Egg Yolk Misozuke (a kitchen misadventure?)

Doesn't this look delicious?!

I was inspired by this post at the Wild Fermentation blog. I've made garlic and winter-squash misozuke, both of which are phenomenal. And egg-yolks seemed a little 'out there' so I thought I should give that a try. This was last March.

I filled a glass dish with a hearty, dark miso.

Then I lined that with cheese cloth and used a broad wooden-spoon handle to make a dozen declivities.

And into each of those, went one fresh hen's yolk. I broke one on the way, but decided to go with it and see what happened. (Nothing different, really.)

Then I covered the yolks with another layer of cheese cloth and packed in more miso to fully encapsulate each egg. And then I stashed it on a shelf in the basement where it's a few degrees cooler. Six months later, I was going to open it but we were going out of town. So I just got around to it now. The top of the miso had aged, but smelled and tasted right.

When I peeled the top layer of miso off, it was hard to tell what I had. The yolks had lost all shape and while they gained some body, they weren't really firm. There were blobs of brown-beige goo in each declivity and I scooped them out onto a plate.

Tasting one, they were salty and umami, dominated by the flavor of the miso. But creamy. There wasn't really much to recommend about the flavor -- I can just use miso if that's what I want! And I found the texture to be frankly, a little gross -- like the runniest of triple-cream cheeses. We waited 36 hours after my tasting to make sure I didn't get sick and my wife tasted one. She was less offended by the texture and more by the flavor, so neither of us really liked these.

It's always a little disappointing when something that takes a long time doesn't work out, but this is how we learn. I'm going to try again with soft- and hard-boiled yolks and see how that works out. I'll report back next year. :-)