A Unusual Snack (Tea Eggs)

You know those marble eggs you see at craft fairs and never buy, because you know that one day the kids will be fighting and they will grab it off the knick-knack shelf and toss it through a window?  You can make the culinary version of marbled eggs by following a simple, although extended method of preparation.  Tea eggs are good things to have hanging around the fridge to snack on.  They can also be included whole into many Chinese style stews.  tea eggs are beautiful to look at and have a rich, vibrant and complex flavor.

This recipe is adapted from Barbara Tropp’s The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking, Hearst, 1982.  It is an essential resource, with easily understood recipes.  A revised paperback version is available on Amazon for $3.57.  Tropp argues that this recipe is best made with older eggs, ones that have been in the fridge for a week.  They will peel easier and since this recipe is all about the smooth, marbled appearance of peeled eggs, go with the older ones.  Use fresh, aromatic tea and make them ahead, allowing the eggs to marinate in the broth for an extended period of about 18 hours.

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Tea Eggs

8 large eggs

2 tbs. soy sauce

1/4 tsp. salt

2 whole star anise, broken

2 tbs. fresh, whole black tea leaves

1 cinnamon stick

2 2-inch strips of orange peel, remove white pith

Hard cook the eggs by putting the eggs in a large soup pot and covering them with cold water.  Add 1/2 tbs. salt and bring them to a boil.  Turn down the heat and simmer for 20 minutes uncovered.  Drain then cool under cold running water.  When the eggs have cooled, using the back of a large serving spoon, tap the eggs while turning, creating a spider web network of cracks in the shell. 

Place the eggs in a slightly smaller pot, one that gives them a little room, but where they fit snugly.  Cover the eggs with about 3 cups cold water.  There should be 1 1/2 inches of water over their top.  Add the seasonings and quickly bring the water to a boil.  Reduce the heat to a low simmer, stir to make sure that the seasonings are submerged and cover the pot, simmer for 3 hours.  Occasionally top off the liquid if has boiled away and swirl it to make sure that the seasonings stay in solution.

After boiling, turn off the heat and allow the eggs to steep for at least 8 hours at room temperature or up to 18 hours.  Discard the liquid.  Refrigerate the eggs tightly covered.  They will keep for at least 4 days in the refrigerator.

The eggs should be peeled before serving, either cold or at room temperature.     

Where We’ve Come From (Chicken Cynthia)

A full Fresh Fun Foods class schedule is posted.  I need your help spreading the word.  Feel free to spam all you friends with the link.

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Writing these blogs can be a trap.  I’ve been trying to document the good and the bad in my time in kitchens.  Consequently, there has to be time for reflection.  I’ve had to sort through a bunch of old bosses, recipes and bad trips, hoping to arrive at a coherent way to present my own culinary history in a way that is engaging, while also avoiding multiple statutes of limitation and never letting anyone know where all the bodies are buried.  It has not been easy.  I hope it has been fun for you.

I lived in Rochester, NY for a few years back in the early 80’s while a bunch of my friends were going to RIT.  At the time I was a competent American style cook.  I could use a knife, work a full board of checks, that kind of thing, but I really didn’t know much about real food.  I could make chili and thought that I was the man.  I got a gig working at a place called Casablanca, an odd hybrid rock and roll club/lunch spot/Greek restaurant.  It was run by three brothers, Bill, George and Chris Petsos.  Their father, Stavros cut meat and generally made himself useful.  Louis (use the French pronunciation) Bel Aire, a mean drunk, washed dishes in his Sméagol-like hole of a dish room.  His “precious” was the dregs of customer’s drinks which he would collect and swill, making him a meaner drunk.  As I hung around Casablanca, I learned their story and grew to respect them. 

Apparently their whole village in Macedonia had immigrated to Akron, OH on the promise of jobs sometime before WWII, a classic example of pull migration.  Like in The Grapes of Wrath the agent promised work never materialized, so the group packed up and moved to Rochester, where over the years, in spite of the difficulty of getting any decent fish, they pretty much took over the restaurant biz, running a few high end places on Park Avenue and dozens of bars and diners all over town.  The boys opened Casablanca in the late 70’s as a fancy place serving Mom’s recipes and stuff like flaming cheese.  Chris ran the kitchen, George the front of the house and Bill was the head guy.  They had a stipulation in their lease that they would be the only food service place in the big strip where they located, however landlords being the slime balls that they are, a TGI Fridays opened 20 yards away on a different parcel, immediately bludgeoning them with cheaper food, a shiny exterior and wall to wall advertising. 

They didn’t stand a chance.  Business dropped to zero.  Rather than pack their tents again, the Petsos brothers pivoted, opening a rock club that had surprisingly good food, considering that I was one of the folks making it.  They booked mid level acts like Johnny Winter, the Psychedelic Furs, John Hammond Jr. and the Legendary Blues Band on their tour after Muddy’s death.  Bands considered Rochester a payday between Chicago and NYC.  This is where I first heard Albert Collins, the Texas great, the “Master of the Telecaster” or “The Iceman” (because he cuts so deep into your soul), a beautiful, humble, sweet musician who toured with his wife.  She used to kiss me every time I visited backstage until Albert’s passing in 1993.  Most would have shuttered the place.  Within 6 months they were in the black.

The Chef, Christos, was demanding, however he treated me with great respect at a time when I was not as reputable as I am now.  I was not a very good cook at the time.  He went out of his way to teach me, helping me appreciate well-prepared food and by his manner demonstrating what it meant to be a cook.  I consider my time with Chris to be the beginning of my professional cooking trajectory and I’ll never forget his kindness when my closest friend died in a car wreck and I became completely unreliable for some time.  He continued to pay me, even when I didn’t show up for work.

I’d like to present one of Chris’s sauté dishes.  Even after all this time, it holds up well.  One time I heard an interview with Son House, the primal Delta bluesman who also spent some years in Rochester.  He was asked to play the song that reached furthest back in his memory and he banged out “Stack Lee,” about a paddle wheel riverboat from the 1840’s.  This is a dish that is imprinted in my DNA.  Like “Stack’ it is probably the earliest sauté that I remember and hasn’t lost its value.  Try it.  You’ll find it has simple ingredients, straightforward technique and a bright fruit flavor.  The recipe is for one, because that’s how we cooked at the sauté station.  You can easily expand the recipe. 

And thanks to Stavros and the Petsos brothers.

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Chicken Cynthia

1 5 oz. chicken breast, skinless

2 tbs. flour, seasoned with salt and pepper

1 tsp. salad oil

3 tsp. unsalted butter

6 green grapes, cut in half

10 orange segments

1 oz. white wine

1 oz. orange juice

1 tbs. chopped parsley (everything got parsley in those days)

salt and pepper

Deeply peel an orange, removing the zest and bitter white peel.  With a paring knife, segment the orange, cutting the fruit away from the membranes.  Reserve the segments, squeeze the membranes to get the juice for the sauté.

Preheat the oven to 400°.  Heat a 10 inch sauté pan on high.  Add the oil and 1 tsp. of butter.  Dredge the chicken breast in flour, coating it completely.  Brush off any excess flour.  Season it with salt and pepper.  When the butter has melted and turns a hazelnut color, you will know that the pan is hot enough to sear the chicken properly.  Add the chicken.  Cook on one side for 2 minutes, turn and cook on the other side for 2 more minutes.  Finish in the oven for a further 8-10 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through.

When the chicken is cooked, remove it from the oven and keep warm while you prepare the sauce.  Dab the grease from the pan with a paper towel.  Return the pan to the stove on high heat.  Add the grapes and the orange segments and the orange juice.  Reduce the juice by half, stirring to scrape up any browned bits stuck to the pan when the chicken cooked. 

Add the white wine and again reduce by half.  Remove the pan from the heat, put the chicken and any juice that has run out of it in the pan and stir in the remaining 2 tsp. of butter, slowly incorporating it with the pan juices.  Adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper.  Add the parsley and serve with rice pilaf.

Gonna Be a Cold Weekend (bread pudding with an orange, rum and cream sauce)

I used to do difficult interviews.  Frankly, almost always I had already decided who I was going to hire beforehand and was only conducting interviews to keep the management off of my back.  Hell, most of the time I even knew when we were going to have a vacancy, because as Chef, I would decide who I was going to make quit and when.  Sometimes we would bet on it.  If it was clear that a cook was not going to cut it, me or one of my Sous Chefs would turn up the heat, increased responsibility, more prep, impossible expectations, dangerous working conditions.  I’m sure that some still bear the physical scars.  Normally that cook would get the message and find another place to work.  Rarely did it come down to confrontation, at least in the better kitchens.

When we needed a cook, I’d make a couple of calls to my Chef buddies around town.  Most of the time another guy would have a cook who was ready to move.  If that young cook had learned all he could from Chef A, he would get a blessing and move on to Chef B seamlessly.  That way I, as Chef B, would get an apprentice who was motivated and had some skills.  I would know his strong and weak points, also his psychological triggers, which is very important in a high stress business.  That was our system.  It benefited everyone.  The Chefs got trained cooks, the cooks got trained.  Wages were kept down, because I could always point out to the new cook that they were getting a fantastic opportunity (to work for ME) even though they had such paltry skills.   

It worked out great, at least until management stuck their heads into our perfect world.  At some point in the 1990s, the restaurant managers, as one, seem to have decided that you would have to interview four candidates for each open position.  They reasoned that since the Restaurant School, New England Culinary and the Culinary Institute of America were churning out cooks, we should do our best to get the pick of the litter.  Their reasoning was based on the flawed premise that these schools were actually training cooks that could step right in and be a help.  Don’t get me wrong, some very talented people came out of the culinary schools, particularly the Restaurant School in the early days, however the vast majority of them had gone into the biz with no experience and graduated unable to cook in the real world.  Many became food stylists.

I didn’t have time to do all these interviews, so like my brother Chefs, I just continued incestuously trading cooks around with my friends and conducting sham interviews.  I would ask questions like, “What’s your favorite hand gun?” or “Maddox or Mantle?” then tell them to make lunch for my staff in order to give my guys a break.  One cook saw through this charade.  I told him to make dessert for the staff dinner.  He responded, “Yes, Chef!”  Then proceeded to rummage through the stale bread bin.  I almost forgot that he was there until about an hour later he presented a bread pudding with a hard sauce that was among the best I had ever eaten.  Additionally, he gave me a cost breakdown showing that each portion which I could serve for $7.25 would only cost the house $.85, almost pure profit.  

Jerry got the job and I never let the staff eat up the bread pudding.  I put it on the menu that night.

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Bread Pudding (serves 12)

10 cups bread, torn into ½ inch pieces

6 cups whole milk

6 eggs

3 cups brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1 stick, 8 tbs. unsalted butter

1 ½ c. flour

1 ½ c. sliced almonds

Preheat the oven to 325°F.  Lightly butter a 9”x14”x2” deep baking pan.  Put it in the freezer so that the butter sets. 

Tear the bread into ½ inch pieces.  Set aside while you make the batter.  Mix the milk, eggs, 2 cups of brown sugar and the vanilla extract in a large mixing bowl

Add the bread and let it soak up the batter.  

Remove the baking pan from the freezer and rebutter it, leaving a 1/4 inch coating that will prevent sticking and brown the sides and bottom of the bread pudding.  Return it to the freezer until you are ready to bake.

  

To make the crust, combine the flour, almonds, one cup of brown sugar and 3 tbs. of butter in a medium sized mixing bowl.   

With your hand, blend in the butter, mixing it with the other ingredients until it is completely incorporated and the crust looks even and sandy.  

Remove the baking dish from the freezer.  Pour in the batter and bread mixture.  Spread it evenly on the bottom, but do not smooth the top, it should remain uneven, like craggy peaks.

Sprinkle the topping evenly on the bread pudding.  Put it in the oven and bake at 325°F for 45 minutes.  At that time, the pudding should have just begun to brown and set.   

As soon as that happens, increase the temperature to 375°F and bake for an additional 20 minutes, until the topping has browned evenly and a knife inserted into  the center is clean when removed.

Remove from the oven, allow to cool 10 minutes before cutting and serving with the Orange, rum cream sauce outlined below.

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Orange, Rum and Cream Dessert Sauce (serves 12)

3 navel oranges, peeled, juiced

1 c. brown sugar

2 c. water

3 shots of rum (one for the cook, two for the sauce)

1 ½ c. heavy cream

Peel strips of orange zest.  Try to get as little or the white part of the peel as you can, however don’t worry too much.  A little adds an interesting bitterness to the finished sauce.  Slice the peel into thin strips.  Juice the oranges.

Put the peel, sugar and 1 cup of water in a small pan.  Bring it to a boil.  Reduce it to a glaze.  Heat the cream in a double boiler.

When the sugar and peel mixture has reduced, add the second cup of water and the orange juice.   

Bring it back up to a full boil, add the rum. Flame off the alcohol.  Again, reduce to a glaze.  This procedure will fully cook the peels.

Add the reduced flavorings to the cream, mix thoroughly and allow the sauce to reduce and thicken slightly for the next thirty minutes.   

When serving, pour the sauce onto warmed plates, center a piece of the bread pudding and place a few peels on top of the pudding.  It is better to avoid pouring the sauce on top of the pudding.  Didn’t you work very hard to make a crispy crust?