Cooking with tea
Most people consider tea a nothing more than a drink, albeit a delicious one. However, in China tea leaves have another common use – they can be used impart a unique flavor to eggs.
Ingredients:
10 eggs
25 grams (5/6 oz) red tea leaves
3 pieces of star anise
15 grams (1/2 oz) cassia bark
150 grams (11 tbsp) soy sauce
100 grams (0.22 lb) sugar
5 grams (5/6 tsp) salt
10 grams (1/3 oz) chopped scallions
15 grams (1/2 oz) crushed fresh ginger
Directions:
1. Fill a large pan with cold water and add the unshelled eggs. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove theeggs and let them cool completely in cold water. Put the eggs on a chopping board and gently crack them with a big spoon or the back of the kitchen knife and then peel them.
2. Wrap the tea, star anise and cassia bark in a piece of muslin and place this in the pan. Add the soy sauce, sugar, scallions, ginger and eggs and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and simmer gently for 30 minutes.
The eggs will become dark red in color, with a unique aromatic flavor.
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I remember being told how to use tea to make hardboiled ‘marbled eggs’. You just add some tea leaves to the boiling water and shortly before they’re finished cooking, you crack the shells with a spoon. Some of the tea seeps in through the cracks and the peeled eggs have a cool veined effect like marble.