My two layer hens Martina and Aretha have obliged me by providing delicious fresh eggs for this Easter weekend, and it’s time for me to share with you my version of the traditional Easter egg. I’m going to talk about probably the most famous dish in the entire repertoire of Chinese tea cookery. For Chinese people tea-spiced marbled eggs are a much loved everyday ‘comfort food’. I hope that you will try them and come to love them too.

My starting point is my mum’s recipe. She uses common spices like cinnamon, cloves, fennel, coriander and szechuan peppercorns in combination with traditional medicinal herbs and roots, such as angelica sinensis (Chinese angelica), ligusticum wallichii (Szechuan lovage) and rehmannia glutinosa (Chinese foxglove). She brews the whole lot in a tea called Shui Xian. This is an oolong, which lies toward the oxidised end of the oolong spectrum, with a robust, caramelised palate and undertones of my favourite fruit longan (‘dragon eye’). Oddly, I grew up under the misapprehension that this tea was the better known Tie Guan Yin (‘Iron Goddess of Mercy’) because it’s often mis-sold under that name in my native South East Asia.

Some tea-spiced egg recipes call for Dragon Well, a green tea that I think would make the eggs too bitter. Pu-Er, a post-oxidised red tea, is commonly suggested, though it seems to me unwise to use a vintage Pu-Er in this way. I usually mix up a blend of Pu-Er, Keemun Black and Lapsang Souchong. Actually, any relatively oxidised and full-bodied black or red teas would work. Ordinary supermarket tea bags of darjeeling, assam, ceylon or earl grey, or what’s sometimes called ‘builders tea’, are perfectly suitable.

Tea-spiced eggs bring back so many evocative memories of my childhood in Singapore. Night markets (‘pasak malam’ in Malay) where I used to go at weekends with my mum and brother. Street hawkers simmering the aromatic eggs in open pots. The clear plastic bags we used to buy the eggs in, with the little drops of poaching liquid. The sense of excitement – because this was a treat! – as I slowly peeled the hot, cracked shells to reveal the marbled patterns on the egg. How my mouth watered as I added the requisite sprinkling of ‘pepper salt’. And then, biting into the egg, tasting the delicate perfume of tea and the five spice. Gorgeous!

If my mum did make the eggs at home, I remember the frustration of having to wait a whole day for the eggs to ‘cure’ in the poaching liquid. The wait was well worth it though! Mum would make 15-20 eggs at a time, which could keep in the fridge for a week, though in our family, they’d be lucky to last a couple of days!

She’d make them sometimes to accompany soy braised pork belly and tofu cubes. Absolutely yummy. Or she’d halve the eggs and add them into Chinese noodle soups. But the eggs can also be served warm with a little mayonnaise or cream cheese on a cracker topped with a slice of vinegared ginger – a really original canapé!

Here is my own simplified recipe for tea-spiced marbled eggs:

• 15g black or red tea leaves or 7-8 tea bags
• 10g star anise
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 2g fennel seeds
• 2g cloves
• 1g szechuan peppercorns
• 1g coriander powder
• 20g caster sugar (or to taste)
• 2tbsp dark soy sauce (or to taste)
• 2g salt
• 1 chinese orange peel (optional)
• 6 hard-boiled standard eggs, or 12 quails eggs, preferably slightly mature

1. Hard boil the eggs. Gently tap the eggs on your work surface so that the shell is cracked but intact. The cracks create a beautiful marbled effect on the egg white and more importantly allows the tea-spice to permeate the eggs.
2. Add all ingredients (except tea) into a pot that is big enough to hold the eggs and a quarter pot full of water. Bring to a boil and ensure that the sugar has dissolved.
3. Add the tea leaves/tea bags. Simmer for 3 minutes.
4. Add the partially cracked eggs and if necessary add more water so that the poaching tea-spiced liquid is just covering the eggs.
5. Simmer for an hour or so. Preferably leave to cure for a few hours (but its hard to resist eating them!)
6. Reheat in the poaching liquid before eating.
7. Serve with a mix of white pepper powder (or finely ground green tea) and fine salt. This brings out the umami of the tea and spices infused in the eggs.

This is my last blog before my big trip to Hangzhou and to Huangshan (‘Yellow Mountain’) in eastern China. On the hunt for more fascinating teas and tea cuisine ideas. I’ll be gone a month or so, but I’ll be back to share my tea adventures with you soon.

Happy Easter!

Pei
pei@teanamu.com
~~ sip a good brew, steal a slice of tranquility, glimpse a lingering fragrance, gladden the heart and refresh the mind ~~

Before I start my tea culinary experimentation, I think it’s high time I share with you the identity of two very important ladies, without whose support and contribution my dishes, cakes and desserts would not taste anywhere near as nice.

Their names are Aretha and Martina. Aretha’s the fusspot, with a certain queenly arrogance, and a fussy and demanding way with food. Martina’s the gentle one. She’s easy to please, and quite shy with me, whereas Aretha’s not at all afraid to come near whenever I approach.

Aretha and Martina are my Miss Pepperpot hens, and together they supply me with the freshest, most wonderful eggs, practically every day.

Aretha laid her first egg a month after Martina in late November 2008, and has always been a little behind in her growth. Martina’s eggs are consistently large while Aretha’s are variable, though still beautiful. Variability in size, of course, makes using the eggs in recipes a little dangerous sometimes, but it’s well worth the risk for the taste, which is greatly superior to mass-produced supermarket eggs.

Aretha and Martina aren’t fond of the layer pellets and mash which are supposed to be their staple food. So instead, every morning before 7, I give them a big bowl of fresh, finely chopped vegetables – their favourites are beansprouts, brussels, broccoli and spinach – combined with leftover cooked soya beans, rice, pasta or wholemeal toast with marmite. In the late morning, they have mixed corn and barley, which they love (and it makes the yolks of their eggs even more yellow!) In the afternoon they get quartered grapes and dried mealworms as a treat. Every few days they also get a mixture of grit with oyster shells, a few crushed eggshells (for the calcium), mineral supplements for their water and for their food, a dash of garlic powder and some special bran called ‘bokashi’. I’m afraid to say they’re really quite pampered!

At least now I’ve re-learned how to get up at the crack of dawn, which I haven’t done since army days!

I needed egg whites this week to make special macaroons to use for decorating two different cakes which I will be making and blogging about.

I recall Chef Pascal at Cordon Bleu telling me that, to make really good macaroons, he prefers slightly ‘matured’ egg whites. In the good old days, he said, when salmonella was virtually unheard of, pâtisserie chefs would keep a bucket of egg whites out in the open, covered with a lid, quietly maturing. It makes the egg whites easier to whisk and the final product much tastier.

Personally, I don’t keep mine outside but in little containers in my freezer, each one of which holds enough egg white for a batch of macaroons.

I’ve written in an earlier blog about the Slow Movement and the virtues of patience and of taking things at just the right pace. The process of making macaroons is definitely something which can’t be rushed. The egg whites should be a little mature. Then after piping you need to wait for the macaroons’ surface or ‘skin’ to dry before you put them in the oven. Being delicate, you have to wait by the oven for 12-14 minutes for them to be baked just right – with a perfect crust and a chewy centre.

I was visiting my mom last Chinese New Year. She was simmering her special tea-spiced eggs (subject of another blog!) and the smell of Chinese five spice permeated the flat. I was enjoying some chocolate-covered sunflower seeds and milky tea while chit-chatting with her, and the sweet taste of the chocolate mingled with the aroma of the Chinese five spice. That’s when the idea came to me to flavour macaroons with Chinese five spice and chocolate, I noted it down in my little scrapbook, and the memory of this came back to me when I was brainstorming ideas for a cake for Marcus and Nicky’s joint “Big Five-0” birthday party. I wanted to make a yummy chocolate-based cake and needed something extra special to decorate it with.

The macaroons will probably be filled with a white chocolate and matcha ganache or else a dark chocolate and Chinese five-spice ganache. I think I will use the latter filling for decorating the chocolate cake, while the macaroons with white chocolate and matcha ganache can be used on a mousse cake which I also hope to make this week. I will write about both cakes in future postings.

Warmly,

Pei
pei@teanamu.com
~~ sip a good brew, steal a slice of tranquility, glimpse a lingering fragrance, gladden the heart and refresh the mind ~~