Quail Fail

Soooo, it's one of those nights.

When I decided to wrap weird cheese batter around quail's eggs and fry them, I knew there was a good chance something was going to go wrong.

Oh, but how.

The recipe wasn't entirely clear on the consistency required of the batter, and since I was making 1/3 of a recipe it took a little doing to divvy up the eggs. Now, if it'd been earlier, say 5:00 PM instead of 8:00 PM, I might've just used my common sense and said, "no way that stuff's gonna stick to an egg no matter what you do with it." As it was, though, I just grabbed another handful of Doritos and said, "it'll set up."

At 9:00 PM, once it had properly chilled for an hour, I took a look at it. Actually seemed sloppier than before, which is entirely possible given it was mostly liquid and breadcrumbs.

And oh yeah, I was supposed to dip the eggs in this glop, dip the glop-eggs in egg white (hah! Egg soup, what fun!) and then chill another 20 minutes.

Hadn't read that far.

I knew this stuff wasn't going to end up like anything resembling something you'd want to eat no matter what, so I decided the chill time could stand to go down by 10 minutes. Heated the oil, dropped the first revolting dumpling into the oil. Oil wasn't *quite* hot enough, ended up with a grease ball.
The second one actually turned out pretty well.
The rest looked like this:
(The whites are torn up a bit from my prodding at them to see if they were even cooked)
They used to be so pretty....

Moral of the story: Do not fry food after 9 PM. Just don't do it. And when you do, for the love of God don't eat it. And when you do, have plenty of orange juice on hand to wash it down.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to get some more Doritos.