Tuesday, 21 January 2014

Tea Eggs 茶蛋

Another breakfast follow up

                                                   During my post about Chinese breakfast, I completely neglected to mention that typical Chinese food the tea egg. Needless to say, alongside the mantous, baozis and paper cups of fresh dou jiang sits a steaming, sometimes bubbling, always brown and mysterious rice cooker full of eggs. They sit wrapped in their shells in a dark brown liquid, dyed as such by a mixture of herbs and spices and left all day to simmer or just to be kept at a warm temperature. They do not look especially appetizing, but they are a quite flavourful and a good way to either supplement your mantou or give you a little snack during the day. Under their shells the flesh is dyed a soft brown colour, akin to a milky cup of instant coffee. When bitten into the flavour is fairly salty, with a hint of that pervasive Chinese spice flavour, a hint of aniseed and various other tastes too numerous to pick out. They are eaten as breakfast items or as snacks, which are known as 小吃, which literally translates as “little eats”, another pleasing linguistic titbit from this endlessly entertaining language.  

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