Street foods. Oh how I miss them so much! The last time I ate one was still pre-pandemic. The Filipino street food is a variety foods from chicken egg to pig's blood (betamax) and the ever-popular balut (duck embryo egg). But even as a Filipino, I can't dare and eat those unusual foods. Yikes!
My favorite street foods are fishball, kikiam, chicken skin, calamares (sometimes), sorbetes, taho, and the tokneneng and kwek-kwek.
Orange Eggs on the Streets
When you pass by the streets in the Philippines, you'll probably see street food vendors selling fried orange balls along with other foods.
Don't they just look very appetizing? But what are these delectable-looking circular-shaped orange balls?
These orange balls are either kwek-kwek or tokneneng. You poke them with a barbecue stick and dip it into the sauce. And when you're buying a lot, you can ask the vendor for a cup where you put it and you can just pour some sauce into it using a ladle or you can just ask the vendor to pour it for you if there's no ladle available.
The kwek-kwek and tokneneng are eggs coated in an orange batter and then fried. Though you might be wondering why are there two sizes of the orange egg? Which is kwek-kwek and which is tokneneng?
The Difference Between Kwek-kwek and Tokneneng?
Being able to identify which is which is actually easy if you already know. The smaller and circular one is the kwek-kwek while the bigger and oval-shaped is the tokneneng. It's that simple. However, my dumb ass had only figured that out when I was in college. Lol.
The kwek-kwek is quail's egg while the tokneneng is the "penoy" or unfertilized duck egg.
I was even confused what to call kwek-kwek back then. Before, I thought kwek-kwek was called "buknoy" and the tokneneng was called "kwek-kwek", because when I was little, my mother and siblings would call the kwek-kwek buknoy. (I don't even know where they got that name. Lol.)
The first time I ate kwek-kwek was in fourth grade when a street vendor selling it stationed outside our school. I remember my siblings and I would buy it everyday after class.
Homemade Kwek-kwek
So about two weeks ago, my mother was able to buy lots of quail's egg and I've thought that we should make some kwek-kwek. It's our favorite street food and we really miss it a lot. And thanks to internet, we were able to find recipes on how to make it at home.
Kwek-kwek is basically just quail's egg coated in an orange batter. I have always wondered what the batter is made of. When I first saw it in fourth grade, I thought it was orange because it has carrots in it. But it turns out, it's just food color or annatto powder. The ingredients for making the batter is really simple:
- all-purpose flour
- cornstarch
- salt
- ground pepper
- annatto powder / orange food color
- water
(For the exact measurement of the ingredients, please refer to the video below.)
(The first step, of course, is to boil and remove the shell of the quail's egg.)
Before coating the quail's egg with the batter, you have to coat first the egg with a thin layer of flour. After coating with flour, you can now dip it into the batter. Mix the flour, cornstarch, salt, pepper, annatto powder, and add water.
The batter should be at least thick but not as thick as the one in the photo. We made ours thicker than the required consistency of batter, but it's alright. For the right consistency, refer to the video below.
Now when the batter is ready, put the quail's egg which was coated with flour into the batter.
Scoop the coated egg and deep fry it until the coating becomes crunchy or when the color has turned into darker orange. In our case, the oil wasn't enough for deep frying so only half was initially fried and I have to turn it around when the underside's already cooked.
Here's the video we used as guide for making our homemade kwek-kwek.
The ingredient used for the orange color in the video was food color but since we don't have that, we used annatto powder instead.
Homemade Tokneneng
If you can make kwek-kwek, then you can definitely make tokneneng because tokneneng shares the same batter recipe and cooking procedure with kwek-kwek. Their only difference, really, is the kind of egg used. For tokneneng, the egg used is the unfertilized duck egg or what they call penoy.
But for our recipe, we used chicken egg because we don't have the penoy. The embryo isn't developed yet on penoy unlike for the balut penoy, so I can still bear to eat it. Though for me, balut penoy tastes better. Hehe.
We cooked tokneneng the next day after cooking kwek-kwek because we still have some sauce left.
Speaking of sauce, you can either dip the kwek-kwek and tokneneng in a sweet or spicy sauce, vinegar with spices, or a combination of both. (But I haven't really tried combining the brown sweet/spicy sauce with the vinegar sauce. I wonder if that tastes good.)
The sauce is also as easy as the batter to make.
- cornstarch
- sugar
- soy sauce
- salt
- water
Here's the video on how the popular street food sauce is made. For the sauce we made, we added a few minced garlic because she like to be extra.
Homemade or Sold on the Streets?
Verdict time! Based from the ones we cooked, I'd say being able to make it at the comfort of our home is a huge convenience but when it comes to which tastes better, I will still choose the ones sold on the streets. I don't know what's in them but the ones sold on the streets really tastes more delicious and has a better circular shape. But of course, our homemade street food also tastes good but the one's sold outside tastes better.
Was it the oil used several times? Being exposed to the polluted air on the street? Who knows?
Street foods can be dirty sometimes and you might just catch a virus so make sure to buy only the freshly cooked ones. If not, get those which are under. Don't get the ones exposed in the open air. Well, just a few tips for a happy food trip!
The sauce made by street food vendors also tastes better than the ones we made. Again, I don't know why.
And that's all with our homemade kwek-kwek and tokneneng. The pandemic has been really letting us do things we don't usually do. Once this pandemic ends, I want to go to the capitol and eat kwek-kwek and other street foods. :)