The house was well-stocked with books, and being a foodie in training, I often picked a cookbook out of the shelves to peruse. I remember writing down many recipes out of the 1000 Recipe Chinese Cookbook by Gloria Bey Miller and being fascinated by the variety of intriguing ingredients and types of cuisine that were presented in its pages. One of the recipes I remember vividly was for Tea Eggs, hard-cooked eggs steeped in black tea and fragrant spices.
I never did get around to making these eggy delicacies until just last week, after having read the latest selection for Cook the Books, the online book club that I and three of my blogger buddies take turns co-hosting every other month. Our featured book this time 'round is The Color of Tea, by Hannah Tunnicliffe, and the author herself has graciously agreed to serve as the judge of our contributed posts about the book and the dishes we were inspired to make.
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Grace and Pete are recovering from multiple rounds of unsuccessful infertility treatments, and as one way of clawing her way out of her malaise, Grace decides to open up a tea shop that specializes in delicately colored and flavored pastries, including many varieties of macarons, those delicate French almond and meringue confections. That's when I really got into the novel, with its descriptions of the customers and coworkers that Grace befriends. The reader finds out the intriguing back stories of these people and of Grace herself, which makes her a lot of more sympathetic than she was to me at the beginning of the tale. I also enjoyed learning more about the issues that foreign workers face which is an integral thread in the novel as well.
One thing that really irked me, though, was the front cover art. It's a delicious looking cover, alright, but given that our protagonist was a redhead, I kept waiting for some explanation of who the long-lashed brunette was featured on the cover. Shouldn't the art department have some conversations with the editorial department at the old publishing house before the book is cranked out?
Please join me in visiting the other Cook the Books posts about The Color of Tea back at the blog. Deb of Kahakai Kitchen is our wonderful hostess this round and she will be shortly posting the roundup of writings and recipes about our featured novel.
And feel free to join the regulars in our foodie book club in reading our June/July book pick, M.F.K. Fisher's collection of essays, "How to Cook a Wolf".
6 comments:
Perfect, ingenious choice! And a lovely post as well. Love it. The eggs look great even if they did not taste any different than a hard boiled egg. I must try five spice powder. I always see it in the shops but I am reluctant to buy it.
I have always wanted to make tea eggs but have never gotten around to it. So pretty and a great choice for the book.
That's funny about the cover--I love it but never really thought about the hair color--too entranced by those pretty macarons I guess! ;-)
Tea eggs were such a great choice for this book!!! And gorgeous too :)
I love the cover and I never put together that the hair color doesn't jive. :) This was an inspired recipe to post.
Yeah, it's a gorgeous cover. It really does suck you in.
Five Spice Powder is so luscious. It's makes things taste velvety and rich to me.
Well, at least they look pretty Rachel, when I made them the color didn't even turn out well. I had better luck tinting a lampshade with tea.
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