The Brooklyn Tea Egg Party

I blame the Bian Dang food truck parked outside my office every Tuesday for my new obsession over tea eggs or as the Chinese call it Cha Dan. My mom recently sent me a care package with some tea egg seasoning so I decided to make myself a home cooked Taiwanese dinner of tea eggs, minced pork sauce and baby bok choi.

The first step is to boil eggs, and surprisingly this is the first time I've ever hard boiled eggs so I had to look up how to do it online. After the eggs are hard boiled you crack the shell with a spoon to allow the tea seasonings to soak in.

 Simmer the cracked-shell eggs in the tea seasoning with soy sauce, sugar and salt for about 1-2 hours

A family trick when cooking Asian vegetables is to drizzle sesame oil in the boiling water when you blanch the vegetables to give it some shine and flavor

I didn't have five spice for the ground pork so I had improvise with star anise, bay leaf and cinnamon stick. I'm sure that doesn't serve as a substitute but it will do. I also didn't have black shiitake mushrooms, so I think the minced pork sauce wasn't winning as hard as it could.

 My friend Jason brought over a Plum Crumb pie from The Blue Stove nearby and it was amazing. I can't think of a better way to end my Asian Tea Egg inspired dinner then with a Non-Asian baked pie.