I have a confession to make – I love food and I love to cook, but I’m sadly deficient when it comes to cooking Chinese food. I never really learned to cook while growing up. I only really started taking an interest in cooking in Junior year at NYU. So you see, I’ve only ever cooked real food in the US.
So while I have tons of experience cooking Italian, American, even a little basic French food for masses of people, I have very little experience cooking the good, Southeast Asian Chinese food I grew up eating. I’ve been trying to rectify that situation this year. Last month, I cooked Tau Yu Bak (Pork braised in soy sauce) and Lotus Root Soup as baby steps. I cobbled together recipes for both by combining a number of recipes I found online, and to my surprise, both dishes turned out well. Even some of my more culinarily adventurous New York friends liked these two dishes.
When I saw that Clement was hosting the 17th edition of “Is My Blog Burning?” and that the theme would be tea, I knew what I wanted to make. Bak Kut Teh (literally translated: meat bone tea). I love Bak Kut Teh, and while it’s a dish better served during the winter months, I felt I could make an exception.
Imagine my chagrin when I found out that Bak Kut Teh was called a tea, but didn’t actually have tea as an ingredient. Not to be thwarted, I decided to cook it any way – and to accompany it with some Chinese tea eggs for good measure.