Soup from the nests of some tropical species. Swallow's Nest Soup
After moving to China, the first thing I did was to find out how things were going on the culinary front. And what was my disappointment when I realized that borscht with bacon would not have to be screwed here, the bread here is only white and not crispy, and the mayonnaise is sweet. Let's see what is included in the diet of a Chinese gourmet.
“So what do they even eat then?” my grandmother asked. She is more worried than anyone that I will stay hungry in China. The Chinese have a rather sophisticated taste in terms of food: they eat everything that flies, crawls and generally moves at least somehow. They talk with humor about their gastronomic addictions: “We eat everything that flies, except for airplanes, and everything that has four legs, except for tables and chairs.” Let's go through the local exotic delicacies.
Author's photo stinky tofu cheese
Simply put, it is rotten cheese (a type of bean curd) that has been soaked in salted brine for so long that it has fermented. The smell, you understand, is appropriate. Although many Chinese claim that they smell aromas only when cooking, but, they say, when using it, the sense of smell fades into the background, and taste buds come into play.
I, fortunately, did not have a chance to taste this creation, because the strong ammonia aromas automatically caused a hail of tears. The Chinese thought that some bad news came to me.
chicken paws
A popular Chinese fast food that is sold everywhere and in any form. Paws are sprinkled with spices or eaten unseasoned, served in restaurants, sold on the street in roadside eateries, and even vacuum-packed in supermarkets. The Chinese love this delicacy! But my parents in Siberia, even our dog refuses to eat it.
Duck tongues and heads
In China, poor ducks are eaten whole, with absolutely no preference for sirloins or offal. Arriving for dinner, for a snack you will get baked duck skin, which should be eaten hot, dipped in salt. Then, most likely, the turn of white meat and Peking duck will come. And at the end of the feast, you will be offered duck bones, which the Chinese like to crunch like chips.
Beef and spinal cord
Russians are not surprised by such a dish, because it is also found in Russia. However, there it is served as a delicacy, and in the Celestial Empire such a dish can be tasted in almost every restaurant. For the Chinese, there is nothing exotic in this, which cannot be said about the brain of a monkey, for example.
bird's nest soup
This is a dessert that resembles jelly in texture. The main ingredient of such a dish is the saliva of a certain type of swifts, from which they make nests. Due to the combination of various trace elements such as iodine, calcium, magnesium, this soup is believed to strengthen the immune system well.
shark fin soup
Such a dish in China is served for important guests as a sign of respect, because it is a symbol of wealth and glory. As a rule, such a soup does not have a pronounced taste, so it is cooked on meat broth, otherwise it turns out to be completely insipid.
centennial eggs
Despite the name, these eggs are not a hundred years old at all, but only a few months at most. Eggs of chickens, ducks or quails are soaked in a special alkaline solution consisting of slaked lime and soda for ten days. Then they are wrapped in plastic wrap so that oxygen does not penetrate inside, and left for several months. During this time, the shell acquires a purple hue, the protein becomes dark gray, and the yolk turns green. The smell of this dish is no better than its appearance. But the Chinese do not pay attention to this and eat with pleasure.
balut eggs
This dish is common in southern China. A balut egg is a duck egg with an already ripe fruit. They eat such an egg both boiled and raw, sometimes with various seasonings and sauces. It is believed that this dish is very beneficial for men's health.
bear paws
This is a very expensive delicacy. As a rule, dishes from real bear paws are served only in very expensive restaurants. In ordinary establishments, they are replaced with pork legs. Bear paws are also widely used in local folk medicine.
And all sorts of frogs, turtles, crickets and spiders
This is a classic of Chinese cuisine! Without them, I cannot imagine modern China.
However, despite the abundance of exotic dishes that cause more disgust than profuse salivation, there are also such foreigners who adore Chinese food. They eat everything, ask for supplements, gaining 5-10 extra pounds in the first year of life in China.
And this is actually about me. Recently, after seeing my new photo on the beach, my friend sent me a message: “I think you have gained some weight.” In short, I don't have a friend anymore.
It turns out that not everything is as sad with food as it seems at first glance, and the likelihood of bringing folds on the stomach as a souvenir from China is very high. So what makes it so fat?
Sugar is added to almost every Chinese dish.
Sugar for the Chinese is the same full-fledged spice as pepper. And in your dish, in addition to sugar, pepper and a lot of salt, by default there will always be monosodium glutamate - a food additive (E621 or MSG), which can change the taste of the dish beyond recognition. Some nutritionists shout that glutamate helps retain water in the body, which leads to an increase in the likelihood of being overweight, others say the opposite.
Anyway, after the shock of seeing the numbers on the scale, when I go to a Chinese restaurant, the first thing I ask is not to add MSG to my noodles. But I suspect that a few crystals of this additive somehow still penetrate my dish.
The Chinese almost always cook with corn oil.
They “bath” food in oil by deep-frying it. And then, of course, it is peppered, salted, millions of other seasonings are added. In my opinion, it turns out very tasty! Because of this, in the duel between proper nutrition and unhealthy fried foods, in my case, the victory is far from healthy habits.
Chinese eat white bread
Just bread without jam, butter, tea or anything else. The average Chinese can eat a loaf of white bread in one sitting as a snack. And the Chinese, believe me, are ready to snack every hour!
Bakeries are very popular here. And worse, they are everywhere. Every day I promise myself not to go there again. But, seeing one not far ... farther, as if in a fog. I usually wake up after a while with coconut on my cheeks and cream on my fingers. You can consider me a weak-willed creature!
Large and filling portions
Author's photo In a Chinese restaurant, my advice to you is to choose a maximum of 5-8 dishes for two.
But often, as it happens with me, when you see the menu, your eyes run wide in search of something new and unusual and something that you haven’t tried yet. Fortunately, restaurants here are not as expensive as French ones, for example.
And now, having tasted a little bit of everything and having eaten, it would seem that they could calm down on this. But no! My grandmother taught me not to leave food on the plate, because in the last pieces, in her opinion, all the power is hidden. And I don’t want to be weak at all, so we eat everything to the last crumb, rolling out of the restaurant with relaxed belts. Fools! You can also ask to wrap with you ...
As you can see, Chinese cuisine cannot be called dietary. Although many Chinese, having moved to Russia, complain about our cuisine, claiming that it is very high in calories. Paradox!
Surely many have heard of such a Chinese delicacy as "swallow's nests". True, in reality it turns out that few people know what this mysterious dish really is, what it consists of and how to cook it. The idea of getting these very nests seems very strange, and even more so - there are them. But the Chinese have a completely different opinion on this matter, because it is not for nothing that "swallow's nests" have long been considered food worthy of the imperial table.
"THE SWALLOW NEST"
On the bare rocks of some islands of the South China Sea, where there is no blade of grass, no clay, no sand,in hard-to-reach caves or gorges,one of the species of stone swifts, very similar to swallows - salangans - build their nests, using as "building material" juveniles of thin, long, like wire, marine fish, such as saury, which has no bones yet, garlands of sea eggs on sea kale and other edible algae, which, combined with bird saliva produced fromwith the help of the glands located under their tongue, they are dried to the state of a stone under the scorching sun and sea wind.
Birds usually take 40 days to build a nest. The nest looks like a "protein" cradle measuring from 5 to 6 centimeters.
This ideal (boneless, healthy) fish and vegetable product, lightly peeled on all sides, is a semi-finished product that does not deteriorate for years.
A product (or rather, a semi-finished product) belonging to the "mysterious", "mysterious", "exotic" products of Chinese cuisine. There is a lot of incorrect and conflicting information about the appearance, taste and use of the "swallow's nest". Nothing definite is usually reported about its composition. Even in cookbooks, a dish is sometimes called a "swallow's nest", while this is a type of product that can be an integral part of various dishes, serve as an additive to them.
The history of swallow nest soup goes back at least 700 years. It is believed that it dates back to the initial period of the Ming Dynasty - XIV-XVII centuries. According to the legend, the pioneers of the "swallow's nests" were the warriors of the emperor of the Jin dynasty in the 13th century, who were defeated by their enemy, and therefore were cut off on a small rocky island. This harsh place could not boast of an abundance of vegetation or the presence of animals that could be eaten. Therefore, out of desperation, one of the warriors came up with the idea to cook soup from the nests of birds that settled on the rocks. Such an unexpected dish not only saved the lives of the remnants of the defeated imperial army, but the emperor himself was extremely pleased. Since then, "swallow's nests" have become a local delicacy, and such a patriotic background only fueled interest in this dish. Until now, anyone who finds himself in China can taste the food of imperial soldiers and for a moment imagine himself in their place. After all, since those times, oddly enough, not only the taste of this dish has not changed, but even the way it is obtained.
Today, such a culinary masterpiece is the first dish on the exotic table of China and many other Asian countries.
Every year, at the end of February and beginning of March, a team of pickers, mostly from local residents, landed on small rocky islands on the southern coast of China. They have to collect several batches of nests in a couple of months, which hardworking birds will create one after another to raise their offspring.
Nest-pickers climb rocks and knock down nests with sticks and ropes. You can carry a lot at a time, because swifts settle on the rocks in colonies.The size of the nest is about five centimeters diagonally. It is reminiscent of a porcelain cup in its graceful form.Color - whitish-yellowish, translucent (highest grade), gray, reddish-gray and black.
The assembly of "swallow's nests" in the Tiger Cave on one of the small islands in the Andaman Sea, located southwest of Thailand, takes place at an altitude of 120 meters.
The nesting season runs from February to May.Nests are harvested three times during the season. Birds restore them twice, usually in the same place. Hunters do not touch the third nest until the chicks grow up. New nests outside the season of gathering for food are no longer suitable, because, for some reason, even slivers, fluff, moss, earth and other delights, fastened with protein saliva, do not arouse appetite among visitors to exotic restaurants.
Viking Cave on Koh Phi Phi Don. Thailand.
"Swallow's Nest" belongs to the category of seafood dishes, along with scallop, trepang, cuttlefish, jellyfish. Pieces of "swallow's nest", filled with boiling water and aged for 5 hours (the water is changed), can increase in volume by 8-12 times (depending on the percentage of fish and algae). For disinfection, cleaning from pebbles and other impurities, the "swallow's nest" is also treated with barium oxide, which gives an alkaline reaction. Then they are washed several times in cold and warm water.
Most delicacies are purchased for home cooking, but in Hong Kong restaurants you can order soup made from them for $50 per serving. Usually the nests are cooked in chicken broth. There are also more refined recipes, for example, "Phoenix swallowing a swallow" - chicken boiled twice in a porcelain dish stuffed with nests.They are added to chicken cutlets (meatballs) or served with vegetables and other side dishes.
Swallow's Nest is considered the highest value food product: a pound of it is valued at 500 Hong Kong dollars!
In Taman Negara Park, we were driven by a businessman who was going to repair his car in the city of Kuatan.
He spoke with joy and enthusiasm about his business, and we asked him with such interest that he offered to stop by and see everything with his own eyes. We had free time in reserve, so we gladly agreed.
His business is growing bird nests. In Russia they are called swallow nests", but in reality the birds are called salangans (swiftlets)- This is a species of swifts that live in southern Asia, they are quite small in size, slightly larger than an ordinary sparrow and look a bit like swallows.
The nesting business is one of the most highly profitable areas in global agriculture. - one of those countries where swifts live in large numbers, which means there are all conditions for doing such a business.
Despite the fact that Malaysia supplies only 10% of the nests to the world market, it is the Malaysian nests that are considered the best in quality and are called "white gold" here - the cost is up to $ 3,000 per 1 kilogram, and they are incredibly popular in the Chinese market.
They consist of practically one saliva, without any impurities or plant inclusions. It is for this that these birds are valued - their nests are a delicious delicacy in Chinese cuisine. The most popular dish is "swallow's nest soup", which is a gelatinous stew with a specific taste.
Of the more than 20 existing species of salangans, only a few produce nests that are edible. The bulk of the nests sold in the world belong to two types: "light-nested" and "dark-nested" salangans. The first builds a bowl-like nest, including layers of salivary secretions with a few feathers between them (it looks light); the nest of the second contains many feathers held together by saliva, therefore it appears dark and has a fleecy structure.
The high price of the delicacy is explained by the great risk for hunters of this prey. In the wild, Salangans nest in caves, the bird knows how to navigate well in the dark and makes nests in hard-to-reach places, which is the main difficulty for miners - you need to be a good rock climber.
Nests are collected 3-4 times a year.
First time they are cut in early spring, before the swifts lay their eggs. The first nests are pristine white. Returning to the cave, the swifts look for their nests and, not finding them, begin to build new ones. They are in a hurry, because the season of laying eggs has come, and there is nowhere to lay them.
Second nests- pink, it is believed that the birds are not able to produce enough saliva for the second time and therefore it is obtained with an admixture of blood, due to which the pink color is obtained - among gourmets they are valued higher than white ones.
The third time nests are red-brown. If you cut off absolutely all the nests, then in a few years there will be no swifts left in this area at all. Salangans never use the same nest twice, and for each new clutch of eggs they build new ones.
Work on the construction of the nest takes about a month. Due to the gastronomic addiction to the delicacy, a huge number of chicks die. It was the high cost of "raw materials" and the frenzied demand in Chinese cuisine that led farmers in Southeast Asia to learn how to tame swifts.
Moreover, "swift" farms mainly appear outside the main place of consumption of nests - China. They are distributed in the Philippines and Vietnam. It turns out that under Mao Zedong, this bird and the soup from its nests were declared “bourgeois excess”, and the population of salangans was exterminated by 95% in the 1970s. Today, in southern China, the number of these swifts is only half the previous level before extermination.
The ability of swifts to navigate in the dark and live in caves was the main obstacle to the cultivation of nests until one Indonesian from the island of Java, in the 70s, went to Mecca for several months, and upon his return found that his empty dwelling was inhabited swifts-salangans.
For 3 years he researched how to attract birds to an artificial structure - he experimented with the size of the room, the material of the walls and ceiling, humidity, temperature and light. He was the first to be able to record on a cassette the singing of birds, which attracted them to an artificial dwelling. All his finds are still successfully used on many farms to this day.
The farm that we visited is located on the territory of a palm plantation, the entry of outsiders is strictly prohibited there - there is a barrier and a guard post. The palm plantation is huge, they move around it in such jeeps
So we changed the sports car to an SUV and drove off
Around the groves of mature palm trees, warehouses, as well as very young palm trees 
In the very depths of the plantation, an unremarkable concrete structure, it is this that serves as a haven for salangans 
There are no windows in the room, complete darkness reigns and a constant temperature of 27-29 degrees is maintained at a humidity of 80-90%, using special devices 
To attract birds, sound equipment is used, with various musical tracks. Some of them are designed to attract swifts to the house, while others are designed to create a "cozy atmosphere" inside 
In addition, the speakers are placed on the far approaches to the house to hint to the birds in which direction they need to move. 
To maintain the necessary smell in the room, specially imported bird droppings are used - guano.
Salangans make their nests under the ceiling 
On average, 1 kg of raw material is obtained from 110-120 raw nests. One such concrete building produces from 15 to 25 kg of nests during the year. The wholesale price for them is about $1,200 per 1 kilogram (and in Hong Kong they are already sold from $2.5 thousand to $3 thousand, so resellers have a profit of 100% and more). And a farmer receives $18-30 thousand for a year of breeding, which is very good, considering that the average earnings of farmers in other areas are $3-4 thousand a year.
The undeniable advantage of this industry is that, in addition to the start-up capital, labor and material costs are minimal: the birds feed on their own, and there is almost no need to take care of them - only occasionally remove the droppings, which again can be used as fertilizer in the fields. This industry is also good because it allows you to keep birds even in cities and 20% of bird nests are “produced” in urban areas.
Interesting Facts:
- The total gross harvest of tasty "raw materials" is 300-350 tons per year;
- On the whole, experts estimate the world market for this "agricultural raw material" at $600-650 million a year;
- Several hundred tons of "swallow nests" are consumed annually in the world, despite the fact that the dried nest weighs no more than 10 g.
- 50% of bird's nest consumption is in Hong Kong, 8% in China, 6% in Taiwan, 4% in Macau.
In China, soup can be tasted in expensive restaurants specializing in Imperial cuisine, and in the south, in Guangdong province, where this culinary masterpiece was invented. In Hong Kong or Shanghai, a bowl of this soup costs between $30 and $100.
There is a beautiful legend about the origin of this dish.
In the 13th century, when the army of Genghis Khan attacked China, the emperor of the Jin dynasty suffered one defeat after another and was driven by enemies to a rocky island. The emperor could not stand the shame, jumped from a cliff into the sea and crashed, and the remnants of the army survived by feeding on the nests of birds that settled on these rocks.
The soup is credited with extraordinary healing properties - the return of youth, the extension of life, the increase in male potency, the cure for asthma, and the glycoprotein found in the nests, which dissolves in water, stimulates cell division in the human immune system, based on this element, scientists are trying to invent a cure for AIDS and others. dangerous viruses. The soup is also very nutritious as it more than 50% of the content of bird saliva is protein.
If you are suddenly going to China or Hong Kong and the restaurant price will scare you away, you can buy separate nests and cook the soup yourself, the delicacy is usually sold in expensive and elegant packaging. And if you really want to try, but a trip to China is not planned in the near future, you can even buy nests on the Internet, for example, through the popular Chinese website Alibaba.
Here is the recipe for you: the swallow's nest is poured with boiling water and kept in hot water for 5-6 hours, the cooling water is constantly replaced with hot water, as a result, the nest swells and becomes soft. After that, fluff, dirt and other inclusions are pulled out of it with tweezers. The finished nest is doused with an alkali solution, and then thoroughly washed with cold water. There are several variations of serving the dish on the table, but as a rule, such a nest is served with strong chicken broth with spices, or stuffed chicken with it.
After visiting the farm, the owner invited us to lunch in the middle of a palm plantation, where the workers were having lunch. 
they offered us, of course, not nests, but traditional Malay food: rice, vegetables in various sauces, salads, fruits and drinks 
Farewell photo with the owners of the farm 
And on the road - before dark we need to be in time, which we will talk about in the next post.
This is not fiction or a joke: the Chinese cook soup from the nests of swallows. Very expensive and, they say, healthy and tasty.
Swallow's nest soup is a traditional Chinese food, and is now enjoyed by very wealthy Chinese gourmets.
It should be noted right away that swallows have absolutely nothing to do with it - edible nests belong to the stone swift. It is the swifts that nest in caves, where they climb the walls surprisingly deftly, clinging with their tenacious claws, similar to fan-shaped rakes.
Swallow's nest soup - food for the elite, imperial, royal. There are many beautiful legends about this extraordinary dish. One of them says that many, many centuries ago, the envoy of the Chinese emperor was treated on the Indochinese peninsula with food from "swallow's nests", which seemed to him so unusual and exquisite that, having taken several nests with him to his homeland, he personally prepared soup from them for his lord. The emperor scooped up the hot broth with a spoon, blew on it, carefully tasted it, and, closing his eyes in pleasure, asked for more. 
Be that as it may, but this delicacy began to be used in China as early as one and a half thousand years ago, according to the research of a well-known connoisseur of the history of "swallow's nests" Chinese professor Yun Chen Kong.
However, in order to prepare such an original soup, it is necessary, first of all, to get a nest.
It should be noted that the swallows' own nests in the coastal caves of China were quickly depleted and devastated, which is also confirmed by archaeological excavations.
Therefore, the delicacy began to be imported as early as 700 BC. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644), the eunuch Chen Ho repeatedly led the expeditions of the imperial fleet to Southeast Asia. Among other assignments, he was charged with the duty to deliver local delicacies to the court, including “swallow's nests”.
Now the precious nests in the dark caves of Thailand are mined by fearless and risky people who have been engaged in this life-threatening trade from generation to generation.
We can say that the miners of swallow nests are real rock climbers.
Before the start of the season, nest hunters bring to the islands not only food supplies, but also ropes and hooks. We can say that the miners of swallow nests are real rock climbers. The fact is that some of the caves resemble jugs, which can only be climbed through the neck. Here, a platform is built on the edges of such a neck, and ropes are fixed on it, along which hunters have to go down for tens of meters, wriggling, swinging, in order to get closer to the walls of the cave. The vaults of the cave went into darkness, and giant bamboo poles stretched there, tied together and twined with vines, resembling tall scaffolding.
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In order not to provoke the wrath of the gods, the hunters never open the nests with their hands. Perhaps the swallows' nests themselves are the work of deities who can punish people for destroying the nests, nest miners say.
Mined nests are different. For the first time, swifts build nests from pure saliva, a sticky substance produced by two glands under the tongue. Such nests are white, and they are very much appreciated by resellers. The second time, after cutting, the nests turn out to be dark, as twigs, seaweed and even feathers go to the “construction”. Their cost is much lower. They collect more nests for the third time, allowing the chicks to grow up. Such nests are painted red, which is often mistaken for the blood of birds, although this is most likely an impurity of iron oxides.
"Swallow" nests are highly valued, they are bought by the chefs of expensive restaurants. A kilogram of nests can pay a thousand or more dollars. The price of a nest fluctuates depending on the "harvest": in a drought, there are fewer swifts, therefore, the price of nests increases. It should be said that only fresh nests are valued.
The nests, gourmets say, contain a large amount of proteins and substances that enhance the immune system. The broth from the "swallow's nest" is useful for the sick and athletes, restores strength no worse than ginseng or rhinoceros horn, and, they say, even helps with AIDS.
According to gourmets, this exotic delicacy tastes like beluga caviar.
The mined "white gold" is transported to Hong Kong, China, the USA - wherever the Chinese live ...
As everyone knows, China is terribly overpopulated. And this situation has persisted for centuries. As a result, China was forever starving. And with hunger you just can’t eat. So they learned in the Celestial Empire not to neglect what the heavens send. In Chinese cuisine, you can find a roast of a snake and a cat, called the "Dragon-Tiger Battle", shark fins, earthworms, chickens baked in salt, ants, mice and rats, snails, dog meat goulash, duck eggs aged for a hundred days in lime dressing.
In a word, the national cuisine has concentrated the skills of cooking everything that ran past (or crawled). Moreover, in China they eat not only animals, but also their dwellings - for example, swallow nests. Do not try to experiment with the cooking of our swallow nests - Chinese swallow nests mean something completely different.
But what exactly?
Let's start with the fact that these are not nests of swallows, but of salangan swifts that live on the shores of the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. The famous nests of the baby salangana are not molded from clay, but from algae, fastening them with their own saliva. As inlays, salangans generously add eggs and fry of fish there. So it turns out that swallow nests consist of completely edible products, except for accidentally stuck feathers.
There was a strong opinion that all dishes of oriental cuisine are terribly healing, downright a panacea for all misfortunes. I don't know about all other dishes, but the swallows' nests seem to justify the expectations attributed to the rumor. It is natural that swallow nests, which are actually seafood, contain a large amount of iodine. In addition, they contain phosphorus, calcium, iron and many other useful trace elements. But this is not the main thing. It is important that the combination of components that make up swallow nests has a surprisingly powerful cumulative effect on the human body, improves immunity, enhances defenses, and has a rejuvenating effect. Especially swallow nests are useful for children, the elderly, pregnant women, weak and sick people.
Only the list of diseases that we could get rid of by regularly consuming swallow's nests takes up several pages. Suffice it to say that they heal asthma, chronic cough, throat diseases, exhibit antitumor activity, and contribute to the treatment of certain oncological diseases. Swallow's nests improve the quality of spermatozoa, solve the problems of male infertility, in addition, they are a strong aphrodisiac and increase potency. And women like that they rejuvenate the skin and smooth out wrinkles. Therefore, swallow nests are not only eaten, but also medicines and cosmetics are made from them.
What profit can be brought by fishing for swallow nests
Delicious swallow nests are one of the most expensive foodstuffs, their price reaches 2000 dollars per kilogram, which is comparable to the most expensive varieties of beluga caviar. Not so long ago, fishing for swallow nests was a very laborious and dangerous business - after all, salangans nest on sheer cliffs at the height of a 10–15-story building and desperately defend their home. However, now, in our highly technical age, they have been bred like chickens, quails or ostriches. For salangans, high multi-storey buildings are built, in which, instead of windows, narrow slots are arranged in the walls, like a notch in a beehive. Inside, numerous concrete beams are arranged under low ceilings. Salangans are happy to make nests in secluded corners between the beams and the ceiling. From there, they are periodically cut off by the workers of the salangan farm, trying to remove only those nests in which eggs have not yet been laid. Sometimes poor salangans have to build nests three times a year. Now all over the world several tons of swallow nests are mined every year. Considering that a dried salangan nest weighs about 10 g, one can imagine how much it is and what scale this business has reached. The fishery for swallow nests is constantly developing, and the hour is not far off when they will become available to any inhabitant of the planet.
How to make the famous swallow's nest soup
Swallow's nests are eaten not only in China. Swallow's nest soup is popular in India, Indonesia, and the countries of Indochina. You can also taste it here, but only in expensive restaurants in large cities. You can cook it yourself, if you manage to get (what the hell is not joking!) This very swallow's nest. How? First, the swallow's nest is poured with boiling water and left to swell for five hours, periodically replacing the cooling water with boiling water. For additional softening, swallow nests are doused with a solution of baking soda. Adhering feathers, fluff and dirt are removed from the swollen nest with tweezers. Then rinse thoroughly with cold water.
Soaked swallow's nest is poured with chicken broth so that it covers the nest, and boiled over high heat for 15 minutes. Then this chicken broth is drained and the nest is filled with a new portion of strong chicken broth. Add finely chopped raw white chicken meat, boiled ham and to taste monosodium glutamate, salt, herbs. Bring to a boil and cook over low heat for half an hour.
Bon appetit and good health!
Swifts live in caves, in the mountains or in urban areas in rooms specially equipped for caves. Until the 1990s many swifts lived in Indonesia, but constant fires led to their mass migration to a safer neighboring country - Malaysia.
The mating season for swifts begins from February to May. At this time, they secrete the largest amount of saliva, which they use to build nests. This process takes about 30-45 days. Another 3-7 days pass in anticipation of the chicks. And if a young pair of swifts feel comfortable and safe in their home, then 2 eggs will appear in their nest, which they take care of in turn. The eggs take 3-4 weeks to incubate, after which the chicks hatch and spend another 45-60 days in their nests before they can fly. Swifts have an extraordinary memory, so it is not difficult for them to find their nest among thousands of others after a long day 50 km from home. They leave their homes early in the morning at 5:30-6:30 am and arrive back at 7:15-7:30 pm. Some swifts return during the day to feed their chicks. Swifts usually live in pairs and they do not change their “life partner” until the end of their lives. They usually build their nests at night.
The consumption of bird nests has been dated to 618-907. AD during the reign of the Tang Dynasty. To date, the main consumers of bird nests are China, Taiwan, Singapore and North America. Indonesia is the world's top supplier, supplying 250-300 tons of nests per year, while Malaysia supplies only 25 tons, but Malaysian nests are considered to be the best in terms of quality and useful composition.
Nest soup (Chinese 燕窝, pinyin yàn wō, pall. yang wō) is considered a delicacy in China, Vietnam, and Malaysia. The soup has the appearance of mucus and resembles jelly in consistency. Prepared in a water bath.
And then there are salangan farms, or edible nests, which involve the use of non-residential spaces, usually urban, to create ideal conditions for birds to fly there, make nests and lay eggs. And the resulting nests from hardened bird saliva are either simply eaten as a delicacy (with or without shearers) or used to make the world-famous bird nest soup.
In Georgetown, the capital of the Malaysian state of Penang, there is a farm with millions of salangans.
The salangan farm in Georgetown poses a significant risk to the city's health and has even led UNESCO to reconsider the city's World Heritage status.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%8A%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B5_%D0 %BF%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D1%8C%D0%B8_%D0%B3%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B4%D0%B0
Let me remind you of a very unusual meal: that's what you think, but here or for example. And yet there are also The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy is made -
