Tea Eggs

I'd always regarded tea eggs and soy eggs as 'those gross brown eggs'.  I'd seen them in magazines, on WTF foods posts and other features online.  They were mentioned alongside things like thousand year eggs, fermented fish, and unappetizing, pungent dishes that I wouldn't want near my face.  I'm usually quite open minded and will try anything twice, especially food.  However, many pickled, fermented, and 'keep it till it spoils and then unspoils' kinds of foods don't taste all that good to me.  Since the tea eggs appeared with foods most foul, I decided that they too must be yucky.

That is until I ate one.  A friend of mine from college met up with me in chinatown.  I was low on cash but I still wanted to hang out and catch up on life things.  Chinatown in Chicago offers a easy stress free way to do this.  No $7 coffees, or $25 meals.  Eight bucks can get you more food than you can feasibly eat.  We stopped in our favorite restaurant, Hing Kee, which, despite its growing popularity, hasn't suffered any diminishing quality in its food.  I ordered a ramen bowl.  It was only about $6.99 and came with a heap of veggies, meat and noodles.  Perfectly balanced meal.

What I wasn't expecting was the little addition on top of it.  A tea egg.  It was dull brown, and the stain had seeped into all parts of the egg white and yolk, turning them a strange ivory color.  I stared at it, shoved it aside and ate the rest of my food.  At the end of our meal and chat, my friend asked if I would eat the tea egg.  Let's face it, we both grew up with parents who believe in the clean plate club.  I carefully nibbled at it.  If I tasted it, I could at least abandon it with the excuse that it tasted weird.

It did taste weird... but not gross.  It was salty, had a mellow savory flavor and sharp sweet spices.  It was GOOD.  A week later I was craving the darn things, so I looked up some recipes online and tweaked them for my tastebuds.

A tea egg is much like a pickled egg.  Except the pickling process requires different ingredients.

1 1/2 cups of STRONG black tea
1 1/4 cups of dark soy sauce
1/4 tablespoons of chinese 5 spice
1 pinch of smoked paprika (I like my eggs smoky)
4 hard boiled eggs

After that, all you do is mix the liquid ingredients and the spices...and plunk the eggs into the mixture and set them aside in a covered bowl in the back of the fridge for a couple days.  The salt and fermentation from the soy sauce pickles the eggs, keeps them from spoiling and the rest of the flavors sink into them.

Take a look at my tea eggs.

Outsides, clean and unbroken...

The insides sport some of that brownish tint... I botched slicing them though.

They taste best when you eat them with an Asian style noodle dish.  By themselves, I find them to be a little too salty.

Hors d'oeuvre: Stuffed Cucumbers

It's been a while since my friends and I had a party.  Naturally, with people enduring various life changes just weeks before Valentine's Day (Which was a Friday this year), we took advantage of it to celebrate, commemorate and memorialize.  No celemoratorialization cermony would complete without comfort foods and a full spread.

Here you see all the things girls need to survive: Sparkles, Carbs, Chocolate, Pizza, Cake, Fruit, and Veggies, and Flowers

Since it had been a while, we decided to expand on what we usually do.  DECORATIONS!  FANCY hors d'oevres!  FLOWERS!

We did it potluck style, as is our usual.  I was in charge of the vegetable based appetizer.  Oddly enough, I was at a loss.  I wanted to make kale and tomatoes- but that would have been messy to transport and a veggie platter was LAME.  I had to come up with something finger friendly, but still kind of awesome.  As we were browsing for decorations in party city, I was inspired to pull this one out of thin air.

Stuffed Cucumbers.

Ingredients: 
Cucumbers (I'm not posting a picture of a cucumber.  You guys should know what that is by now.)
Boursin (Or Goat Cheese)
Cream Cheese
Greek Herbs (Or Spinach dip mix)
Siracha- or any hot sauce
Tomato Sauce.

I bought boursin because I didn't feel like prepping my own spinach and artichokes.

We didn't have siracha, so I used hot sauce.  It works.

Tools:
Knife
Melon Baller
Potato Peeler
Whisk

Just Three tools!

Instructions:
1. Prep your cucumbers!  I always wash them with soap and warm water because, that oily wax stuff that they put on them in the grocery store is disgusting.  Once clean, slice off their ends and use the potato peeler to slice the skin off in stripes.  I left some of the skin on for decorative effect.

2. Prep your cucumbers some more!  Next, you slice them into 1.5 inch long cylinders.  It's ok if it's not exact, but if you're putting them all on the same platter, it looks better if they are about the same size.  Next, use the melon baller to scoop out the cucumber middles.  DO NOT scoop it all the way down to the bottom of the cucumber.  You want them to look like little cups.  Arrange them in the platter and put them in the fridge while you prep the rest of the dish.  You don't want soggy cucumbers.

SEE, cups! 

Arrange them attractively in a platter.

3. Blend your cheeses and herbs with the whisk until smooth.  It is unfortunate that I do not measure as I mix, but this one's easy.  For whatever amount of goat cheese and herbs or Boursin you use, add half that amount of cream cheese.  The cream cheese is mostly there to make the mixture SMOOTH and creamy.  I added additional herbs to pump up the flavor. Once the cheese mixture is smooth, put it into a ziplock bag.

4. Blend your hot sauce or siracha with a couple teaspoons of tomato sauce.  That's a nobrainer.  I had to add tomato sauce to avoid roasting my Polish friend's tonsils out. 

5. FILL THE CUPS!  Take your cucumbers from the fridge.  Drip a small dollop of the hot sauce mixture into each cup, just a little bit, not a lot.  Then, take that ziplock bag of cheese, snip off a corner and use it to pipe the cheese into the cups.  It's best to swirl it into the cups, working from the outer edges towards the middle.  It works up quickly.  Once finished, you may choose to garnish the tops of your cucumbers with a bit of red pepper or pickled vegetable.

AND YOU ARE DONE. That took what?  20-30 minutes tops? 

Enjoy with a light, fruity wine.