INGREDIENTS:
4 eggs
2 black tea bags
1/3 cup soy sauce
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp whole peppercorns
1 tangerine's peel
1 Tbsp Chinese five spice powder
First, hard boil the eggs. We have a microwave egg boiler where we pop the eggs into the unit, stick it into the microwave, and voila we end up with hard boiled eggs. If you do it on the stovetop, or just buy them hard boiled already, that's fine too.
Now take those hard boiled eggs and gently make cracks in the outside shell. Don't actually remove the shell. You're making a crackle pattern, and that's where the dark mixture is going to soak through.
We tried our best to make an actual "pattern" as you can see by the shell piece shown. It didn't work very well :). The shell didn't want to fracture in straight lines. Here's another example where we just gently cracked all over the place.
So, in any case, make cracks all around the egg's surface. Put the eggs into a large pot. Fill with water so the water is about two inches over the top of the eggs. Now mix in all the other ingredients. You can just rip the tangerine peel into a few large pieces - you don't have to do anything complex with it. It smells absolutely lovely :).
So now simmer this for two hours. That gets the mixture integrated. Then let it sit for another few hours, or overnight if you have the time. The longer you let it sit, the darker the lines will become.
Enjoy! The end result has a gorgeous texture on it, and a lovely flavor. Really the only carbs you ingest in this are in the egg itself, so depending on what egg you buy, that is fairly minimal. I highly recommend cage-free eggs, of course. Chickens tend to lead very unhappy lives otherwise.
Enjoy!
