Although I cook semi-regularly, I can't remember the last time I've boiled an egg, much less attempt to make tea eggs. In fact, I actually did not know that to boil eggs, one has to put them in the water while the water is still cold.
We threw--er, gently placed--the eggs in cold water and started to boil them. I feel like boiling eggs should be a very simple straigthforward process, but I managed to crack some eggs before the eggs were fully boiled. (Since the recipe called for cracking the eggs anyway, I hailed this as a time-saving measure, rather than regard it as a sign of my incompetence and inability to perform the simple task of boiling eggs.)
At this point, we decided to just throw in the tea bags and some random and not-so-random collections of spices. Pretty soon, Patita's whole kitchen filled with the delicous aroma of mystery spices--a wonderful melange of cardamon, Sechuan peppers, star anise, black tea, bay leaves, peppercorns and other fabulous flavors. We let the concoction brew for several hours, while we sat around like old Chinese ladies and made jiaozi and talked about travels.
Three days later, I cracked open one to eat for dinner. They turned out absolutely beautifully, replete with the cracked design.
But after soaking in our mystery broth for three days, they still tasted kindof bland. Thus, I stood in my kitchen, hovering over our masterpiece, torn between choosing aesthetics over taste. However, after taking my requisite photo as evidence of aforementioned lovely cracked design motif,
I decided that taste won out in the end and placed them back in the broth after cracking them open. Thus tomorrow, I shall look forward to eating some no-longer-aesthetic-but-(hopefully)-boldly-flavored tea eggs.
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