLES AND OVARIES" and OF COURSE I SAID YES (and also picked up some free range quail eggs to build out the quail quail quail of it all) -  I thought I'd have a go at the Seventh Son recipe as well as a chawanmushi (basically the easier part of the recipe than the deep frying one) but well, life was hard that week, so I went with just the chawanmushi. 

Here's the video (Tiktok) and Youtube below which is is more to give you an idea of the process with actual proper details below. It wasn't perfect by any means as I'd just guesstimated the quantities based on Dan's recipe but it was decent enough to start improving on. 

It's actually incredibly delicious - you get the rich flavour of the best quail but it's light and delicate as well with the creamiest of textures aligning with the chawanmushi egg texture.

Intent was to really focus on the quail testicle flavour and not overpower it - with better planning, I would have also bought a few quails, grilled them and then made a stock to use instead of the bird stock but anyway, first tester days always a little rough haha. 

What I used:

• 50g quail eggs
• 30g quail testes
• 175ml water
• 18ml fresh cream (35%)
• 25ml aged bird stock

Process:

1. Blend the testes and eggs together then add water, cream and stock

2. Sieve, pour into a steam friendly vessel, plastic wrap on top, then steam. Time for steaming depends on the size of the vessel and the amount of mix - basically steam it until it's wobbly in the middle but not on the edges. I usually go between 8-12 minutes. See more details here.

3. For the ovaries, I did a quick salt cure for about 15 minutes because they're super delicate and then marinated in a "to taste" soy and sake mix for about 10 minutes (but would depend on the size and condition of the ovary so just have a look and see what looks ok). 

If you also like poultry testicles or have any questions or experiences to share, feel free to leave below! All of the beautiful tableware is Kurieto.