Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Kylie Kwong's Soy Sauce Eggs

Over the winter, I bought myself a copy of Kylie Kwong's Simple Chinese Cooking with an Amazon gift certificate my good friend Jodi gave me. And I am just now getting around to trying out a recipe!

I might venture into one of those food blogging trends a la Julie & Julia, where I cook my way through a cookbook & blog about it. I think this Kwong cookbook is a good place to start. We'll see how it goes.

Anyway, with my weird appetite issues, which persist, unfortunately, I for some reason remembered this recipe and it really appealed to me at the time. It looked simple enough and the flavour combination intrigued me. I made half a recipe to start out with in case I didn't like them.

The recipe is here.

Here is a look at my process, from the beginning. My hard boiled eggs went into the soy sauce mixture, after mixture camed to a boil.
The cartouche part didn't really work for me, and I didn't see the point of it. When I placed it on the eggs, it kept the steam in and would bubble to the top. It got annoying to keep letting the steam out so the cartouche wouldn't fly away on me, so I tried the lid of the pot. It boiled over. So, I simmered without any covering, just making sure to keep the eggs basted in the liquid. This worked fine.
This recipe takes a long time - an hour of braising. Here are the eggs half-way through.
And here they are at the end, by which time the soy sauce mixture had reduced to a thick syurp. BTW, I didn't use the fresh ginger, I used 2 tsp of ground.
They don't look terribly appetizing at this point...
And here they are plated...I couldn't resist the googly-eyed face...
These taste delicious, but the drawback is that it's a lot of work for not a lot of end product. The outer part of the egg was a little rubbery, but not off-puttingly so. I might make a larger batch for a special occasion.

I wonder what I'll do next?

11 comments:

Heather S-G said...

LOL...Googly eyes! These sound really good, actually. I really like Kylie Kwong's cookbooks...they're always visually appealing, but I don't think I've ever tried cooking from them. hmmm. I'd be interested in seeing how more of her recipes come out.

Inspired by eRecipeCards said...

They look pretty. Like you said, seems to be a lot of work for just a couple fancy eggs. I am more than happy to work hard when I feed lots of people, but this seems a big effort for the pay off.

Now that I think of it, these would look great as a top to a spinach salad. Maybe cut at a sharper angle so the colored edge shows off more (like an American London Broil ;-).

I am working on more salads, so I have salads on my mind right now.

And I personally LOVE the idea of cook through book blogs. Nothing with an artificial cut off (like finishing in a year), it certainly challenges you.

As always, best wishes

Dave

Cathy said...

I love Kwong's recipes! These look oddly appetizing....

Dr. Monkey Von Monkerstein said...

I love Kylie.

Bob said...

Mmmm, soy sauce eggs. I did something similar ... wow, a long time ago. I've never heard of Kwong before, I'll have to check her out. I love Chinese cooking.

Dewi said...

I heard about her book, seems like she has many good recipes. The egg looks really tempting.

Palidor said...

I like Kylie Kwong. Those eggs looks very tasty and I hope they will help with your appetite. Have you tried tea-braised eggs? Same concept, except with Chinese black tea and some spices added to the braising liquid.

Coleens Recipes said...

I love the googly eyes, how funny is that.

Tina said...

I had not heard of this book...you always turn me on to new stuff Coyote.

I have been neglecting my Nigella recipes as of late so committing to cooking oneself through a cookbook takes dedictaion I'll tell you.

Xiaolu said...

I love soy and tea-braised eggs! I guess I never thought of it as a lot of effort since the hands-on time is fairly low. Plus, I'm Chinese. Glad you gave these a try.

Wandering Coyote said...

Xiaolu: thanks for visiting! I am now very intrigued about the tea braised eggs - do you have a recipe.

I'm making another Kylie recipe tonight for dinner - Mongolian Beef. Looking forward to it!

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