First Try at Tea Eggs!

Pre-COVID I frequented a Chinese tea house in DC pretty often called Ching Ching Cha. I’ve written about it before, you can check it out here!

One of the visits I tried their tea eggs and wow, they were good! They have this potent aroma and flavor that really elevated the eggs. Ever since then I wanted to try it but was afraid I would ruin a bunch of eggs.

Fast forward to last week and I found a recipe that was relatively simple and while I didn’t get ALL the ingredients, I got most of them and made a few tweaks.

Here is the original recipe!

One big change is that I made only 4 eggs instead of the 12 in the recipe. The recipe mentions 12 eggs but because you are essentially boiling the eggs then placing them in the broth, I think the number of eggs can vary without causing any problems.

For my broth, here are the changes I made to the recipe based on availability of what I had.

• 4 eggs soft boiled

• 3 star anise

• 1 cinnamon stick

• 4 slices ginger

• 2 teaspoons sichuan peppercorns

• 2 tbsp Ritual from Aera Tea

• 3 Bay Leaves

• 4 tbsp soy sauce

• 2 tsp salt

• A dash of mirin

• A dash of rice vinegar

The method for this is very simple:

• Bring the eggs to room temperature and boil them to your preference of hardness. Put them aside.

• In a medium sized pot, take all your ingredients (minus the eggs) and bring that to a boil. Let it boil for a little bit. The original recipe called for 10 minutes but I left it a little longer until it was very fragrant. Turn it off and let it cool completely.

• Crack the eggs all over to allow the broth to seep in. Place the eggs into the completely cooled broth.

• Make sure the eggs are totally covered by the broth.

• Let them sit in the broth in the fridge for 24 hours at least. You can leave them for longer! I took 2 out after 24 hours and left the other 2 for another day.

While my eggs didn’t come out as marbled as I would have liked, these were delicious!!!!! They are so fragrant and the flavors of the tea and spices seeped into the eggs well! I think these are a really simple and fun treat! If you have a lot of tea, this is a great experiment. I definitely want to try using other teas as well!

Tearamisu!

Ok, so I guess I'm late the game but holy cow how have I never made tiramisu before??? Or should I say TEAramisu !

I've always loved the taste of tiramisu and thought that I could easily switch out the coffee for tea but never knew how easy it was to make!

From looking at recipes online, it seems like everyone has a slightly different way of making the cream but the way I made it is super simple and takes pretty much no time!

I bought a brand of Lady Fingers on amazon that worked well for me. I will say that one of the most important parts of the recipe for me was to make sure the tea you use for dunking is cool otherwise the lady fingers will crumble so fast. 

A note about the tea you choose: choose something you like. This may be obvious but the flavor is pretty obvious in the dessert so don't pick something you dont like. I would also suggest not picking a super blended tea because there may be too many conflicting  flavors. I used the Nepal Kanchanjangha Noir black tea from Nepal Tea that came in my sips by box. 

If you were wondering why I chose to make these tearamisu sweets in glasses it's because I made them for my sister and her husband for their wedding anniversary! They recently had a sweet babe who takes up a lot of their time and I wanted to make sure they had something special to enjoy on their special day!

One thing I learned in the layering process is that I used wayyy too much cream on the bottom so I wasn't left with much for the top and as you can see below some of the lady finger mixed with the cream. Luckily you get to cover it up !

I broke the lady fingers in half to fit the glass but if you use something larger or place it in a regular serving dish you wont have to do this. 

For the top I  used a combination of cocoa powder and cinnamon! I think you can definitely experiment in this area and top it with other things! I already have plans to make a matcha one! 

Don't let the glasses fool you, there is plenty of marscapone cream and ladyfingers to go around in that glass!

This is seriously such a simple, quick and delicious dessert to make for any occassion!

Green Tea Shrimp

Green Tea For Dinner. 

I've been sitting on this Gyokuro imperial sample from Zhi Tea for a while, not knowing if I wanted to just taste it as is or be a little more adventurous. One Thing that was mentioned by several people on my 2017 Tea Thoughts survey was that it would be fun if I incorporated tea into food! I created a marinade/sauce for green tea shrimp using the Gyokuro!

After taking in the aroma of the Gyokuro I knew that it would be great in a savory dish. After researching a bit I also found out that green tea is often used in seafood dishes! 

Gyokuro is a special tea. The name of the tea means jade dew and it is a very high grade tea. I learned that like Matcha, Gyokuro is grown in the shade which increases it's nutritional benefits. This similarity to Matcha gave me an idea about the recipe. 

Matcha differs from other teas because the leaves are ground up and you are actually ingesting all parts of the tea as opposed to brewing and throwing out the leaves. That is why I decided to not only include the brewed tea in the recipe but the leaves as well! Double the power of the tea!

I've created a simple graphic to help you create the sauce to cook the shrimp in! 

This is a very simple sauce and I will also go through the process of cooking it with other ingredients but feel free to cook with it however you'd like! For this recipe I bought large raw shrimp. 

I decided to use yellow and orange peppers as well as asparagus. I chopped up all of these ingredients as well as some garlic. 

Heat about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet on medium heat, once hot, throw in the garlic and let it simmer. Once the garlic is browned or has become aromatic, add in the raw shrimp. Stir the shrimp until it becomes slightly colored. 

Add in all of your vegetables and stir with the shrimp. Pour the sauce over the shrimp and vegetables. Make sure that it is all mixed in and covered well.

Cover your skillet with a lid and turn it to low. Let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes checking on the shrimp to make sure it's not overdone. To check to see if the shrimp is done, cut it open and make sure it's opaque. 

This pairs really well with garlic jasmine rice. I have been making this recipe a lot and it was all inspired by a blue apron diner we tried!

This combination was so good because there is a lot of sauce in the shrimp and veggie skillet to pour over your rice. I suggest serving rice and adding a bit of the sauce and sesame seeds. Top it all off with shrimp and veggies! The green tea tastes great with shrimp! Do you incorporate tea in your recipes?