Roll With It
Egged On by a Wider Array of Varieties, We Scramble for a Taste

By Walter Nicholls
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 28, 2007

The chef gives the cantaloupe-size ostrich egg a couple of firm taps around the center with the back of a knife, just until the glossy ivory-colored shell cracks and a small hole opens up. It's barely enough room for her to get her thumbs inside. With a deep sigh, she pulls and pries open the thick shell.

Out gushes a glistening lake and sun of white and yolk -- equal to about two dozen chicken eggs -- into a large bowl. After a chorus of "Wow!" the onlookers agree: None of us has ever seen anything quite like this before.

With a pinch of salt and a splash of olive oil in a large heated skillet, the Washington Post's executive chef, Marleen Ameye, prepares enough fluffy scrambled ostrich egg to fill a platter. The flavor is mild, the color a deep yellow. There's easily enough to feed a dozen people. For a few moments we feel like Edie, the memorable Egg Lady of John Waters's film "Pink Flamingos," obsessing over an egg.

The ostrich is one of five unusual eggs we purchased at the Whole Foods Market in Fair Lakes and asked Ameye to help us sample. Also into a shopping cart went gorgeous dark green emu eggs, fragile speckled quail eggs and delicate white duck and goose eggs.

In the world of edible eggs, these varieties represent a small fraction of total domestic egg production, with numbers so small that they are not even tracked. Americans, of course, are chicken-egg eaters; in January alone, more than 7.6 billion chicken eggs were produced.

Still, there are about 1,000 ostrich ranchers in the United States raising about 100,000 birds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. On average, an ostrich hen lays 50 eggs or more a year (commercial chickens lay more than 250). Because of the 1/8 -inch-thick shell and a secreted coating that makes the egg shiny and acts as a preservative, ostrich eggs can keep in the refrigerator for up to a year.

Overall, when we taste the scrambled spread in the Post kitchen, we prefer the ostrich egg to the emu, which has an off-putting, syrupy white and a bulging yolk so pale that when whisked together the combination looks like ivory frosting. Scrambled, the results are fluffier than the other eggs and the flavor mild, but the barely off-white color is hard to get used to.

Emu, native to Australia and with a population of about 1 million in this country, are raised in more than 40 states for their eggs, meat, hide, feathers and oil. The beautiful eggs that emu lay every three to five days are prized by hobbyists, who etch and carve designs into the shell, exposing various colored layers underneath. First, the white and yolk are removed by drilling a small hole in each end of the egg and blowing out the contents.

"As a farmer, it makes sense to blow the egg out, feed your family and then sell the shell," says Myra Charleston, an emu rancher from Trezevant, Tenn., and spokeswoman for the American Emu Association.

After emptying the shell, Charleston whisks the white and yolk together, adds 1/2 teaspoon of sugar or salt per cup of egg and freezes the mixture in an ice cube tray, to be kept at the ready for sweet or savory recipes. Either mixture can be used in any recipe that calls for chicken eggs. Scrambled, an emu egg has a more pronounced flavor than a chicken egg and a denser texture.

Duck eggs are higher than chicken eggs in saturated fat (3 milligrams vs. 2) and cholesterol (619 milligrams vs. 212). And with a higher level of protein and richness, they are sought out by pastry chefs.

Jonathan Zearfoss, who teaches advanced cooking and pastry at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., calls duck eggs "a really nice item, particularly for custards, ice cream, creme brulee and flan. They bring a real richness, a yolky quality." He says the only downside for novices would be calculating the recipe adjustments. (Zearfoss tells his students to expect a large, raw chicken egg to weigh about 2 ounces, while a duck egg weighs an average 2.5 ounces.)

In the Post kitchen, the goose egg turns out to have a deep, orange yolk that rides high in the gelatinous white, and its rich but gamy flavor when scrambled draws mixed reviews, with some of us saying "hmm" and others "ugh." Even though they are bigger than chicken eggs, goose eggs have the same saturated fat content, but the cholesterol content -- 1,227 grams -- is almost six times as high.

Like us, Zearfoss isn't a fan. "My advice would be to try a recipe first before serving it to guests in case the results are not favorable," he says.

In our tasting, the sweet and rich quail eggs, with paper-thin shells and lemony-colored yolks, are everyone's favorite. The ones we scramble are positively sweet and creamy.

Fabrizio Aielli, chef and owner of Teatro Goldoni on K Street in Northwest, agrees with that assessment, saying that he always has quail eggs "one way or another" on his menu. "I think it's because I like things that are teeny," says Aielli, who runs through 350 to 400 of the speckled eggs a week. "You can do so many dishes and eat them in one bite."

At Goldoni, three eggs are used to make a tiny quail omelet. For an appetizer, a single egg is poached in balsamic vinegar and topped with chopped chives. Aielli makes a very thin, plain frittata and rolls prosciutto or sliced salami inside. "I use them in my gnocchi," he says. "That's why it's more sweet and delicate." He loves them pickled.

Whole Foods is not the sole source for all of these egg varieties (see graphic), but it is the first market in the region to bring them together under one roof. The chain started offering an array of eggs in fall 2005 at a Columbus, Ohio, store because a number of farms nearby produce them. In January 2006 the eggs made their local debut at the opening of the Alexandria store, and they were on hand this past January when the Fair Lakes store opened. Next month, all Whole Foods Markets in the Washington area are slated to have the eggs, plus those from turkey and guinea fowl.

At the Fair Lakes store on a recent afternoon, shoppers approached the egg display, set up in the produce section, with amazement and apprehension. "It's nice to come into a market and see something you've never seen before," said Lisa Mushaw, a government contractor from Reston who also conducts cooking classes in Italy.

Her friend Regina Fosstvedt, a medical administrator from Herndon, ran a finger across a glossy, dimpled ostrich egg. "I wouldn't feel comfortable breaking this," she said.

Store officials would not say exactly how many of the specialty eggs they are selling. But Erik Brown, regional produce coordinator, did say duck and goose have been moving fairly well and "emu, ostrich and quail, not so much so." Price may be an issue with the emu and ostrich eggs, which are $20 each. That makes the goose at $1.50 each and duck and quail at 50 cents each seem like a bargain, despite their much smaller size.

Sarah Kenney, director of marketing, dismissed any notion that offering the eggs is an attention-getting novelty. "We didn't bring them in as an oddity, and we wouldn't be bringing them out at all stores if they weren't selling well," she said. All eggs at Whole Foods, no matter their species, come from cage-free birds, Kenney says.

In an informal survey of two dozen customers at the Fair Lakes store, nearly all said they would not buy the unusual eggs because they didn't know how to use them. "They need signs to tell people what to do with them," said Mushaw, whose cooking program is called "Treasures of Tuscany: an Epicurean Voyage."

The lone shopper who had tried most of the eggs was Robert Wagner, a physician and pain management specialist from Fairfax who was accompanied by daughters Katherine, 11, and Stephanie, 6. Wagner said he buys an egg of some sort every time they shop at the store. They have not tried the emu.

"I buy them for a sleepover if I'm making scrambled eggs," says Wagner, who has also tried them fried, in omelets and deviled. He likes the goose and duck eggs because "they make the creamiest egg salad."

Still, Wagner hasn't done what Glinda Cunningham, co-owner of Wild Canyon Ostrich Ranch in Ranger, Texas, has, which is to make a deviled ostrich egg, quite the crowd-sized hors d'oeuvre.

Cunningham, spokeswoman for the American Ostrich Association, says it takes 1 1/2 to 3 hours to boil the eggs, depending on their size. "It's no different than a chicken egg -- only bigger," she says.

For family gatherings, she also likes to slice hard-cooked ostrich eggs for sandwiches: "One slice will cover a whole piece of bread."

Try that with a chicken egg.