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I discovered a packet of Lapsang Souchang I bought, oh, several years ago in order to make marbled tea eggs, and finally got around to making them this evening.
Look at them! So pretty!
And very delicious! Easy to make in large batches! Great for a snack at any time of day!
I've been having them for breakfast - an egg and a cup of coffee. I ran out of my previous batch of tea eggs yesterday, so I had banana bread and coffee instead - and felt seriously bloated up until lunch.
Thankfully I had the good sense to only eat half my Thai fried rice lunch, asking to put the rest in a take-away container for dinner. So no icky, protuding-belly feeling after lunch.
For both sets of tea eggs, I used Lapsang Souchang tea by Twinings, a cinnamon stick, two star anise, a few peppercorns, and about one cup of soy sauce mixed in with the remnants of cooking the eggs.
Must remember to hijack the parental spice cupboard next time I'm over there. I know they have both Chinese five-spice and Szechuan peppercorns - more than they're going to use in any cooking, anyway!
*noms her tea eggs*
Look at them! So pretty!
And very delicious! Easy to make in large batches! Great for a snack at any time of day!
I've been having them for breakfast - an egg and a cup of coffee. I ran out of my previous batch of tea eggs yesterday, so I had banana bread and coffee instead - and felt seriously bloated up until lunch.
Thankfully I had the good sense to only eat half my Thai fried rice lunch, asking to put the rest in a take-away container for dinner. So no icky, protuding-belly feeling after lunch.
For both sets of tea eggs, I used Lapsang Souchang tea by Twinings, a cinnamon stick, two star anise, a few peppercorns, and about one cup of soy sauce mixed in with the remnants of cooking the eggs.
Must remember to hijack the parental spice cupboard next time I'm over there. I know they have both Chinese five-spice and Szechuan peppercorns - more than they're going to use in any cooking, anyway!
*noms her tea eggs*
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Also, would you recommend any overview texts about a history of China? Am looking at writing an Earth AU about the journey of a Chinese lady's maid with her royal mistress from the middle kingdom to a barbarian empire on the Mediterranean, circa 700-800AD. Will need specific research, but the general stuff will start me off thinking about where I want to be specific - and probably also correct any mental inaccuracies I have about the period at the time.
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I'm looking at extending the Han Dynasty by a couple of hundred years - an AU Earth. So we have the Chinese empire in the East, and the Egypto-Persian empire in the west, and a princess of China is sent (well, really exiled) into a marriage with a Ptolemaic prince.
It came to me after the shaming realisation that I know very little of Central Asian history, apart from the Ancient legends and the modern times. School history here is taught in stages: Prehistoric, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, then the Middle Ages, a little of the Renaissance and Victorian eras, and then the modern era.
I want to explore a world where Rome never managed to hold an empire, and so the world (especially the west) develops quite differently.
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The ones I made are nice, but not as tasty as the first batch - I think the first batch steeped longer than this one, though. (Apparently you don't have to boil them for all that time, you can just leave them in the sauce.)