煙薰溏心蛋 Tea-smoked Eggs

You will all have eaten these beautiful, delicate eggs somewhere in the world. In Japan, they're called onsen tamago, literally eggs dipped in an onsen and cooked to perfection, and served with ramen. In HK or China they're called 溏心蛋, eggs with a runny centre, and are served usually on its own. In Taiwan you can find them in sandwiches at the local convenience store, and I recently ate a lovely Thai style son-in-law egg with the centre still running at Gingerboy in Melbourne. The rest of the meal was blah, but the egg left an indelible impression in my mind.

Here's how I made mine for Wok with Nana's 6th episode, served on top of a Nicoise Salad.

Ingredients

6 Duck Eggs

100ml Water

375ml Chinese Marinade

For Smoking

2 tbsp Sugar

4 tbsp Flour

Tealeaves of your choice. We used Lapsang Suchong for added smokiness.

Method

1. Mix Chinese marinade together with 100ml water, set aside.

2. Fill pot with cold water and insert eggs. Cook on high heat until water is boiled. Turn down to medium heat and continue to cook for another 3.5 minutes, make sure to continuously stir so that the eggs receive heat evenly. Timing is key to attain the runny texture of the yolk so be careful not to overcook.

3. Take out the eggs and cool under running water. Peel off shell.

4. Marinate in marinade mixture for 15 minutes.

5. Layer wok with a piece of alumimium foil. Sprinkle with flour, sugar and tealeaves.

6. Steam eggs on steaming rack in the wok until you see smoke coming out from the sides of the wok. This should take about 5-8 minutes.

7. Slice eggs in half to serve.

Comments

[cakebrain]

Nana,
I was just watching your youtube videos and think they are awesome! I was looking for a decent egg waffle recipe and got sidetracked by your recipe for these eggs. It's refreshing to be able to watch professional quality videos about Asian food spoken in good English from an insider's perspective. I don't read or write Chinese and I wish you were living in Vancouver and my buddy, so you could translate all my Chinese cookbooks! I think some things get lost in translation! Especially with baking cakes and weird ingredients! Great blog and videos!

[Nana]

Hey Cakebrain, thanks so much for your comment. Did you try making these tea-smoked eggs then? They're wonderfully beautiful and in fact not so hard to make. I hope that one day I'll be able to publish my own cookbook too, so then you won't have to worry about the weird ingredients and their awful translation :)

All the best!

[Elliptical reviews]

No offense, but if there's a facebook like button, it'll be much easier for me to share.