Stewed Egg Salad (Lu Dan)

by Liv | May 2, 2010

Stewed Egg Salad (Lu Dan)

Stewed Egg is a very common dish in Taiwan and we call it “Lu Dan”. I loved to order a stewed egg with my lunchbox when I live in Taiwan or I will order stewed egg with my mince rice or mince noodle. Stewed egg is just simply the best friend with a lunchbox.

I always remember the first time my husband tried this stewed egg at home his face looked like he had been struck by lightning. After the first time he tried this stewed egg he fell in love with it. He always asks me to cook this stewed egg if he knows I’m going to cook stewed pork or chicken.

This stewed egg needs to cook in soy sauce and spices for a while and soak in the sauce for few hours to make sure eggs has all the fragrances from the sauce. So, you can imagine this egg has a lot of flavour in it.

Stewed Egg Salad (Lu Dan)

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 4 hours

Total Time 4 hours

Servings 2 people

Ingredients

6 eggs
1 thin slice ginger
1 spring onion
2 cloves garlic
1/2 chili

Seasonings

1.5 tbsp sugar
1 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp rice wine
1/4 tsp salt
2 cups water
1 star anise
3 cm cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp Sichuan pepper use a Chinese spice bag if you have one

Instructions

Use a little bit of oil to sauté ginger, spring onion, garlic and chilli.
Place all the seasonings into a sauce pan and boil it by full strength gas power.
After sauce boiling we turn the gas power to the lowest and simmer for 2 hours.
Take out the eggs from fridge and leave it aside for while to make sure it’s reach room temperature.
Cook the eggs from cold water and keep moving them when you cooking. (This way can make sure the egg yolk will stay in the middle.)
After the water is boiling we turn the gas power to medium and cook for another 5 minutes.
After 5 minutes we take the eggs out of the hot water and soak it in cold water. Peel the eggs when they have cooled down.
Place the eggs into the sauce we made and cook them for 40 minutes.
After 40 minutes just soak them in the sauce for a couple hours. You will see the eggs turning a light brown colour and it’s ready to eat. My grandma always cook the egg a day before and soak them over night.

Dumplings shui jiao

by Liv | Apr 30, 2010

Dumplings shui jiao

Dumplings, or shui jiao, are one of my favourite foods. They are really tasty but also the perfect food for a working couple like Chris and I, for whom both of us work shift patterns.

Living in the UK is so different to living in Taiwan. Taiwan has many 7-11 shops which are open 24 hours, night market which are open until midnight and a lot of 24 hours restaurants such as Swensens, N.Y. Bagel and Citystar 24 hours Dim sum restaurant.

Whenever I make dumplings I always make at least 100 to 150. Compared to dumplings that you can buy in restaurants here, which normally cost about £1 each, we can make 100 hundred at home for approximately £10. This works out at around 10p each.

When I’ve made the dumplings I put them in the freezer in case we run out food or feel hungry in the night or just come back home from work.

This recipe is just one of the methods of making dumplings that I have used for a very long time. It’s a very common but also basic flavour in Taiwan. Of course there are so many different kind of filling that you can put it into your dumplings such as shitake mushroom, scallops, cabbage, cucumber, chinese white chive, carrots, prawns and so on.

Maybe you can try different filling at home and you could easily create your own special kind of dumplings!

By the way, some Chinese provinces have a new year’s tradition which is when the people will eat dumplings for New Year’s Eve and sometime they will put a coin inside the dumpling. The person who has the dumpling with that coin will be the luckiest one in the coming year.

Credit: These photos were taken by Chris at Chris Radley Photography

Dumplings Shui Jiao

Course Main Dish

Prep Time 3 hours

Cook Time 10 minutes

Total Time 3 hours 10 minutes

Servings 150 dumplings

Ingredients

150 dumpling pastry sheets