Tea Eggs

I love the smell of tea eggs.  I still remembered going to the malls in Malaysia (where I grew up) smelling tea eggs simmering away in one of the stall.  My pace automatically slowed down and my eyes would search for the huge pot with those delicious eggs.  Those are such nostalgic memories from my childhood.

Today, I woke up remembering those eggs.  Immediately after I sent the kids off to school, I ransack my kitchen to see if I have all the ingredients necessary for this scrumptious dish.  Sometimes, I think my motivation is really powered my appetite.  And "yes" I have all the ingredients except dry mandarin orange peel (but I have fresh one---hahaha!):

8 hard boil eggs
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 dry mandarin orange peel (I usually try to dry some but haven't done so)
tea leaves (I use jasmine just because it is the only chinese tea leaves I have)
1 bag of tea bag (I got from a friend which is black tea with a hint of spice---perfect!)
1/4 cup soy sauce
sugar and salt (if the soy sauce is not salty enough since I use low sodium soy sauce)
water

Anyway, besides the orange peel, which I toasted it slightly before adding into the pot with all ingredients except the eggs.  I had already boiled 8 eggs for this purpose.  While the pot with all my aromatic ingredients are coming to a boil, I cracked the boiled eggs viciously still taking care not to break the apart.  What I wanted was the trademark crackled pattern on the eggs when soaking the eggs into the dark brown ingredients.  The idea was to keep the crack eggs without peeling them all simmering in the aromatic soy sauce base liquid for at least 6 hours so that the color and taste seeped into the eggs coloring the part that was cracked.  I haven't done this for a long long time, I may even cracked the eggs too much...hahaha!

This is definitely one of my favorite dish, but I am not sure if the kids would enjoy them as much as I do.  As I am writing this, the aroma of the spice kept teasing me to check on it.  To me this is one of the smell of home.  But this may not be true for people here in my little country side town, where barberque prevails.  Probably half the population here do not even know how star anise smells.

I think I will go check the eggs, though this dish is really a hands off dish.  But the smells is just to tempting.  It is just like a little kid asking me to give a hug.  I must go to see this little baby one more time.

The eggs while slowly simmering away!