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Recipe: chinese tea eggs

If I go without enough sleep for several days in a row, I start to get a little stabby. But I have been pretty chipper despite my paltry sleep hours of late, because the days have been filled with The Crush of Awesome. Here’s a visual sampler:

our monsoons have begun!

we had my parents and close family friends up for dinner

enjoying the evening on the deck

dramatic sunset clouds

fireweed and monkshood blooming in the mountains

hiking the rockies

cute little pika taking a peek at us

jeremy on the continental divide (aka “another great morning in paradise”)

a stroll around a local lake

kaweah still loves her walkie

My problem is that no matter what time I go to bed, I almost always wake up with the sun. That’s somewhat problematic considering it is summer. I also suffer from the general problem of being both a night-owl and an early bird which translates into cranky pants. All this to say – it’s gonna be a quick post… on Chinese tea eggs!

gather some eggs, ginger, green onion, soy sauce, star anise, chinese five spice, black tea

hard boil the eggs

Chinese tea eggs or marble eggs have a more delicate flavor than Chinese soy sauce eggs. I love both, but the tea eggs are just so pretty. Crack the shells after hard-boiling the eggs. You can do this by tapping the eggs on a counter or work surface, or by smacking the back of a spoon or the flat of a heavy knife on the shell. Then simmer them in the heady black tea mixture to create the beautiful eggshell pattern.

cover the eggs with cracks

place the eggs, spices, tea, and water in a saucepan

simmer for an hour

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: butterscotch and milk chocolate puddings

Were any of you able to catch the full moon this past weekend? Since the moon was at perigee (closest approach to Earth) for 2012, it appeared 14% larger and 30% brighter than typical full moons. Everyone was saying it would be a “supermoon”. For us, it certainly was if only for the fact that clouds were building all day, sitting like a giant cap on top of our region. Sheer luck and strategic planning gave us a tiny window from the horizon of the Great Plains to the base of the cloud deck. For all of ten minutes we were able to witness and capture something beautiful.

supermoonrise

As the moon disappeared into the clouds, I looked up from the camera and shouted, “I love it here!” We have good skies, clean air, quiet mountain roads, and a topography of mountains, foothills, and canyons that dramatically abuts a flat, expansive plain. The storm eventually committed itself on Sunday and brought a shower of wet, heavy snow upon us. Moisture is welcome now, in any form.

kaweah wanted to check out the snow

It was most definitely a super weekend – super moon, super snow, and I recreated a lovely treat I’ve enjoyed from Pizzeria Locale in Boulder (part of the grand Frasca dominion).

call it super pudding

Last month, I was on assignment to shoot a fun annual event in downtown Boulder – Taste of Pearl. Local restaurants, Colorado wineries, and shops on Pearl Street triple up to create 15 tasting stations for attendees to sample and peruse and mingle. It’s festive and lively. People get friendlier and friendlier as the afternoon progresses, I’m guessing because of the wine! As I was working, I didn’t eat or drink until the end. The fellas at Pizzeria Locale were handing out cute little cups of their butterscotch pudding. If you said “butterscotch pudding” to me in the past, I would have politely declined. After having sampled this butterscotch pudding twice (first time at the restaurant, second time at this shoot), I was SOLD. But you know me… something this good needs to be tested at Butter Headquarters.

vanilla, bourbon, milk, eggs, brown sugar, butter, salt, cornstarch

mix melted butter with the brown sugar and salt

I don’t develop recipes. I just don’t. That kind of activity makes me crazy and cranky. I seek out good recipes from trusted sources and proceed to test them out. After searching my library and looking online, I settled on David Lebovitz’ butterscotch pudding, because he puts BOOZE in his pudding. Whiskey, to be specific. I went to my wine and booze adviser (Jason at Boulder Wine and Spirits – he is the best) and grilled him about whiskeys. What is whiskey? Can I use bourbon instead of whiskey? What the heck is scotch? Jason deserves a batch of cookies just for putting up with me. In the end, I decided to save myself $30 and use the bourbon I already had.

whisk milk and cornstarch

whisk in eggs

stir milk into the brown sugar mixture

**Jump for more butter**

Recipe: the woodward pizza

There’s something to be said for sharing a good meal with good people. Aran was in town this past week to teach at The Makerie in Boulder, so Jeremy and I met up with her at The Kitchen for a lovely evening. We shared a family-style dinner that was almost as excellent as the conversation, the company, and the laughter. Despite traveling and meeting people all day, after 20+ hours, Aran was delightful and genuinely sincere as always. Jeremy said it best, “Aran is good people.”

filet on spinach with bernaise

aran was happy to be back in colorado

So did anyone stay up to catch the Lyrids meteor shower over the weekend? I’m going to guess the majority of you did not. That’s okay, because I did and there are pictures to prove it! The best one I was able to capture was at 2 am while I stood in my neighbor’s driveway (they said I could). It was brilliant and lasted several seconds.

that’s my house in silhouette

We used to have to drive 4.5 hours to get to a decent dark sky site when we lived in California. Now? Less than 30 seconds of walking and I’m there (on my deck or in my neighbor’s driveway). You know what else we used to do? We used to order pizza when we didn’t have the time to make our own dough. Things have changed.

with the help of this book

I received Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day from St. Martin’s Press back in October. It was written by Jeff Hertzberg and my friend, Zoë François. Yes, I realize it is now April, but I didn’t want to write about my experience with the book until I could do it properly. We have made a lot of ghetto pizza at home in the past, but I finally went out and procured a pizza stone and pizza peel. And because a 550°F oven in warm weather makes me cranky, we also have a proper grill (one that doesn’t simultaneously undercook and scorch the same piece of food). Huzzah!

you will need: flour, water, salt, yeast, and olive oil

the water should be 100°F

add the yeast and salt

After learning about all of the equipment involved in pizza-making, I started with the olive oil dough variation on their master recipe. There are many other recipes in the book and not just pizza dough recipes (gluten-free too!), but focaccia, pita, tarts, pies, soups, dips, and spreads. However, we really needed to get our pizza dough down in this house once and for all.

add olive oil

add the flour

a slightly sticky, viscous dough

**Jump for more butter**