Antipyretics for children are prescribed by a pediatrician. But there are emergency situations with fever when the child needs to be given medicine immediately. Then the parents take responsibility and use antipyretic drugs. What is allowed to be given to infants? How can you lower the temperature in older children? What medications are the safest?
Deep in the steamy jungles of Borneo, Malaysia, there is a massive fissure that exposes deposits of limestone, leading to a complex cave system. Entering the cave is not for the faint of heart. The damp walls of the cave have millions of bats hanging from above, while the walls are covered with cockroaches, beetles, rats running across the floor and a variety of other animals capable of causing horror, feasting on bat excrement and dead swiftlets that have fallen from their nests. The caves are also home to snakes that feed on rats and cockroaches. The air is saturated with ammonia from bird droppings. Guano spreads across the floor to about 10 feet deep. Wooden walkways through the exploration section of the cave keep visitors safe from these nightmarish creatures that infest the ground.
Situated on Gomantog Hill inside the protected forest area of the Sabah Department. Gomantog Caves are the largest caves in Sabah. The caves are best known for birds' nests, which have been collected for centuries and used to make bird's nest soup.
Swiftlets build their nests using threads that they extract from saliva. These threads harden when exposed to air. The soup made from these nests is considered a delicacy in Chinese cuisine. This is a very rare dish that has enormous nutritional value and health benefits. Some nests contain foreign materials such as feathers and twigs and are known as black nests. Both are collected for consumption, but a clean nest is more expensive and highly valued.
The collection of birds' nests is now regulated to avoid overexploitation. Twice a year, from February to April and July to September, trained local workers climb to the cave roof and collect nests using rattan ladders, ropes and bamboo sticks.
The first collection occurs at the beginning of the season, before the swiftlets lay eggs. The birds build another nest in which they lay eggs. After the chicks have hatched and the young swiftlets have left these nests, a second gathering occurs.
The bulk of the collected nests goes to Hong Kong, where they are used for soup, drinks and medicine. Surprisingly, the US is the second largest importer of nests in the world.
A bowl of bird's nest soup in a good restaurant can cost $100. A kilogram of clean nest costs up to $2000.
Despite the high price, the gelatinous soup is practically tasteless; it was described by one author as “vanilla banana with sticky noodles.”
The nests in this photo are approximately 3 inches long. The sample shown in the photo costs about $20 each.
Health
Many of us love to eat a bowl of delicious steaming soup for lunch to satisfy our hunger. Soups are hearty and healthy dishes, which are prepared from what you have in the refrigerator. Maybe you have a bat or a tiger penis lying around in your refrigerator?
There are soups in the world that are completely different from those you are used to cooking. Most of them came to us from Asian cuisine, so unusual for Europeans.
Discover the most unusual first courses from around the world, some of which may shock you.
1) Menudo (Mexico)
While the ingredients in this soup may not be surprising to some of you, not everyone would be willing to try beef gizzard. Menudo is a traditional Mexican soup that is quite popular in Mexico and is often prepared according to special occasions. The dish is also widely known as a hangover cure.
Menudo is made from cow stomachs with the addition of onions, cilantro, oregano, chili peppers and corn. It takes 7 to 10 hours to cook as the gizzard is cooked for a very long time to make it soft and tender. Some may wonder, can stomach really taste good? But if you add all the other ingredients to it and let it simmer on low heat for a couple of hours, the result will be simply incredible.
The stomach is so tender it melts in your mouth, add some corn tortillas to dip into the soup and you have a wonderful lunch. Little is known about the origin of this soup, but one can guess that in Mexico, when they slaughtered a bull, they wanted to use all parts of the carcass for cooking, including the stomachs. You can find this dish in many Mexican restaurants.
2) Kiburu (Tanzania)
This is probably the simplest soup on the list, prepared by the Chagga tribe, who live at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro in eastern Africa. This tribe survives by farming and focuses primarily on the cultivation of bananas and coffee.
The tribe leads a simple lifestyle, which is why they prepare simple dishes: kiburu soup is made from sweet bananas, legumes and... dirt. All ingredients are mixed with water to make a soup, and tree branches can also be added. The dirt makes the soup salty and gives it an "earthy" flavor.
3) Supu (Tanzania)
This soup is somewhat reminiscent of Mexican menudo soup, as it uses different animal parts. Supu, as the name suggests, translates to “soup.”
The Tanzanian version of this dish is prepared for breakfast, it is the most unusual and is made from the lungs, heart, liver, head of a goat and stomach of a cow, sometimes from the entrails and tongue. Sometimes the soup is made from hooves, then it is called "supu ya makongoro". This dish is traditionally enjoyed for breakfast in Tanzania and it also cures hangovers.
4) Rooster testicle soup
This soup is very similar to ours chicken soup with noodles, except that it is not made from chicken meat, and from rooster testicles. Eggs and vegetables are boiled until tender. The testicles have a creamy consistency inside, they are very soft, somewhat reminiscent of tofu, but with a hard skin, like sausages.
Some compare them to boiled eggs, which have a custard-like flavor. The testicles, as it turned out, have good side effects, for example, they have a beneficial effect on the skin of women and increase potency in men.
5) Bird's nest soup (China)
One of the most expensive soups on this list is bird's nest soup, which is made from the nests of swiftlets. This Chinese soup is a real delicacy and can be enjoyed in some restaurants for $30-$100 per serving. A kilogram of bird's nests costs about 2 thousand dollars.
This soup is actually made from sticky bird saliva, which is what birds mainly use to make their nests. The nest dissolves in water, the soup is somewhat reminiscent of jelly. These nests have been cooked in China since ancient times, mainly in the form of soups.
Salangans build their nests in caves, and this is done by male birds. It takes about 35 days to build one nest. Birds weave threads of their saliva into a bowl-shaped shape. They say that the dish has a positive effect on human health, in particular, it helps treat asthma, increases libido, and strengthens the immune system.
6) Deer placenta soup (China)
In Shanghai, China, you can try deer placenta soup, which can provide health benefits: strengthen sexual power, heal kidneys, improve skin condition and increase vitality. Mushrooms, flowers, chicken are added to this soup, but the main ingredient is deer placenta, which is quite elastic and takes a long time to chew.
The placenta is a sac-like organ female body, which attaches the embryo to the mother's uterus during pregnancy in most mammals. The placenta passes blood from the mother's body to the embryo, which delivers oxygen and nutrients to it, and also helps remove byproducts. After the baby is born, the placenta leaves the mother's body.
7) Cod milk soup (Japan)
This soup is made from the milt of cod fish and is very popular in Japan, where it is called shirako soup. Milts are sacs of fish sperm that are boiled in water until a soup with a creamy consistency, almost like custard, is obtained.
"Shirako" translated means "white children". The dish is prepared mainly in winter; it is believed that it can increase potency if eaten in a certain quantity. Some oriental restaurants prepare this dish as something special to surprise customers.
8) Bat soup (Palau)
This soup might not be so terrible if its main ingredient (bats) were at least cleaned of fur. On the islands of Palau in the Pacific Ocean, there is apparently a shortage of edible animals, so the locals do not disdain bats. The islands are home to several species of bats, those that eat insects and those that eat fruit.
The latter are boiled in coconut milk with ginger and other seasonings for several hours. Some restaurants even let you choose a male or female before throwing the poor mouse alive into boiling water. Many gourmets who have decided to try this masterpiece of culinary art claim that it is magnificent, however, if you do not pay attention to the hairy head sticking out of the plate.
9) Tiger penis soup (China)
There are many soups made from animal genitals, but this soup is the rarest and most expensive of them all. Of course, to prepare it you need to kill at least one tiger, which is punishable by death in China.
Tiger penis soup has been a special dish in Asian cuisine for many centuries (which is probably why there are so few tigers there today), since the tiger penis is believed by Asians to have the mystical properties of Viagra!
The poor feline's dried penis is soaked in water for a week and then simmered for 24 hours with spices and medicines, sometimes along with tiger bones. One serving of this soup can cost $400. Despite the fact that tigers are protected in every possible way, their body parts still leak into markets, but most of the products sold as tiger penises are actually deer or bull tendons.
10) Blood soup (Vietnam)
And finally, the strangest soup on our list, which we hardly dare call soup. This is a traditional Vietnamese dish made from raw blood (usually goose blood), bird giblets, peanuts and herbs.
This soup is frozen and the blood becomes thick, and is eaten chilled before the blood loses its jelly-like consistency. Supposedly, the soup gives strength not only to those who eat it, but also to those who cook it. The soup fell out of favor after bird flu became rampant in Asia. And yet, many Asians continue to eat it without fear of getting infected.
+ Bonus: Soup No. 5
Soup No. 5 also makes it onto the list of the strangest soups on the planet. It is prepared in some areas of Southeast Asia and consists of onions, carrots, meat broth, penis and testicles of a bull. This soup has also gained popularity due to its aphrodisiac properties.
We were driven to Taman Negara Park by a businessman who was going to repair his car in the city of Kuatan.
He spoke with joy and delight about his business, and we asked him with such interest that he offered to stop by and see everything with our own eyes. We had some free time, so we gladly agreed.
His business is raising birds' nests. In Russia they are called " swallow's nests", but in reality the birds are called swiftlets- This is a species of swift that lives in southern Asia, they are quite small in size, slightly larger than an ordinary sparrow and look a little like swallows.
The nest breeding 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 the conditions for running such a business.
Despite the fact that Malaysia supplies only 10% of the nests to the world market, it is the Malaysian ones that are considered the best in quality and are called here “white gold” - the cost is up to $3,000 per 1 kilogram, and they are incredibly popular in the Chinese market.
They consist practically of only saliva, without any impurities or plant inclusions. This is precisely why these birds are valued - their nests are a tasty delicacy in Chinese cuisine. The most popular dish is “swallow’s nest soup,” which is a gelatinous stew with a specific taste.
More than 20 existing species Only a few swiftlets produce nests that are edible. The bulk of nests sold in the world belong to two species: “light-nest” and “dark-nest” swiftlets. The first builds a cup-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, and therefore appears dark and has a fleecy structure.
The high price of the delicacy is explained by the high risk for hunters of this prey. In the wild, swiftlets nest in caves; the bird can navigate well in the dark and makes nests in hard-to-reach places, which is the main difficulty for hunters - you need to be a good 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 snow-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 egg-laying season has arrived and there is nowhere to lay them.
Second nests- pink in color, there is an opinion that the birds are not able to produce enough saliva the second time and therefore it turns out 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 The resulting 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. Salangans never use the same nest twice, and for each new clutch of eggs they build new ones.
Work on building the nest lasts about a month. Due to a gastronomic addiction to the delicacy, a huge number of chicks die. It was the high cost of “raw materials” and the frantic 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 common in the Philippines and Vietnam. It turns out that under Mao Zedong, this bird and the soup from its nests were declared a “bourgeois excess,” and the swiftlet population was exterminated by 95% in the 1970s. Today, in southern China, the number of these swifts is only half of its previous level before extirpation.
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 returning found that his empty home had been inhabited swifts.
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 lighting. He was the first to record on tape the singing of birds, which attracted them to an artificial home. All his findings are still successfully used on many farms.
The farm we visited is located on the territory of a palm plantation, entry of outsiders is strictly prohibited - there is a barrier and a security post. The palm plantation is huge, they move around it in these jeeps
So we swapped the sports car for an SUV and drove off
All around are groves of mature palm trees, utility warehouses, as well as very young palm trees. 
In the very depths of the plantation there is an unremarkable concrete structure, which serves as a haven for swiftlets 
There are no windows in the room, complete darkness reigns and is maintained constant temperature 27-29 degrees with humidity 80-90%, using special devices 
To attract birds, sound equipment with various music tracks is used. Some of them are designed to attract swifts into the house, while others are designed to create a “cozy atmosphere” inside 
In addition, speakers are also placed at the far approaches to the house to hint to the birds in which direction they need to move 
To maintain the required smell in the room, specially imported bird droppings are used - guano.
Swiftlets 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 over the course of a year. The wholesale price for them is about $1,200 dollars per 1 kilogram (and in Hong Kong they are sold from $2.5 thousand to $3 thousand, so resellers have a profit of 100% or more). And a farmer earns $18-30 thousand per year of breeding, which is very good, considering that the average income of farmers in other areas is $3-4 thousand per 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, there is almost no need for caring for them - only occasionally removing droppings, which can again 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;
- In general, experts estimate the global market for this “agricultural raw material” at 600-650 million dollars a year;
- Several hundred tons of “swallow’s nests” are consumed annually in the world, despite the fact that a dried nest weighs no more than 10 g.
- 50% of bird's nest consumption occurs in Hong Kong, 8% in China, 6% in Taiwan, 4% in Macau.
In China, you can try the soup 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 from 30 to 100 dollars.
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 to a rocky island by his enemies. 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– return of youth, prolongation of life, increase in male potency, cure for asthma, and a glycoprotein found in nests, soluble in water, stimulates cell division in the human immune system; based on this element, scientists are trying to invent a cure for AIDS and other dangerous viruses. The soup is also very nutritious because... more than 50% of the contents of bird saliva is protein.
If you suddenly plan to go to China or Hong Kong and the restaurant price puts you off, you can buy nests separately and prepare the soup yourself; the delicacy is usually sold in expensive and elegant packaging. And if you really want to try it, 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's the recipe: 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. cold water. There are several variations of serving the dish on the table, but as a rule, such a nest is served with a strong chicken broth with spices, or stuff chicken with it.
After touring the farm, the owner invited us to lunch in the middle of the palm plantation, where the workers were just 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 farm owners 
And on the way - we need to be in time before dark, which we will talk about in the next post.
The entrance to other caves is hidden by thick water and opens only at low tide. Photo Depositphotos/PhotoXPress.ru
This delicacy, familiar to many of those who have traveled to the countries of Southeast Asia, at least by hearsay, is considered one of the most exotic dishes. As rare and unique as, say, the fillet of a king cobra or the brains of a living monkey. We are talking about swallow's nest soup. True gourmets do not deny themselves the pleasure of tasting it at least once if they happen to be somewhere in Singapore, Bangkok or Saigon.
In expensive restaurants it is served at a price of a hundred dollars for a serving the size of a tea bowl. You can do it cheaper - at home. Packages or tins with the inscription “BirdNest” are sold in large quantities in markets and stores. But this, as they say, is not the same style. A real swallow's nest is the food of the gods. It's all about what you're served.
The lagoon shone dazzling white. On the sparkling surface, like jewelry inclusions, darkened lonely rocks and a small scattering of bamboo vessels, similar to coconut shells. The shore gradually moved away from us, parting, like a curtain, the picturesque panorama of Sam Bong Bay at the northern outskirts of Nha Trang.
Against the background of tousled palm trees, the white thread of the bridge over the Kai River stood out clearly. From here he seemed even more graceful than in the photographs in the advertising brochures. The curled caps of the Cham temples of PokhNogar became even closer to the clouds. Facing the sea, they serve as our navigator and altar at the same time.
Tung, the captain of our “Pearl,” looked at the shore and muttered something under his breath. Obviously he was praying. In the morning he went to the fortune teller who sat at the steps of PokhNogar and asked him to tell his fortune. The old soothsayer promised good luck and protection from the sea lord.
History is reflected in these waters. In past centuries, even before the era of great geographical discoveries, pirates ruled here. Ethnically, they are a diverse rabble. Fugitives from Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, and the Philippines were engaged in sea robbery and did not build nests anywhere. Actually, this is the South China Sea, about which there is a lot of talk and debate today in society, on newspaper pages and even in the International Court of Justice in The Hague.
But we read more ancient sources - the notes of the British East India Company sub-receiver Thomas Bowir, who writes how local merchants carried printed silks, porcelain, tea, mercury, ginger in their holds from China...
From Siam - sandalwood, red, ebony, betel nut, lacquer, mother of pearl, ivory, emeralds, Pailin sapphires...
From Batavia - pearls and silver jewelry, cinnabar... From Manila - incense, tobacco, silver, wax, sinew... From Vietnam - gold and iron, patterned silks and cotton, eagle wood and swallow's nests...
Since time immemorial in Vietnam, en sao soup has been the decoration of any royal table. At the royal feast of Emperor Ly Thanh Tong, a great lover of life and patron of the muses (he founded the Temple of Literature in Hanoi in 1070), poets competed, praising en sao as a divine drink.
According to the Chinese version, it was first prepared in the 13th century by the cooks of the young emperor from the Jin dynasty. This happened at the wrong moment - Genghis Khan’s troops were moving from the north to Beijing. The emperor's army was defeated, its remnants took refuge on a deserted island surrounded by rocks. Hungry soldiers began to look for food, but the island was covered only with stunted vegetation.
And then the emperor’s attention was attracted by colonies of swallows. Their nests covered all the stones from top to bottom. A skillful cook, by order of the ruler, prepared a rather tolerable dish, and everyone liked it - both the overlord and the army. The threat of famine was over.
Our “Pearl” was briskly moving on its tack. To the right, rocky islands stretched in a darkening chain. Tung, raising his hand, calmly said: “Here, you wanted en-sao. In the spring, clouds of swiftlets - small needle-tailed swifts, reminiscent of swallows with their dark plumage and wing geometry - flock here to nest. This is where the name of the islands came from – Lastochkiny.
Having short legs that are not adapted for life on the earth's surface, swiftlets spend most of their time in the air or in nests. But strong wings provide them with greater maneuverability and high speed in flight. Stone cliffs, rugged shores and labyrinthine fjords provide ideal nesting sites. Passing ships do not disturb the peace there, the road is closed to predators. Only noisy waves crash against the rocks and the salty wind blows around.
Huge colonies of swiftlets settle in stone grottoes and caves, which are not so easy to reach even for an experienced rock climber. The entrance to other caves is hidden by thick water and opens only at low tide. There are few such caves. One of them is Ho Cave near Da Nang, the other, the largest, is Chong Cave, five kilometers from Nha Trang.
We approached it. We made our way over the slippery stones to the very entrance. Birds flew overhead in excited flocks. There was such a hubbub that we couldn't hear each other. Inside the cave, I climbed onto a ledge and looked down. Snakes swam in the water below me - the eternal companions of swiftlets during the nesting period.
Swiftlets begin to make nests in the spring. They choose a secluded place and get to work. The first nest, mixed with clay and sand, where eggs have already been laid, is torn off the walls by hunters. Swallows, obeying the instinct of procreation, take up the latter. They are in a hurry to make a second clutch. But this time too, the miners of the most valuable product take the nest into their pouches. There are very few days left for the swiftlets to breed their offspring. And they get to work for the third time. This nest is very small, made only from saliva, without impurities, the main thing is to be in time.
Salangans create a home for little chicks with all their might, literally from their own flesh. The secretions of the sublingual salivary glands are the only building material. Day after day, they pull out threads of saliva from themselves, building up the semicircle of a new nest. The humid climate keeps the nest soft, preventing it from drying out within a week. The gelatinous mass with reddish and pink veins is the most valuable in taste, and therefore the most expensive and rare on the market. For one kilogram – a hundred million dong (about 4.5 thousand dollars).
Hunters build special bamboo forests on nearby rocks and climb the steep wall using climbing equipment. For hours, nest collectors hang on ropes at heights of up to hundreds of meters, risking their lives and literally playing with death.
The hottest time for harvesting does not last long - about seven days. During this time, with good weather and accompanying luck, it is possible to collect tens of kilograms of high-quality product. On shore, in specialized factories, it is sorted, packaged in containers and sent for export - to Hong Kong, the USA, Australia...
Compared to other countries in the region - Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, where they also engage in similar fishing, Vietnamese swallow's nests are considered the most delicious and nutritious. They say it all depends on the local climate and special natural conditions.
Nest hunters make their last call when the chicks have hatched and started to fly. Then typhoons come from the Philippines and sweep into the sea everything that remains on the rocks and inside the caves. Until next spring...
As everyone knows, China is terribly overpopulated. Moreover, this situation persisted for centuries. As a result, China was always hungry. And if you're hungry, you can't eat anything. So we have learned in the Celestial Empire not to neglect what the heavens send. In Chinese cuisine you can find roast snake and cat, called the “Battle of the Dragon with the Tiger,” shark fins, earthworms, chickens baked in salt, ants, mice and rats, snails, dog meat goulash, duck eggs aged for one hundred days in lime coating.
In a word, the national cuisine concentrated the skills of cooking everything that ran (or crawled) by. Moreover, in China they eat not only animals, but also their homes - for example, swallow's nests. Don’t even think about experimenting with cooking our swallow’s nests - Chinese swallow’s nests mean something completely different.
Let's start with the fact that these are not the nests of swallows, but of swiftlets that live on the shores of the Bay of Bengal and the South China Sea. The famous nests of baby swiftlets are made not from clay, but from algae, holding them together with their own saliva. As inlays, salangans generously add eggs and young fish. So it turns out that swallow’s nests consist of completely edible products, except for the accidentally stuck feathers.
There is a strong opinion that all oriental cuisine is terribly healing, a panacea for all ills. I don’t know about all the other dishes, but swallow’s nests seem to live up to the rumored expectations. It is natural that swallow's nests, which are actually a seafood product, contain a large amount of iodine. In addition, they contain phosphorus, calcium, iron and many other useful microelements. But this is not the main thing. It is important that the combination of components that make up swallow’s nests has a surprisingly powerful cumulative effect on the human body, increases immunity, enhances defenses, and has a rejuvenating effect. Swallow's nests are especially useful for children, the elderly, pregnant women, weak and sick people.
Just 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 help treat some oncological diseases. Swallow's nests improve the quality of sperm, solve problems of male infertility, in addition, they are a strong aphrodisiac and increase potency. And women like that they rejuvenate their skin and smooth out wrinkles. Therefore, swallow's nests are not only eaten, but also used to make medicines and cosmetics.
How much profit can swallow nest fishing bring?
Delicious swallow's nests are one of the most expensive food products, their price reaches up to $2,000 per kilogram, which is comparable to the most expensive varieties of beluga caviar. Not so long ago, fishing for swallow nests was a very labor-intensive and dangerous task - after all, swiftlets nest on steep cliffs at the height of a 10-15-story building and desperately defend their home. However, now, in our highly technical age, they have begun to be bred like chickens, quails or ostriches. Tall multi-storey buildings are built for swiftlets, in which instead of windows there are narrow slits in the walls, like a hole in a beehive. Inside, there are numerous concrete beams under the low ceilings. Swiftlets happily make nests in secluded corners between beams and ceilings. From there, workers of the swiftlet farm periodically cut them off, trying to remove only those nests in which eggs have not yet been laid. Sometimes poor swiftlets have to make nests three times a year. Nowadays, several tons of swallow's nests are mined every year all over the world. If you consider that a dried salangan nest weighs about 10 g, you can imagine how much this is and what scale this business has reached. The swallow nest fishery 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 Indochina. You can taste it here, but only in expensive restaurants in large cities. You can cook it yourself if you manage to get hold of (what the hell is it!) 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. To further soften the swallow's nests, douse them in a baking soda solution. Remove stuck feathers, fluff and dirt from the swollen nest with tweezers. Then rinse thoroughly with cold water.
The soaked swallow's nest is poured with chicken broth so that it covers the nest, and cooked over high heat for 15 minutes. This chicken broth is then drained and the nest is filled with a new portion of strong chicken broth. Add finely chopped raw white chicken meat, boiled ham and monosodium glutamate, salt, and herbs to taste. 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 greatest amount of saliva, which they use to build nests. This process takes about 30-45 days. Another 3-7 days pass waiting for the chicks. And if a young pair of swifts feels comfortable and safe in their home, then 2 eggs will appear in their nest, which they take turns caring for. The eggs take 3-4 weeks to incubate, after which the chicks hatch and spend another 45-60 days in their nests before they learn to 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 and fly back by 7:15-7:30 in the evening. 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's nests dates back to 618-907. AD during the reign of the Tang Dynasty. Today, the main consumers of bird's nests are China, Taiwan, Singapore and North America. Indonesia is the main supplier in the world, supplying 250-300 tons of nests per year, while Malaysia supplies only 25 tons, but Malaysian nests are considered to be the best in quality and nutritional content.
Nest soup (Chinese 燕窝, Pinyin yàn wō, Pall. yang wo) is considered a delicacy in China, Vietnam and Malaysia. The soup looks like mucus and has a consistency similar to jelly. Prepared in a water bath.
And there are also farms Swiftlets, or edible nests, involve the use of non-residential spaces, usually urban ones, to create ideal conditions for birds to fly there, build nests and lay eggs. And the resulting nests from hardened bird saliva are either simply eaten as a delicacy (with or without swiftlets), or used to prepare the world-famous bird's nest soup.
In Georgetown, the capital of the Malaysian state of Penang, there is a farm with millions of swiftlets.
The Georgetown Swiftlet Farm poses a significant public health risk to the city and has even caused UNESCO to reconsider the city's World Heritage status.
And here is what Maria Glazunova writes
During our hitchhiking trip from Kuala Berang to Taman Negara, we were picked up by a businessman who was going to Kuatan to repair his car.
He spoke with joy and delight about his business, and we asked him with such interest that he offered to stop by and see everything with our own eyes. We had some free time, so we gladly agreed.
His business is raising birds' nests. In Russia they are called "swallow's nests", but in reality the birds are called swiftlets - a type of swiftlet that lives in southern Asia, they are quite small in size, slightly larger than an ordinary sparrow and look a little like swallows.
The nest breeding business is one of the most highly profitable areas in global agriculture. Malaysia is one of those countries where swifts live in large numbers, which means there are all the conditions for running such a business.
Despite the fact that Malaysia supplies only 10% of the nests to the world market, it is the Malaysian ones that are considered the best in quality and are called here “white gold” - the cost is up to $3,000 per 1 kilogram, and they are incredibly popular in the Chinese market.
Swiftlet nests consist almost entirely of saliva, without any impurities or plant inclusions. This is precisely why these birds are valued - their nests are a tasty 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 extant species of swiftlets, only a few produce nests that are edible. The bulk of nests sold in the world belong to two species: “light-nest” and “dark-nest” swiftlets. The first builds a cup-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, and therefore appears dark and has a fleecy structure.
The high price of the delicacy is explained by the high risk for hunters of this prey. In the wild, swiftlets nest in caves; the bird can navigate well in the dark and makes nests in hard-to-reach places, which is the main difficulty for hunters - you need to be a good climber.
Nests are collected 3-4 times a year.
The first time they are cut is in early spring, before the swifts lay their eggs. The first nests are pristine snow-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 egg-laying season has arrived and there is nowhere to lay them.
The second nests are pink, there is an opinion that the birds the second time are not able to produce enough saliva and therefore it turns out 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 the nests turn out to be red-brown. If you cut off absolutely all the nests, then in a few years there will be no swifts left in this area. Salangans never use the same nest twice, and for each new clutch of eggs they build new ones.
Work on building the nest lasts about a month. Due to a gastronomic addiction to the delicacy, a huge number of chicks die. It was the high cost of “raw materials” and the frantic 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 common in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. It turns out that under Mao Zedong, this bird and the soup from its nests were declared a “bourgeois excess,” and the swiftlet population was exterminated by 95% in the 1970s. Today, in southern China, the number of these swifts is only half of its previous level before extirpation.
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 returning found that his empty home had been inhabited swifts.
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 lighting. He was the first to record on tape the singing of birds, which attracted them to an artificial home. All his findings are still successfully used on many farms.
The farm we visited is located on the territory of a palm plantation, entry of outsiders is strictly prohibited - there is a barrier and a security post. The palm plantation is huge, they move around it in these jeeps 
So we swapped the sports car for an SUV and drove off
All around are groves of mature palm trees, utility warehouses, as well as very young palm trees.
In the very depths of the plantation there is an unremarkable concrete structure, which serves as a haven for swiftlets 
There are no windows in the room, complete darkness reigns and a constant temperature of 27-29 degrees is maintained with a humidity of 80-90%, using special devices
To attract birds, sound equipment with various music tracks is used. Some of them are designed to attract swifts into the house, while others are designed to create a “cozy atmosphere” inside
In addition, speakers are also placed at 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 - guano - are used.
Swiftlets 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 over the course of a year. The wholesale price for them is about $1,200 dollars per 1 kilogram (and in Hong Kong they are sold from $2.5 thousand to $3 thousand, so resellers have a profit of 100% or more). And a farmer earns $18-30 thousand per year of breeding, which is very good, considering that the average income of farmers in other areas is $3-4 thousand per 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, almost no care is needed - only occasionally removing droppings, which can again 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;
- In general, experts estimate the global market for this “agricultural raw material” at 600-650 million dollars a year;
- Several hundred tons of “swallow’s nests” are consumed annually in the world, despite the fact that a dried nest weighs no more than 10 g.
- 50% of bird's nest consumption occurs in Hong Kong, 8% in China, 6% in Taiwan, 4% in Macau.
In China, you can try the soup 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 from 30 to 100 dollars.
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 to a rocky island by his enemies. 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 - returning youth, prolonging life, increasing male potency, curing asthma, and the glycoprotein found in the nests, soluble in water, stimulates cell division in the human immune system; based on this element, scientists are trying to invent a cure for AIDS and other diseases. dangerous viruses. The soup is also very nutritious because... more than 50% of the contents of bird saliva is protein.
If you suddenly plan to go to China or Hong Kong and the restaurant price puts you off, you can buy nests separately and prepare the soup yourself; the delicacy is usually sold in expensive and elegant packaging. And if you really want to try it, 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's the recipe: pour boiling water over the swallow's nest and keep it 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, but as a rule, this nest is served with strong chicken broth with spices, or chicken is stuffed with it.
According to scientific research from the University of Hong Kong, Japan's Shizuoka University and a group of experts from China, bird's nests have a beneficial effect on overall human health. Bird's nests have been proven to have the following therapeutic properties:
- Bird's nest improves the color and condition of the skin, reduces the number of wrinkles and prevents their formation for a long time, rejuvenates and nourishes the skin.
- Helps with diseases respiratory tract, bronchial asthma, suspends pathological changes in the lungs.
- Helps increase male strength, treats impotence.
- Useful for pregnant and lactating women, promotes mental development child.
- Helps normalize heart function, improves blood circulation and stabilizes blood pressure.
- Increases immunity, helps with general weakness of the body, promotes faster recovery of the body after illnesses and surgical operations.
- It is recommended to consume bird's nest for illnesses digestive system, kidneys, liver cirrhosis, in the treatment of hepatitis B. It has a persistent antitumor effect in cancer of the esophagus, larynx and intestines. It can also be used to prevent the above diseases.
- Indicated in the treatment of complications after radiation and chemotherapy (dryness and inflammation of the throat, constipation, nausea, etc.)
- Modern research from the University of Hong Kong also provides evidence that a bird's nest provides positive results in the complex treatment of lung cancer and AIDS.
There are no known contraindications, but individual intolerance is possible.
The biochemical composition was studied in detail by Taiwanese researchers, and the results were recorded using HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) and GC-MS (Gas Chromatograph Mass Spectrophotometer) preparations.
According to the above studies, the main component of bird's nest is glycoprotein - a biomolecule consisting of protein and carbohydrate. That is, a bird's nest consists of 50% protein and 30% carbohydrates. Glycoproteins are important for the functioning of cells of the immune system. In addition, 5% of bird's nest is iron, 3% is other minerals, 1.4% is fiber. 17 important amino acids were also found in bird's nest.
Amino acids
Contents of a bird's nest in 100g
Calories (kcal.) 281 Protein (g.) 37.5 Fats (g.) 0.3 Carbohydrates (g.) 32.1 Calcium (mg.) 485 Phosphorus (mg.) 18 Iron (mg.) 3 Water ( gr.) 24.5
Bird's nest, according to research from the University of Hong Kong, contains a hormone that stimulates cell division and has epidermal growth factor, which stimulates tissue growth, cellular regeneration and cellular immunity in the human body. Dermatologists in the USA Stanley Cohen and Rita Levi-Montalcini recognized that epidermal growth factor is one of the most important components of the epidermis, stimulating cell growth and being one of the most effective for skin care.
Thanks to its unique composition, bird's nest is easily and completely absorbed by the human body. According to scientists, edible bird's nest is an invaluable product used in the prevention and treatment of many diseases. Their experiments and practical experience have proven the positive effects of using a bird's nest in the regeneration of cells in the human body, stimulation immune system, treatment of bronchial, digestive and heart diseases, healing postoperative sutures etc. The high value of bird's nests in Eastern medical practice explains its popularity in Hong Kong, China, Japan, Singapore and the USA, despite the high cost of the product. http://www.life-in-travels.ru/2012/09/swiftlets-nests.html#ixzz318j7RYmz
http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A1%D1%8A%D0%B5%D0...%D0%BD%D0%B5%D0%B7%D0%B4%D0%B0
taken
