I decided to make some tea eggs using quail eggs because, well, I love miniature food.
Quail eggs are easy to find – back when I was a grad student, I would go to UC Davis meat lab and get a flat of 30 or so for $3 or $4. Now I just go to Ranch 99.
You start off by boiling the eggs whole (in clear water or the broth) until they’re somewhat solid enough to crack. Cracking will create the marbled look.
Once they’re cracked, simmer them in a broth of tea leaves (I like using black teas, like oolong), salt, star anise, cloves, coriander seeds (pretty much the solid versions of the ingredients in 5-spice powder), a bit of sugar. You can add soy sauce to make is really dark and murky. I like to add spicy peppers to the mixture too, but didn’t this time because there would be kids eating them. I like to simmer the eggs for a few hours and then let them sit and cool in the goop for another few hours.
Wish I had a chicken egg here to show how tiny and cute quail eggs are, but maybe the star anise can provide a size reference.
For variation, you can use leftover broth from beef noodle soup or five spice beef and leave out the tea. Add more salt/pepper, etc to taste.
Over Thanksgiving break, I was struck with a powerful desire for strawberry shortcake, or strawberry fruit cake, or an Asian style fruit cake brought by one I saw in Stanford Shopping center. Of course, I knew as a western style bakery, they wouldn’t have exactly what I was looking for. I wasn’t TOO picky – I simply wanted a small slice of a moist cake with light frosting that wasn’t too sweet and some fresh fruit. Mike was nice enough to indulge me as we searched. As luck would have it, all the Asian bakeries I went to either didn’t have the cake I wanted or only had it available as a whole cake. So I settled.
My first concession came at La Patisserie, a bakery close to the Marukai supermarket in Cupertino. I saw a green tea mousse cake, albeit with mango mousse on top. For some people, mango mousse is a plus, but I personally am not fond of mango flavored confections or pastries. And then I saw the lemon mousse with raspberries. Raspberry, strawberry… both are berries, I thought, so I gave these a try.
I was a little disappointed. The green tea mousse didn’t have the matcha taste I was looking for and the mango mousse was just OK. The lemon mousse was delicious and I love raspberries, but it wasn’t the strawberry cake I wanted.
The next day, we tried yet another Asian market. (At this point, we’d visited Marukai, La Patisserie, and Ranch 99.) NO luck. My precious strawberry cake and fruit cake were both sold out. Bah.
On the last day, before we left for Davis, I gave up and returned to Stanford shopping center. I went to La Baguette and Cocola and picked up a strawberry cake from each. And a hazelnut mousse cake. I can’t resist hazelnut.
The hazelnut was nothing too special, but it was good. The strawberry shortcake from La Baguette was my preferred cake of the two strawberry ones.
It was fluffy, light, not incredibly sweet – but there wasn’t enough strawberry to it. I was rather happy with it though.
Cocola Bakery’s strawberry fruit cake was visually stunning, but it wasn’t as delicious as it looked. The green marzipan with a bit of chocolate ruined it for me, I think. I was in the mood for light, fluffy and fruity, and the marzipan made it too heavy. In addition, the entire thing was a bit on the sweet side for me.
Verdict: La Baguette wins hands down, but the strawberry fruit cake from a small asian bakery in SF near Tom’s place and Satura’s strawberry shortcake are definitely superior. I’ll have to brave the downtown Palo Alto traffic to get some Satura cake over Christmas.
This quest may be complete, but I must re-do it to get complete satisfaction.
Some UCD student organization was showing an actual porn on campus (the most expensive one ever made, apparently) last night. I decided I would make one of the cheapest porns ever on my own… food porn, that is. :)
I wrapped some bacon around several stalks of asparagus that had been seasoned with black pepper and baked it for ~12-15 minutes. Mmm….
Lyra’s a lot more adventurous and loud than Derek. She’s the more aggressive and energetic of the two. Last night she did a ninja wall jump against the door while chasing a wand with a feather attached. Her acrobatic skills are impressive, though Derek’s also mastered the art of scaling the scratching post with one leap.
We got the kittens home last night. They’re currently exploring Chad’s room and bathroom. Derek is pretty mellow and… well, I don’t want to judge, but Lyra seems to be braver and smarter. And louder.
But how do you resist a shy little kitten with curled ears? Especially when he sits so sweetly in your lap?
According to Daviswiki, there will be a Mikuni’s occupying the space where Fuzio used to be. Humina humina. Lest you brush this off as undue excitement, I leave you with some images of a very satisfying meal at Mikuni’s.
I gave in to temptation and bought at 16gb nano in red today. It’s beautiful. I will cherish it, but I will not neglect my shuffle either. I figure I need an mp3 player with a screen so I can um… have one.
And enough linking… after one last tidbit of Lego Sweeney Todd. There’s a ton of awesome stop-motion animation done with legos. Including Pirates of the Caribbean, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Monty Python… and the list goes on. :)
Today I got to see Cirque de Soleil: Corteo, courtesy of the MSR intern program. Awesome. Amazing acrobatics and amazing strength shown. These people, or at least the ones doing the tricks, are in top physical condition. I mean, there was one act where there was one man and one woman, both attached to two large ribbons… (think of the rings event in men’s gymnastics) and at one point, the woman holding on with her feet and her hands while holding the man up by her HAIR. And of course, there were the bits where they both held on with just one hand and did tricks. It was amazing, and a little creepy. (Costumes, story being told was that of a clown dreaming/witnessing his own funeral.)
Several other Davis students are here. Daniella, Chris, and Shubho. Yay for familiar faces! (although I never did interact with them much in Davis…)
Next week we’re going to have a banana splits ice cream social as our intern event.
