Tea eggs

I've made these tea eggs a few times over the past few years. They're a traditional Chinese snack, or so the internet tells me. The flavoring is mostly from soy sauce, but the spices and tea give the eggs a very complex flavor. I don't remember where I got the recipe; I have it written on a piece of paper and stuck to the fridge.

The marbled surface of the eggs comes from partially hardboiling them, then cracking the shells all over before cooking the rest of the way and and steeping them for a few hours or overnight. You have to crack the eggs pretty well to get the marbling. Here's one example of how mine looked before steeping.

Tea eggs

6 eggs

3/4 cups soy sauce

2 star anise

2 tbsp black or oolong tea

1 tsp sugar

1 cinnamon stick

1 tbsp peppercorns

Some tangerine or orange peel

Place eggs in a small saucepan and cover with water. Bring to a boil, lower the heat, and simmer for 3 minutes.

Run eggs under cold water and, when cool enough to touch, crack all over with a spoon. Return to saucepan with still-hot water.

Add soy sauce, star anise, tea, sugar, cinnamon, peppercorns, and citrus peel. Bring to a boil, lower heat to a simmer, and simmer for 40 minutes. Turn off heat and let steep for a few hours or overnight.

Inductive almonds and post-party brunch

Our anniversary was on Friday, and we had a little party at our apartment. We served these almonds along with a cheese plate, spiced olives, mini puff pastry spanakopita, and stuffed mushrooms. We tried some sweet and salty spiced almonds at a party recently, and these are my attempt to recreate them. I think they're pretty great, and as a bonus, they are stupidly easy, especially if you buy roasted almonds. They are called inductive almonds because after you have one, you want one more.

Inductive almonds

1 cup unsalted almonds

1 tsp olive oil

1/4 tsp salt, or more to taste

1 tsp sugar

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

A pinch of chipotle powder, optional

If almonds are already roasted, leave them alone. If not, cook them at 400 F for 5-10 minutes. When they have cooled slightly, transfer to a glass bowl. Add olive oil, salt, sugar, pepper, and paprika, and toss to coat. Taste test a few to make sure they're good.

The next morning, Jon brilliantly suggested that we have a party leftovers brunch. Inspired by my friend Renee, I made the table pretty and used the nice bowls (which were a wedding present). In addition to the almonds (a new batch because there were none leftover), we had cheese and crackers, pickles, olives, and a salad of romaine, cucumber, grapefruit, and avocado. I think it's a nice brunch salad. To drink, I had some Negroni punch left over from the night before, diluted with grapefruit juice and club soda. Jon boringly just had water and coffee. It's easy to have a good Saturday when you start it like this.

Moroccan-spiced olives

This is an easy way to jazz up jarred olives. They are nice as a little appetizer before dinner, especially if you're making other Mediterranean foods that night. Jon likes them even more than he likes garlic-stuffed olives, which is saying a lot. We often had olives spiced with fennel as an appetizer in France, but I got this particular spice blend from a Moroccan cookbook by Rebo Publishers. I omitted the garlic because I thought it would be too assertive and overpower the lovely spices.
Moroccan-spiced olives

1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 tsp whole cumin seeds
1 tsp whole fennel seeds
1 tsp whole coriander seeds
1/4 tsp ground cardamom
Pinch ground nutmeg
Pinch ground cinnamon
1 1/2 cups green olives
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp orange juice

Heat the olive oil, cumin, fennel, coriander, cardamom, nutmeg, and cinnamon in a saucepan over medium heat for about two minutes. The spices should be quite fragrant. Remove the pan from heat, add olives, and toss to coat. Stir in the lemon juice and orange juice. Refrigerate in an airtight container (like the jar the olives came from in the first place) for at least four hours before serving to let the flavors meld. These are best if served room temperature. When you've eaten all the olives, Jon says the leftover spiced olive/citrus juice is a good dipping sauce for bread.

Frozen peas

Sometimes I get hungry but nothing sounds good. Or I have an upset stomach that needs some food to settle it. Or I'm not hungry but really feel like eating. When I get like that, I reach for frozen peas. When my siblings and I were little, my mom would give us frozen veggies as a snack at night because she didn't want us to have junk or eat just for fun, but she wanted us to have some food if we were hungry. Now I find them comforting. Frozen corn is good, and frozen mixed vegetables are decent, but frozen peas are the really good stuff.