Food

Favorite foods and recipes

Does anyone have a recipe for tea eggs?

TSA YIEH DON (Tea Eggs)

6 eggs
1/2 stick cinnamon
2-3 tsp black tea (leaves)
3 cloves
1-4 T soy sauce
preserved ginger (optional)
2-3 star anise
1 T salt

Place eggs in boiling water and boil 12 minutes. Immerse the eggs immediately in cold running water and allow to stand until eggs cool. When cool, crack shells all over but do not peel.

Bring enough water to cover eggs. Add crackled eggs and all ingredients, except preserved ginger. Cover and cook over low heat for 1.5 to 2 hours. Refrigerate 3 to 4 hours or overnight. Remove from liquid, shell carefully, and serve whole or cut in wedges. Garnish with preserved ginger, if desired.

Source:
Cooper, Sandi and Steve. 1982. The Good Food of Szechuan (class). Ann Arbor, MI: Complete Cuisine, Ltd.

>mdochoda-thank you. My German neighbor has become interested in Tea eggs, but my mom doesn't measure, but guestimates everything like all good Chinese cooks. This will be very helpful to my neighbor who likes to measure. It took mom ages to find star anise. We live a good distance from Chinatowns.

Yeah, I don't measure either, though I'm not a good cook, so I can't be of much help. I use a much simplified recipe, no cinnamon, cloves or ginger, only star anise, tea bags and soy sauce (tea bags are cheap and easier to clean up).

I learned from my mother to crack the eggs by knocking them with the back of a spoon.

You'll want to warn your neighbor that this leaves a dark ring on metal pots that takes a big scrubbing to get off.

I haven't made these in a while ... time to make some!

>4 mvrdrk: good idea about the teabags. The ancient Chinese didn't have them, and they would have used teabags if they were around. Ah, American ingenuity. Yah, there's a real knack to the whapping of the egg with a spoon. You need to be quite energetic, or your eggs will not crack enough to let all the spices seep in.

I'm glad belleyang asked about tea eggs--I haven't made them in ages. Bet they'd be a good hors d'ouevre for a Chinese South Beach feast (Hot Pot). A friend makes a Hong-Kong version of the Mongolian hot pot recipe--he doesn't measure, either, but he explains--and I add Thai elements, which he graciously approves. Maybe next fall... Yum!

(I wonder if the cinnamon, cloves & ginger in the tea egg recipe are mostly to make the kitchen smell good. {;>)

REPLY FROM MY GERMAN NEIGHBOR AFTER SENDING THE RECIPES AND WHAT mvrdrk WROTE ABOUT THE MESSY POT

Belle,

Thanks for this version. The cinnamon sounds interesting. I may go for it but only after I buy a cheap pot a Safeway that can get ruined without me giving a hoot.

Then I’ll make the smoked eggs and the German Sol Eggs too. Probably on the weekend. The German eggs stay brined for several days up to a week. You can try those as well. Does your mother know how to make ‘red eggs’? Just curious.

I had to laugh reading your other friend’s email saying she is not a cook. Tell her to use an aluminum pot next time and cook some tomatoes in it afterwards. It will come clean without scrubbing. Other acidic foods will work too, but tomatoes do a great job. She sounds really cute, is she?

SO WHAT'S A RED EGG? I'VE NO IDEA. IT'S NOT WITH A NEARLY-HATCHED CHICK INSIDE, IS IT? I'LL PASS IF THAT'S THE CASE.

Thanks for the comments from your neighbor, they made me laugh. I know acidic foods will take stuff off, but tea flavored tomatos just doesn't sound right!

Red egg = hard boiled egg dyed red

It's food coloring. The brighter red, the better.

You could always tell her how to make lu dan. Or buy century eggs (pi dan). Pi dan were my favorite egg when I was little. Shanghainese style, cut into wedges and sprinkled with soy sauce, sesame oil, and a bit of sugar. Now days, I leave off the sugar and mash it with tofu.

Does anyone drink kombucha? It's a health drink I've been taking for nearly 30 years. It was so strange to see that it had come a New Age craze with people cloning the "Manchurian mushroom" (misnomer) starter cakes and giving them to friends with all the reverence of a Zen tea ceremony. The drink is tasty, and great for the GI tract. I was ill for a time and had to take a lot of antibiotics, but the kombucha restored me nicely.

My mom said my grandmother made kombucha when mom was a little girl in Taiwan.

I make mine at home, but you can buy it in the stores. People are selling the cakes on ebay. LOL.

My German neighbor, after being introduced to kombucha, is making big vats of her own now, lol. She swears by it and will teach her son and mother in Germany to make it, too.

On another topic. My family used to make our own jiaozi, dumplings, for decades, but we've found that the frozen Korean jiaozi is much better than home made. Very clean, all flavors including, seafood, or mushrooms. Yum.

Really?! What brand of Korean jiaozi do you like? I find the Korean brands are too strongly garlic and the Japanese brands are too sweet.

I've never seen the Japanese brand. The Korean packaging says "Wang." It's pretty mild, especially the veggie one with mushrooms. When we first bought these, I thought I prefered homemade, but after making homemade, I realized the Korean jiaozi are far less doughy.

Chinese jiaozi can be doughy or can not be doughy. Personally, I've always thought of the doughy ones as being "American, fake Chinese" food. My mother always used the really thin skins bought at the Japanese grocery.

Friends of our were from 山东/shandong (Northerners!) and they always made their own skins, and those were more doughy.

Our Manchurian Jiaozi is thick-skinned, too. I think the best-tasting ones are the ones you've had to sweat in the kneading and rolling out the dough. Then you're so exhausted and hungry, everything tastes extra good.

I bought myself a Shanghainese cookbook and made, um, fangkuairou. With the wrong kind of pork. I have been faking it for the last 20 years and was surprised at just how much sugar goes into these dishes! And fat! Yum!

I want to make zhongzi next, but it's really the wrong time of year for it. I've found lots of recipies for Taiwanese and HK versions of zhongzi, but no Shanghainese ones. I may have to switch to searching in Chinese.

Oh yes, fangkuairou:

1 lb pork (ideally fatback with the 'skin' on, I used shoulder roast, American tastes can't take that much fat)
1/2 cup each Chinese cooking wine, sugar, soy sauce
6 slices ginger
some scallions
6 cups water or enough to cover the meat

Skip frying the pork on it's fatty side. The frying adds color and flavor, but it makes a mess. If you do fry it, fry till the skin is golden and smells good. If the skin burns, just scrape the burnt parts off.

Cook all in a covered pot for 2 hours, put the pork skin side up. Remove the lid and cook till the sauce is reduced to approx. 1 cup.