Chinese tea eggs

Chinese food fascinates me but nothing caused me more confusion on initial discovery than this method of cooking eggs.  The first Chinese recipe I book I owned was Marks & Spencer's book 'Chinese Cooking' by Deh-ta Hsiung and bought in 1981.  I still have it and it brings back so many happy memories of my (retrospectively staid) introduction to this exotic and alien cuisine.
Chinese takeaways didn't feature on my radar until my mid-teens.  My introduction came instead from a wonderful family friend, Vera,  who took my younger sister and I to Chinatown in London for the first time when I was about 12.  I was hooked from the first moment, the smells, the hustle and bustle, and the ducks hanging in the windows of the restaurants as we strolled by.
Vera took us to a restaurant on Shaftesbury Avenue where she was greeted as a long lost friend.  It's only whilst typing this that I remember that she was brought up across the road in Soho, part of the close-knit Italian immigrant community who have introduced us Brits to the joys of Italian coffee as well as proper Spaghetti Bolognese and Parmesan cheese.

Mark Bittman's crustless gluten free almond tart

My first ever parent-free overseas visit was, like most English schoolkids, a day trip to Boulogne.  This included the obligatory visit to Auchan which, thinking back, was more for the teacher's sanity than the kid's education!  How influential that trip was - so much so that I still remember exactly what I brought back: 4 different cheeses, the stone pot of grain mustard and a crepe pan.

I fell in love with the array of pans, coffee filters and implements that greeted me in aisle after aisle in this enormous supermarket.  This was heaven beyond my wildest 11 year old dreams.  But what to buy?  I settled on a crepe pan as it was the cheapest non-stick pan in the store.  Non-stick was aspired-to but untested in our household.  I relished the thought of arriving home and presenting my mum with this new modern pan in which we would create paper-thin lacey crepes flambeed with brandy, instead of our more familiar thicker pancakes rolled up with a sprinkling of Jif lemon juice and granulated sugar.