The best egg you've ever eaten

This is simply the perfect egg.

First of all, the whites of the egg are deliciously flavored. A good dousing of Shaoxing rice wine lends a heady sherry and mushroom aroma to the eggs. This is tastefully and tastily countered with an infusion of dried salted plums, ginger, lemon peel, and whole peppercorns that turns this from a one-note wonder into a dish worthy of the most finicky eater. Rarely do egg whites taste of much of anything, but here they serve as the perfectly flavored foil for a yolk that is molten.

Yes, you read that right: the center here is soft and runs like liquid gold, but it's also cooked to just the absolute perfect degree so that while the yolk remains just this side of solid, you won't taste any rawness. Instead, the yolk serves as a delicate sauce for the white that cradles it.

Love

But this dish is not just about flavors and aromas -- it's primarily all about texture.

In most boiled egg recipes, the white is rendered into a relatively reasonable facsimile of a ping-pong ball. Those that aren't tend to look soggy and runny and anything but appetizing. However, the folks in Jiangsu’s capital of Nanjing have turned the practice of cooking an egg into the highest art, for the whites are cooked for a mere 30 seconds, made to sit in the hot water for another three minutes, and then quickly cooled down. What this does is to give the whites the texture of the tenderest custard, and the yolks are sent just barely over that fine line between raw and cooked.

I've experimented with a bunch of different versions, happy to indulge my passion, and after tossing in this and taking out that, this has come to be my favorite way to prepare eggs, period. It isn't too sweet, but also has enough pizazz from the rice wine and dried sour plums and all those seasonings to make me sit up and take notice. You too can play around with the flavorings to your heart's content; just be sure and not use anything with, say, chicken fat or sesame oil, as the eggs should come across as clean and greaseless.

Traditionally this dish is made with fresh duck eggs, but because they are relatively difficult to find in the States, I've substituted large hen eggs; feel free to use whatever type of eggs you like, but do know that you'll have to experiment a bit in order to get the texture the way you want it, since the size of the egg will greatly affect the cooking time. The only caveat I want to make is that the eggs should be organic and free range; the better quality egg you use, the better the result, since this is after all just about one ingredient.   

The eggs are best when they are about a week old in order to make them easier to peel. Bring them to room temperature before cooking in order to a) have the perfect cooking time and b) keep them from bursting. I like to prick the round ends of the eggs with a large tack, since there's a little air pocket in there, and if you give the air an escape route, the whites will be able to swell without breaking the shells.

Salted plums

The only unusual ingredients here are the dried salted plums, called huàméi 話梅. You can find these in just about any Chinese grocery store in the candy aisle. They are very tart and sweet and salty all at the same time, and usually used as a tea snack. 

Drunken eggs with molten centers 
Tángxīn huādiāo zuìdàn 溏心花雕醉蛋
Jiangsu

Makes 6 eggs

6 organic, free-range eggs about a week old and at room temperature
1 cup water
7 dried salted plums
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, smashed with the side of a cleaver
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon whole white or black peppercorns
Zest from half a lemon
1 cup Shaoxing rice wine, plus more as needed

1. Use a sharp tack or pin to poke a hole in the round end of the egg; just barely break through the shell without puncturing the inside of the egg.

2. Place the eggs in a small saucepan and cover with cool tap water by about 1 inch. Place the pan uncovered on the stove and bring to a boil stirring the entire time to center the yolk. As soon as the water comes to a full boil, where big bubbles are bursting over the surface, start counting down 30 seconds. At the end of 30 seconds, remove the pan from the heat, cover, and wait exactly 3 minutes. Then, immediately drain the eggs and cover them with cool tap water. Change the water a few times until the water remains cool. Drain the eggs and lightly crack them all over with the back of a spoon, but don't remove the shell.

Ready to enjoy

3. Clean the saucepan and bring the filtered water, dried salted plums, ginger, salt, peppercorns, and lemon zest to a boil; lower the heat to a bare simmer and cook the marinade for around 5 minutes. Allow the marinade to cool to room temperature and add the rice wine.

4. Place the eggs in a tall, narrow container. (This allows the eggs to soak in as little marinade as possible.) Pour the marinade over the eggs, cover, and refrigerate the eggs for a few hours; add more rice wine if needed for the marinade to completely cover the eggs. When the eggs are cold, shell them and return the eggs to the marinade for 24 to 36 hours. If you are not eating them within 36 hours, remove the eggs from the marinade so that they don't get too salty.

5. Serve the eggs as a simple appetizer by slicing them in half and serving on any light and refreshing vegetable, like microgreens or radish shoots or finely shredded leeks. Or, serve them as a summer breakfast on hot toast, with noodles or Congee, or as a midnight snack. It's hard to go wrong with this, the perfect egg.

Crunchy breakfast rice rolls -- a Taipei memory

The sweet version of these rice rolls was without a doubt the first thing I ever bought to eat in Taipei, and the reason for this was that a nice middle-aged Taiwanese lady would plant herself in front of my language school every single weekday morning and sell them from her simple cart.

She was that lovely sort of woman who seemed to run Taipei’s underground economy: short, strong, with a smiling and ruddy face, her arms and neck were covered with gaily printed cotton to protect her from the sun, and she wore a wide conical hat made out of bamboo sheaths. Industrious and incredibly dependable, she’d make her usual rounds as she pushed her iron and wood cart through our neighborhood, calling out “Fantuan!” (rice rolls) as she walked, and providing a delicious hot breakfast for what must have been about a quarter.

Like Laura Palmer: wrapped in plastic

One thing that has struck me as strange, now that I think of it: although this is a morning staple that most likely originated in Nanjing (Zhejiang province), I never saw anyone but Taiwanese ladies selling them. And this is really unusual, because it was usually expats from the Mainland who sold their hometown specialties.

Anyway, that nice lady would ask me whether I wanted sweet or savory that day and then spread the rice out on a wrung-out towel, as the moisture would keep the rice from sticking to the cloth. The finished roll would be wrapped up in a piece of paper and tossed into a plastic bag so that I could slowly savor it between classes.

Today, street hawkers are a rare sight in Taipei; things like these rice rolls are found almost exclusively now in the breakfast shops that specialize in hot soybean milk and the fried crullers known as youtiao. Sometimes called “fried devils” in both English and Chinese (youzha gui 油炸鬼), this name most likely originated in Hong Kong and was a misinterpretation of yet another one of their names, “fried crullers” (youzha guozi 油炸果子).

Chinese crullers

Both the sweet and savory versions are delicious and unusual and highly addictive. They are perfect with a bowl of hot soybean milk, a combination that brings back immediate memories of my first hot, humid, wonderful mornings in Taipei.

Crunchy breakfast rice rolls 
Zīfàntuán 栥飯團 
Zhejiang

1 rice roll (can be multiplied infinitely)

Sweet:

½ fried Chinese cruller (youtiao), see Tips

1 cup hot, cooked sweet rice (aka glutinous rice)

2 tablespoons chopped Toasted Peanuts

2 tablespoons Toasted Sesame Seeds

2 tablespoons sugar, or to taste

Pickled greens & radish

Savory:

½ fried Chinese cruller (youtiao), see Tips

A drizzle of peanut or vegetable oil

1 to 2 tablespoons salted dried radish (caipu)

1 to 2 tablespoons sour pickled mustard greens (suancai)

1 cup hot, cooked sweet rice

¼ cup (or more) fried pork fluff (rousong), see Tips

¼ of a finely chopped Pickled Red Chili, optional

1. Split the cruller down the middle into two long strips, cut each strip into 2 equal pieces (giving you 4 pieces per cruller), and then heat as many of them as you want them in a 300°F oven until very crispy. (You can bake them until they are very hard, if you prefer, at 275°F for a longer time.) If you are making the savory rice rolls, heat half of the oil in a wok over medium-high until it smokes and fry the radish for a few seconds to even out the flavors; scrape this out onto a small plate. Repeat this step with the other half of the oil and fry the pickled mustard greens. 

Pork fluff

2. If the rice is super-hot, lay a clean washcloth on your counter, cover it with a large, clean resealable plastic bag, and then top this with a foot-wide piece of cling wrap. (The washcloth will protect your hands, the plastic bag will give you a nice slippery surface, and the cling wrap will keep the sticky rice manageable.) If the rice is cool enough to handle, you can omit the washcloth.

3. Scoop a cup of the hot rice onto the middle of the cling wrap and use a rubber spatula to spread it out into a more or less 8-inch square. Sprinkle either the sweet or the savory condiments along the middle section and lay a piece of the toasted cruller on top. Use all three layers of the wrapping to roll up the rice and condiments around the cruller, patting the ends in to seal in everything. Lightly squeeze the rice roll in your hands to compact everything around the cruller and keep it from falling apart. Rearrange the cling wrap, if necessary, around the rice roll and serve it wrapped up. The diner then peels back the cling wrap as bites are taken.

Layer on the fillings

Tips

Use fresh, hot rice for this; reheated rice doesn’t have the same amount of stickiness or flavor. 

Be sure and used sweet (glutinous) rice, as other varieties won’t be able to hold the grains together in a nice layer unless you mash them into a pulp.

Fried crullers are now a common item in the freezer section of Chinese grocers; these packages usually contain 3 or 4, so just remove as many as you’d like and reclose the package in a freezer bag. If left in the fridge, the crullers will mold within a week, so freeze them for longer storage.

A toaster oven is perfect for heating up the crullers.

Nuts & sugar

Fry the salted radish and pickled mustard greens before you use them, as they otherwise will have an unpleasant packaged flavor. 

If you don’t care for salty things, they can be rinsed in a sieve and patted dry before being fried.

Pork fluff is meat that has been shredded, deep-fried, and then cooked with seasonings like soy sauce and sugar until it is fine and, well, fluffy. Taiwan has some good brands, with the best being (IMHO)  Hsin Tung Yang. Keep the pork fluff in a tightly closed jar, use it up within a month or so, and dry it out in the oven on low if it looses its oomph.

Nanjing's drunken eggs with molten centers

New York chef David Chang of Momofuku and the fine folks at McSweeney's recently came out with a hip new culinary magazine called Lucky Peach, and this first issue centered mainly on eggs and chicken.  This grabbed my attention because I am eternally in search of the perfect egg.  

And beautiful as these different approaches are -- in particular the whipped cream and maple syrup topped wonder known as the Arpege Egg -- in all good conscience I have to mention Nanjing's version as my own contestant for the most divine version ever.

First of all, the whites of the egg are deliciously flavored when done this way.  A good dousing of Shaoxing rice wine lends a heady sherry and mushroom aroma to the eggs.  This is tastefully and tastily countered with an infusion of dried salted plums, ginger, lemon peel, and whole peppercorns that turns this from a one-note wonder into a dish worthy of the most finicky eater.  Rarely do egg whites taste of much of anything, but here they serve as the perfectly flavored foil for a yolk that is molten.

Yes, you read that right: the center here is soft and runs like liquid gold, but it's also cooked to just the absolute perfect degree so that while the yolk remains just this side of solid, you won't taste any rawness.  Instead, the yolk serves as a delicate sauce for the white that cradles it.

But this dish is not just about flavors and aromas - it's primarily all about texture.

It doesn't get better than this

In most boiled egg recipes, the white is rendered into a relatively reasonable facsimile of a ping pong ball.  Those that aren't tend to look soggy and runny and anything but appetizing.  However, the folks in the Jiangsu capital of Nanjing have turned the practice of cooking an egg into the highest art, for the whites are cooked for a mere 30 seconds, made to sit in the hot water for another three minutes, and then quickly cooled down.  What this does is to give the whites the texture of the tenderest custard, and the yolks are sent just barely over that fine line between raw and cooked.

I've experimented with a bunch of different versions, happy to indulge my passion, and after tossing in this and taking out that, this has come to be my favorite way to prepare eggs, period.  It isn't too sweet, but also has enough pizazz from the rice wine and dried sour plums and all those seasonings to make me sit up and take notice.  You too can play around with the flavorings to your heart's content; just be sure and not use anything with, say, chicken fat or sesame oil, as the eggs should come across as clean and greaseless.

Traditionally this dish is made with fresh duck eggs, but because they are relatively difficult to find in the States, I've substituted large hen eggs; feel free to use whatever type of eggs you like, but do know that you'll have to experiment a bit in order to get the texture the way you want it, since the size of the egg will greatly affect the cooking time.  The only caveat I want to make is that the eggs should be organic and free range; the better quality egg you use, the better the result, since this is after all just about one ingredient.   

The eggs are best when they are about a week old in order to make them easier to peel.  Bring them to room temperature before cooking in order to a) have the perfect cooking time and b) keep them from bursting.  I like to prick the round ends of the eggs with a large tack, since there's a little air pocket in there, and if you give the air an escape route, the whites will be able to swell without breaking the shells.

Dried salted plums

The only unusual ingredients here are the dried salted plums, called huamei.  You can find these in just about any Chinese grocery store in the candy aisle.  They are very tart and sweet and salty all at the same time, and usually used as a tea snack.  However, I like pouring boiling water over a couple to make a tasty beverage for summer; just chill the infusion, add fresh lemon juice to cut the sweetness, and dribble it over a glass full of ice.  Instant refreshment!

Drunken eggs with molten centers -
Tangxin huadiao zuidan  溏心花雕醉蛋   
Jiangsu

Makes 6 eggs

6 organic, free-range eggs about a week old and at room temperature
1 cup filtered water
7 dried salted plums
1-inch piece of fresh ginger, smashed with the side of a cleaver
1 tablespoon sea salt
1 teaspoon whole white or black peppercorns
zest from half a lemon
1 cup Shaoxing rice wine, plus more as needed

1. Use a sharp tack or pin to poke a hole in the round end of the egg; just barely break through the shell without puncturing the inside of the egg.

Marinating eggs

2. Place the eggs in a small saucepan and cover with cool tap water by about 1 inch. Place the pan uncovered on the stove and bring to a boil.  As soon as the water comes to a full boil, where big bubbles are bursting over the surface, start counting down 30 seconds.  At the end of 30 seconds, remove the pan from the heat, cover, and wait exactly 3 minutes.  Then, immediately drain the eggs and cover them with cool tap water. Change the water a few times until the water remains cool. Drain the eggs and lightly crack them all over with the back of a spoon, but don't remove the shell.

3. Clean the saucepan and bring the filtered water, dried salted plums, ginger, salt, peppercorns, and lemon zest to a boil; lower the heat to a bare simmer and cook the marinade for around 5 minutes.  Allow the marinade to cool to room temperature and add the rice wine.

Gentle marbling under the shell

4. Place the eggs in a tall, narrow container. (This allows the eggs to soak in as little marinade as possible.) Pour the marinade over the eggs, cover, and refrigerate the eggs for a few hours; add more rice wine if needed for the marinade to completely cover the eggs. When the eggs are cold, shell them and return the eggs to the marinade for 24 to 36 hours. (If you are not eating them within 36 hours, remove the eggs from the marinade so that they don't get too salty.)

5. Serve the eggs as a simple appetizer by slicing them in half and serving on any light and refreshing vegetable, like microgreens or radish shoots or finely shredded leeks.  Or, serve them as a summer breakfast on hot toast, with noodles or Congee, or as a midnight snack. It's hard to go wrong with this, the perfect egg.

Today's koan: when is pork not pork?

When I served this dish to a vegetarian friend from Nanjing, he had exactly the same response as you probably did to the photo on the left: "Wow," he said, "that sure looks like pork." 

I smiled at his apparent nervousness and said, "Now, do you think I would do that to you?" Dr. Li peered closely at the dish before a big grin broke out over his face. "Su Dongpo!" he exclaimed.

Those of you who are fans of Chinese poetry may be wondering why he called out the name of one of the greatest poets of all time. This returns us to a favorite topic of mine from a little while back: the Chinese sense of humor, particularly when it concerns food. It also recalls another dish we looked at, Dongpo Pork.  And it also seems quite in character with my pronounced love for pig meat. Like a good mystery movie, all these disparate threads will come together in the end...

Part of the fun of the best Chinese meals is the element of surprise, of humor, of twisted expectations. This dish does that in spades. In this instance, you serve your guests, preferably vegetarians or vegans, with what appears to be a huge hunk of pig flesh and wait for their reaction. And then you either do as I did and wait for a sophisticated guest to guess the truth, or soothe them by revealing the actual ingredients, or carry the deception further by insisting that they at least try a taste... it all depends upon your guests and their ability to wield heavy cutlery. 

The fried "skin"

What we have here, then, is actually a piece of winter melon (which is actually a squash rather than a melon; more on that later) done up as red-cooked pork belly. 

Yup. That is just a vegetable, folks. But since it looks very much like Dongpo Pork, it's called Su (fourth tone) Dongpo, since su means "vegetarian," a play on the poet's name, Su (first tone) Dongpo.

The genius of this Jiangsu-style dish lies in the ability of winter melon to take on all the attributes of a good piece of pork. Look at that skin on the right, just after it's been fried: that looks just like lovely, crispy pork fat. The "skin" is scored just as pork fat usually is, which carries the deception even further. Finally, the winter melon is braised in a wine- and spice- infused sauce that drenches the very bland squash with a buttery, savory flavor that mimics that of pork. It's no wonder that this culinary trick fools just about everyone. As Mr. Li noted after a few considered bites, the recipe here is only slightly sweet, as is favored in Nanjing, but you can add more sugar if you like and have it in the style of Shanghai; both are equally good.

Winter melon, or donggua, is in season now, and it can range in size from a basketball to the heft and length of one of the pods out from the 1978 remake of The Body Snatchers. The tendency of winter melon to grow to breathtaking sizes is why this vegetable is usually sold in chunks. 

Remove just the green part

Chinese markets carry winter melon during most of the year, as it has a thick skin and so can be stored whole much like its other thick-skinned brethren, gourds and pumpkins. So why is it called a melon if it isn't sweet? For the same reason that other Chinese squash, like bitter melons, got weird translations: gua in Chinese is used for both melons and squashes. Somebody long ago just tacked "melon" on the end of its new English name and, voila, here we are today.

A word of caution when it comes to winter melons. Make sure that the slice you buy is really fresh. It should be completely white all over with no yellow or soft spots on the white flesh, which tell you quite insistently that it has been sitting around for a while. Smell it, as it should have just a faint squash smell and no sourness. Press it gently through the plastic wrap to ensure that it is firm. Finally, cook it as soon as you get home, since it doesn't improve by sitting around and in fact will deteriorate rapidly, turning soft with decaying juices spilling all over your fridge as it devolves into mush. Fortunately, this vegetable is terrific in any number of dishes, particularly soups with some Chinese ham and ginger, as well as this, the divine Su Dongpo.

Braise the squash in the sauce

Vegetarian roast pork belly 
Su Dongpo  素東坡
Jiangsu, Zhejiang

Serves 4 

1 pound piece of winter melon, as flat and square as possible
1/2 cup fresh vegetable or peanut oil
1 finger fresh ginger, thinly sliced
2 green onions, trimmed and cut into 2-inch lengths
1/2 cup Shaoxing rice wine
1/4 cup good-quality regular soy sauce
2 tablespoons sugar or rock sugar
2 star anise
1/2 stick cinnamon or canela
1/4 cup filtered water

1. Scrape off any seeds and fibers in the winter melon, trim the edges so that they are even and white, and cut off the rind with a heavy knife or cleaver; just trim off the green skin, and don't go too deeply into the flesh, as you want the slightly hard area under the green part. Then, score that skin side of the winter melon in a crosshatch pattern in lines about 1/2 inch apart and 1/2 inch deep. Wipe the squash dry with a paper towel so that it doesn't splatter when you fry it. 

2. Heat the oil in a wok over medium-high heat until it starts to shimmer; a wooden chopstick inserted into the oil should immediately be covered with bubbles. Carefully lay the winter melon skin-side down in the hot oil. Fry just the one side of the winter melon until it is an even brown color as shown above. Remove the winter melon to a small plate and drain out all but 1/4 cup of the oil in the wok.

3. Heat the oil again over medium-high heat and add the ginger and green onions; stir-fry them until they are nice and fragrant, then toss in the rest of the ingredients. Bring the sauce to a boil and add the winter melon to the wok, this time skin-side up. 

Vegetable becomes "meat"

4. Reduce the heat to low and slowly simmer the winter melon for about an hour, turning it gently and only two times while it is cooking. At this point you should be able to insert a wooden chopstick into the center very easily; cook a little bit longer, if needed, but try not to add more water unless most of the liquid has evaporated. Once the winter melon is tender, cook it slowly for another 15 minutes so that it becomes deliciously soft, loses its squash flavor, and soaks up the sauce. 

5. You may serve it immediately by using two spatulas to carefully transfer the very tender winter melon to a plate. Strain the sauce, and if it is not yet syrupy, boil it over high heat until it's thick and glossy. Pour it around the winter melon and serve to your unsuspecting guests. 

6. If you want to make this ahead of time, let both the winter melon and strained sauce come to room temperature, place them in a container, and store covered in the refrigerator; steam the winter melon for about 10 minutes until it is completely heated through before serving.