Chinese marbled tea eggs are super easy to make at home and the aromas of tea, cinnamon, and star anise are intoxicating.
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Breakfast for dinner. Those words are like music to my ears. There are many days in a month when I just feel like having a plate of eggs sunny-side-up or French toast or a bagel with lox for dinner. (Similarly, a slice of pizza or leftover pad thai in the morning sounds delicious.)
Last night I was craving eggs with kimchi again. I hadn't made a meal with that particular combo in a while, but I felt like fortifying myself with an extra dose of kimchi, seeing how it's good for the immune system and all. Every other person I know seems to have gotten struck with the flu lately. And when you're riding the NY city subways and people are around you are coughing, it's good to be prepared.
Here's my arsenal of good foodstuffs to prevent illness. Yes, all the orange juice is for one person. Not pictured is the 12 containers of Greek yogurt that also came with the Fresh Direct order.
Read MoreI first made these baked eggs with cumin and saffron when I lived in Shanghai a few years ago. I had recently become obsessed with cumin, after eating at many Muslim Chinese restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing that specialized in cumin lamb dishes. Of course, at home, I wanted to use cumin as much as possible, and worked the spice into this breakfast dish.
So here's a short, revised recipe, since I recently made this again and it was every bit as good as I remembered. The process is a piece of cake. You just sauté some shallots or onions in a pan, add the tomatoes, cumin, salt, and pepper, then transfer the mixture to ramekins. Then you crack an egg into each ramekin and sprinkle a bit of saffron on top. It looks really nice coming out of the oven with specks of bright red from the saffron and the egg still bubbling on top.
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Stir-fried eggs and tomatoes is a classic Chinese dish that takes just 10 minutes to prep and cook.
Read MoreHappy Leap Day!
This morning, I had planned get up and to try cooking something totally new. I mean, isn't this supposed to be the magical day for trying things you normally wouldn't do? (Or maybe, just maybe, I watch too much TV.) I racked my brain. Haggis? Squab? Jello mold? Croquembouche? By the time I had gone through a list of possibilities, it was that iffy time between breakfast and lunch. I was getting hungry, and finally settled on adding a twist to something I make about 10 times a month.
Fried eggs. Or more specifically, fried eggs with oyster sauce. It's pure comfort food, and something I've raved about periodically on this blog but have never formalized into a recipe. I fry up the eggs until the whites are all set but the yolks are still runny, transfer them to a bowl with rice or noodles, add an oyster sauce/soy sauce combo, and mix everything up. It's incredibly addictive, either as a slightly hedonistic weekday breakfast or a super-fast lunch or dinner.
Read MoreI have a somewhat unhealthy addiction to eggs. In the past year, I was sometimes eating two or three eggs a day, just because they're so darn versatile and easy to prepare. (My doctor hasn't said anything about this habit...yet.) Breakfast? Scrambled eggs with salt and pepper. Lunch? Omelet with mushrooms and onions. As for dinner...well, you know how everyone has that secret, fool-proof, but embarrassingly unattractive dish they make when eating alone? Mine is a fried egg, still runny in the middle, slathered with oyster sauce, and plopped into a bowl of reheated rice.
Photogenic? No. Delicious? Quite.
A few days ago I decided to make a few days' worth of eggs in one go, that can be reheated and eaten with rice or other sides at a later, lazier time. I then remembered what my mom used to do on weekends to prepare for a week of after-school snacks. On Sunday nights, she would just simmer hard-boiled eggs in a soy sauce broth with some sugar and ginger slices added in. I would eat one immediately out of the pot, and on subsequent days the rest would be scarfed down straight from the fridge or warmed in the microwave.
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