Cha Trung Hap + Eggs Benedict

 If you follow my Facebook page for this blog, you may have seen my request for recipes and ideas to use up my expiring eggs. Phil had bought buy one get one free carton of eggs and we were struggling to finish them. I posted a request for recipes and got more suggestions than I could handle. Two people told me that eggs don't really expire at the expiration date on the carton. Yahoo Answers seems to think they're good for 4-8 weeks after that date. By the time I learned this, I had already challenged myself to eating eggs all week and didn't want my friends' ideas to go to waste.

Thanks to all my friends and readers who responded with ideas. I meant to make a recipe each day but it turns out, two recipes was enough to last us the week and finish off our carton of eggs. This is what I made:

 Cha Trung Hap or Steamed Pork and Egg Custard. This custard is usually eaten with broken rice, or com tam. I have always wanted to try one of the recipes from The Ravenous Couple and this was the perfect opportunity. As the recipe was already laborious and adventurous for a newbie cook, I did not bother making broken rice or any other items in the recipe.

From top left to bottom right: Beef (used in another dish), soaked silver noodles, shrimp(used in something else), and soaked and julienned woodear mushrooms.

Cooking annatto seeds with oil to get the red color. Failed...it wasn't red enough.

Separating egg whites from egg yolks. Used 4 eggs total.

I didn't have ground pork so Phil had to chop up pork into small pieces. This substitution turned out to be a bad idea. You'll see why later. Here's my steam set up. This was also a bad idea, I'll explain later.

Ok, it's later, time to explain why this was such a failed attempt. 1) The chopped pork did not hold together as well as ground pork would have. 2) I had the water level too high in my steamer set up and water flowed into my bowls, basically making boiled eggs on top. In generally, everything didn't hold together as well as I hoped. Taste wise, it wasn't terrible. A little bland but nothing that a dosage of seasoned fish sauce didn't fix. It took us a week of eating this for lunch and dinner with rice to finish the whole thing. I made 4 bowls total of what's pictured above. Not a bad attempt and I'm confident I'll get it right next time.

Richard posted this Hollandaise Sauce Recipe on Facebook and it was perfect for using up the remainder of the eggs. This is my hollandaise sauce mixture after I took it off the double boiler.

Making 3 poached eggs. They turned out better than they look here. Excuse the iPad photo quality.

The final result. Not too bad. You can't really tell because the eggs are white on a white plate next to white rice. But I assure you, it was quite tasty. Hollandaise sauce only uses egg yolks so I had egg whites leftover and decided to poach them by themselves. I sprinkled some furikake and soy sauce on the rice. Tabasco sauce on the eggs. Side of pickles and carrots and I had myself a quick and good breakfast that also used up all the leftovers from the fridge. That's something you learn when you start cooking on your own; how to make meals out of leftovers before they go bad. Thanks for all the help, friends. That's a week of eggs!