khiemtran | Tea-cooked Eggs

For Easter, we made Chinese Tea-cooked Eggs. I remember seeing pictures of them in a Chinese cookbook years and years ago when I was a child and thinking they must taste wonderful. Charmaine Solomon's Complete Asian Cookbook has a recipe with a similarly attractive photo, so Liem and I set out to make some on Easter Sunday. It turned out to be quite a good activity for small children, apart from involving fragile eggs and standing over a stove with boiling water and all.

Step 1: Hard boil the eggs. Start off by placing them gently in cold water. I said GENTLY! Ok, never mind, that one will still work. Stir eggs gently while simmering. I said gently...

Step 2: Crack eggs by rolling on a hard surface. Be really really sure they've been properly cooked before you attempt this. Try to get a maze pattern so the finished product with have a marbled effect. You can also get spiderweb like patterns from pressing the egg down hard on the flat surface. Don't crack the shell so much that it will fall off by itself.

Step 3: Simmer gently in tea and Chinese five spice for 30 minutes, then let stand for at least 30 minutes, or overnight if possible (we used 30 minutes).

Step 3a: We used four bags of Irish breakfast tea and about a teaspoon of five spice powder (note empty spice bottle in the background).

Step 4: Cool the eggs. Uh oh, things are not looking good for some of them. See note in Step 2 about not cracking the shell too much.

Step 5: Peel the eggs. Things are looking up here.

Step 6: Finished! Note some at the back which are half all brown because the shell came loose while soaking. Present eggs to family and attendant Grandparents. Liem happily eats a quarter slice of egg and decides he's had enough.