Kettle's on, soup's on

Every now and then, I run into posted recipes for tea soup. The variations are myriad, but the best ones, in my experience, center on green tea and salmon.

This is the one that crossed my path recently, a quickie from Samovar which trims away some of the traditional Japanese ingredients in favor of a few extra steamed veggies. The one that's always worked for me is this one: blanching some veggies, poaching the salmon, then steeping the tea in the broth. A little matcha for presentation is a fine idea.

Of note: there's also an old meat-fish-and-potatoes soup colloquially referred to as Fisherman's Tea, though tea is not an ingredient.

Egg hunting? Try Chinese tea eggs

As Easter weekend arises, no doubt many of us have eggs on the brain. The kind of egg dying I prefer to do as an adult, however, involves cracking the shells and boiling them in tea.

Chinese tea eggs are typical mixtures of beauty and nourishment. Here's a good recipe for the tasty snacks, fairly easy to make — though, in my experience, a skill requiring some finesse.

Holiday breakfast everyone's sure to Finnish

Looking for a new recipe for the holiday mornings?

I have been indulging in this breakfast delight all year long, and I've just about got it perfected. Over the years I've tried different versions of a Finnish pancake — a suomalainen pannukakku, a big poofy oven-baked, custard-like creation made simply of eggs, milk, flour and sugar. I finally found one I can work with, from Sunset magazine.

Theirs uses honey and lemon zest to brighten it up, and fresh berries in the mix — raspberries inside, strawberries on top. Don't know about you, but the process of pureeing and then straining (and straining, and straining...) the raspberries to get the seeds out is more of a pain than I'd like in the mornings; thus, I often toss in plump blueberries instead (as pictured, above).

Be sure to let it rise and brown the edges; it'll settle down out of the oven. It's a killer breakfast, and works equally well with a stout black or a floral white tea.

Toddy with tea (cough, cough)

I sound like a goose (honk, honk) running late for the trek southward. It's three in the afternoon and I'm still in bed, in nightshirt and robe, surrounded by tissues, Advil, a pot of tea (of course), three quilts and a very cozy cat.

This stubborn head cold began a couple of days ago as a scratchy throat. Just recently, I'd read a blurb in Time Out magazine about some trendy bars in town serving up creative hot toddies, and I thought: that's the ticket! So I set to perfecting my recipe. Medicinal purposes, you understand.

It's quite restorative, though. The basics of a toddy: whiskey, honey, lemon, spice and hot water. In my book, there's absolutely no sense in using plain hot water; you want flavor, you want spice, so use tea. Black tea goes well with the whiskey — into a mug balanced to taste and tolerance, plus juice from half a lemon, a hefty squeeze of honey, and I add some ground spices (cinnamon and ginger), though whole would be fine if you can let them steep a bit (perhaps in the tea).

The origin of the toddy itself may have a connection to tea:

No one knows who created this drink or who named it. Some believe that since there was a lot of trade with Great Britain and India at this time that the name might have come from an Indian beverage named toddy, which is created from fermenting palm tree sap. Others believe that the name came from Allan Ramsay’s 1721 poem, The Morning Interview, in which Ramsay refers to the water used for a tea party as coming from Todian Spring (which was also called Tod’s well). As Todian Spring is the water supply for Edinburgh and as hot water is one of the most important ingredients in a hot toddy, it’s possible this is where our beloved warm libation acquired its name.

Either way, it's been wonderful on the throat. Given that ethanol evaporates around 180 F, you can control the alcohol content by aiming your liquid temperature higher or lower, but keeping the alcohol in helps you relax. Nyquil's full of it, after all.

Iced tea and baking soda

My apologies for my recent absence. Life gets in the way sometimes. And I totally missed National Iced Tea Month!

The May issue of Southern Living magazine presaged that lengthy June holiday with a feature headlined "Sweet & Simple: 28 New Ways to Enjoy Tea From Pitcher to Platter" (for some reason, the same feature online lists only 19) loaded with some great drink and food recipes, including a wonderful looking sweet tea-brined chicken and a sweet tea tiramisu. (This is southern living, mind you, so we're talking sweet tea and only sweet tea.)

This one I've tried, for blackberry sweet tea — all hail those buckets of berries at the farmers market this summer! — and is worth noting for a particular ingredient:

3 cups fresh or frozen blackberries, thawed
1-1/4 cups sugar
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
Pinch of baking soda
4 cups boiling water
2 family-size tea bags
2-1/2 cups cold water
Garnish: fresh blackberries

1. Combine blackberries and sugar in a large container, and crush with a wooden spoon; stir in mint and baking soda.
2. Pour 4 cups boiling water over tea bags; cover and steep 5 minutes. Discard tea bags.
3. Pour tea over blackberry mixture; let stand at room temperature 1 hour. Pour tea through a wire-mesh strainer into a large pitcher, discarding solids. Add 2 1/2 cups cold water, stirring until sugar dissolves. Cover and chill 1 hour. Garnish, if desired.

"Er, baking soda?" a friend asked.

Depending on the variety you're making, or the astringency of your particular kind of tea, the soda blunts the tannins that, in this case, double from the tea and the berries. As Fred Thompson writes in his book Iced Tea:

There are as many ways to brew iced tea as there are Southern grandmothers. I grew up on iced tea made by bringing a small amount of water to a slow boil and then pouring it over the tea bags to form a concentrate. More water was added to finish the process. I guess I'm biased toward this method, but it definitely does make good tea. The baking soda might seem strange, but it softens the natural tannins that cause an acid or bitter taste.

Stay warm with cinnamon tea

A friend's tales of travel recently reminded me of a tasty cold-weather tea treat: canela tea. On a hiking trip in Ecuador, he paused along a trail and chewed leaves right off a fragrant, red cinnamon tree; higher on the peak, his guide boiled water and served tin mugs of canela (cinnamon) tea. These were the same mountain paths once explored by Columbus and his followers; they were as desperate to find spices like this as they were to find gold.

This is an herbal infusion, of course, though it's not unheard of to include some black tea. Canela tea is about as simple as things get: boil water, throw in cinnamon sticks, simmer till it's good and brown. Sweeten to taste. Easy peasy. (Don't try ground cinnamon, no matter how well you think you can filter the results. Also, if you want to take it up a notch, hit the specialty market for "Mexican cinnamon" or "canela," which will be looser and not as tightly curled as the American spice-rack variety and thus will steep better.)

Here's a better, more considered approach from Sunset magazine: As above, boil water, add cinnamon sticks, simmer. Remove from heat, remove the sticks. Stir in honey and a wee bit of almond extract. Ladle into mugs, garnish with more cinnamon sticks. Highly recommended: amending each mug with tequila. Enjoy around a patio fire pit.

Tea smokin' in Carolina, and Lady Grey's drunk

Catching up on some magazines — found a couple of interesting features:

Food & Wine's Sept. issue has a profile of North Carolina chef Andrea Reusing. The writer launches the piece mentioning that he first heard of her when a restaurant co-worker asked him, "Have you heard about the woman in Chapel Hill smoking chicken over tea?" Loved by celebrities and rock stars as well as lucky locals, her restaurant, Lantern, is revered worldwide despite its relatively remote location. For her "legendary tea-smoked chicken," Reusing brines the birds in a spicy mixture, then uses a combo of rice, tea, spices and chile to smoke with. The full recipe is here. (The magazine previously interviewed her here. My Earl Grey-smoked pork roast meal, plus other tea foods, is here.)

Martha Stewart's Everyday Food mag (I'm not always crazy about her, but this is a nifty little monthly book full of some great simple recipes) this month had a recipe for a sweet tea cocktail — a mini-infusion, of sorts. The Spiked Berry is simply: Combine a cup of sliced strawberries, a cup of vodka and a bag of Lady Grey tea. Steep it an hour. In a pitcher, stir together a quarter cup of powdered sugar with a cup of fresh lemon juice. Toss the tea bag and pour the vodka mix into the pitcher. Yum.

The correct ratio for an Arnold Palmer

So sayeth the creator and namesake. From ESPN's Page 2:

Adding some sparkle to everyday iced tea

It's already chilly in Chicago. This morning had a definite autumnal bite, and after walking the dog the flip-flops were put away for the season. So, drat, I meant to write about this while the weather was still a bit steamy ...


One of the things we encountered on our European travels early this summer was sparkling iced tea. In the vast majority of cafes we visited, when one of our companions, Richard, asked for iced tea, he was served a bottle of sparkling, usually a Lipton variety.

Richard, it's important to note, likes nearly all of his liquids to be as sparkling as his personality. At home, in fact, he possesses his own carbonation system, with which he adds bubbles to his drinking water. It's pretty marvelous: a faucet, a Brita filter and a SodaStream Penguin Water Carbonator — no more wasting money and glass buying Pellegrino or Perrier. Richard "penguinizes" everything he can, so when we returned home, of course (and at my urging), he tried penguinizing his own tea.

It's tricky and messy experimentation, as most liquids refuse the carbonation if they already have something else dissolved in them. Richard found it easier to brew the tea separately, and strongly, then add the sparkled water. Here's his conclusion:

1. Prepare steeped tea, 3x strength; chill.
2. Prepare simple syrup [Water and Sugar, 1:1]; chill.
3. Place about 1T of syrup in a highball; add squeezed quarter of lemon wedge; fill 1/3 full with strong tea; and top with penguinated water.

As for buying it bottled, I still haven't located sparkling iced tea in any U.S. stores yet, though Lipton says varieties like this green tea with berry flavors is in stores (and was just launched last year). But given that it's just another bottled drink that's mostly high fructose corn syrup, I haven't looked that hard. Nestea and Lipton both have sparkling varieties throughout Germany and some of northern Europe.

p.s. Here's a great recipe for homemade sparkling tea with lemon, cucumber and mint!

You've got a pink kink in your think

This weekend we enjoyed a Saturday afternoon lunch on Chicago's famed Devon Avenue, which features several blocks of Indian restaurants and shops. After stuffing myself with chana masala and chai, we wandered into one of the food markets. In the tea aisle, I found a few interesting items, including ... pink tea?

It's a plastic jar of green tea leaves, labeled "Kashmiri Pink Tea." The pink part comes from a complicated preparation process, detailed on a poorly printed and folded piece of pink paper just under the lid. The recipe is basically a different take on chai using, of all things, baking soda.



I tried this out today, melding the pidgin English of the jar's instructions (which call for "backing powder") with some recipes found online (like this one, this one and mainly this one). I used two pots. In one, I boiled water and added the green tea, along with some crushed cardamom and a pinch of salt. After this boiled down a bit — and become a strong, dark green tea — I added half a teaspoon of baking soda, plus a half cup of cold water. The pot fizzed, and the tea went noticeably reddish. The power of chemistry. While that simmered a while longer, I heated milk, ground nuts and a cinnamon stick. In the end, both were strained and poured together (like the Malaysian teh tarik makers). The result: a strong chai, surprisingly smooth, with a bitter underpinning.

And, yes, it was kinda pink. (Some recipes include pink food coloring, which is just cheating.) But it's not something so delicious that I'll be going through all this rigamarole again. Unless you come over and ask for some pink tea.

The chai of wine

President's Day — that's a holiday, really? I never remember that I'm off work to honor our leaders until the Friday before. So we never make plans for the long weekend, we just relish the sweet surprise of an extra day. Which is nice considering (a) it usually falls near Valentine's Day, (b) our anniversary is two days before that and (c) it's February in Chicago and good for hibernating at home. Which also means a few pots of tea will be poured. And a few cocktails. One of our favorite wintertime treats actually marries the two tastes.

It's called glogg, aka mulled wine, or spiced wine. The spouse is of Swedish decent, so when the goblet is raised here, we call for glogg. This weekend, in fact, we enjoyed a bottle of Vin Glögg from the nearby Glunz Family Winery in Illinois. It's beautiful, smooth stuff with a base of red wine and supplemented with port (!), citrus oils, nut oils, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon. Does that mix of spices sound familiar, tea lovers? That's why I call it "chai wine."

In fact, when I've made my own glogg before, I add black tea It really rounds out the flavor and gives the brew a bit of heft. Here's my time-worn recipe I have scrawled in my bar book (alas, unattributed):

1 bottle or merlot or cabarnet
1 cup orange juice
zest of lemon and orange
1 cinnamon stick
5 whole cloves
1/2 cup of brown sugar
2 tea bags (a basic orange pekoe will do)

Add everything except the tea to a saucepan. Simmer about 10 minutes (let it steam, but don't boil it). Remove the pan from the heat and drop in the tea bags. Steep 5-10 minutes. Strain and serve.

Using chai throughout the kitchen

Another winter walk this weekend with a mug of chai in hand. How I love it. But in addition to drinking the stuff — bought or blended at home, with hot milk and honey — I enjoy applying the spicy flavors throughout the kitchen. Some things I've tried and tinkered with:

• The chai syrup recipe I posted a while back is fabulous for mixing up a quick serving, but it's also scrumpdillyicious over ice cream.

• A neighbor of ours adds chai powder or mix to his pancake batter. I also recommend this recipe for Oatmeal-Chai Buttermilk Pancakes.

• By now you know my love of vodka infusions, and the chai liqueur I made last fall has been a delicious dessert treat and nightcap all winter.

• Chai makes a great poaching liquid for fruits, especially pears.

• I've even used it to deglaze a pan or two when sauteeing onions, when the spice and the carmelizing might be perfect together.

• Speaking of savory recipes: Chai makes a lovely brine for meats, too, a la this Chai-Brined Pork Tenderloin we enjoyed last night (alas, without the apple chutney). Cooking Light magazine has been a good friend for many years; their recipe for Chai-Spiced Winter Squash Puree is awesome, too, over pasta or by itself.

• Over the holidays, we also made shortbread rounds spiced lightly with cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and pepper. No actual tea, but we called it chai shortbread, and in addition to dessert uses it sure tasted good with a cup o' chai, too.

Green tea snow ice cream and more

It's a weird winter when my native Oklahoma has had significantly more snow than my current Chicago home. But we're finally due a big dump tonight, and my kettle's at the ready. Forget snowmen: it's time to get out there and make a snow pot!

Actually, if the snow on your outdoor tabletops or lawn is clean enough, make some snow ice cream. There are hundreds of different ways to do this. This is the one we've tried that actually gets some decent results (though you'll need to eat it quickly, as the snow melts easily): Beat a pint of whipping cream till it firms up, then stir in a can of condensed milk, a spoon or two of vanilla extract and sugar to taste (1/4-1/2 cup?). This being a tea blog, of course, when I tried this out last winter I added a scoop of matcha green tea powder. Fold in fresh snow — until it achieves a thick, creamier consistency. Voila!

About those tabletops, we might recommend catching freshly fallen stuff instead. Before or during le deluge, set out a nice big mixing bowl or a wide pan.

If you want to make actual ice cream flavored with green tea, well, then this is yet another gleeful opportunity to link to this bizarre video in which a dog explains how to do just that.

Or simply heap some snow in your cup or kettle and make tea. Arctic naturalists and Himalayan hikers do it all the time. Here's an outdoorsy video demonstration (chopping your own wood is, thankfully, optional...):

The winter season was ideal for making tea. With snow easily accessible, a hearty scoop with a stone pot placed atop a fire would melt the snow, and then boil the water up to the proper temperature. Snow water had a very pure and crisp taste, so Mithos & Tuna wanted to enjoy it as much as they could. This was possibly their last day together for some time, so they felt that she could be a little generous with their tea consumption.
— from Fire Emblem: The Rune of Shadows

Of note: Snow tea is an actual tisane once common in China. It's not actual tea but a rare herb, heralded for lowering blood pressure. But the snow tea herb, it seems, is endangered due to overharvesting. This "red snow tea" certainly looks absolutely delicious (now that's why you keep some glass teaware in the cubby!), but let's wait and see if this delicacy comes back before contributing to its decline.

Instead, try Teavana's Snow Geisha white tea — white tea blended with sour cherries and cranberries. Delish.

Also, dig these "snow tea cups"! Nice shape, and the glaze looks like they were fashioned from new-fallen snow. (With matching pot.)

Wouldn't you like to be a (hot) Pepper, too?

Driving by the Tulsa Twelfth Night bonfire, circa 2002.

Every Jan. 6, Epiphany, in Tulsa, Okla., where I used to live, people pile their spent Christmas trees in a city park — a mound of dry evergreenery sometimes reaching 10-12 stories — and then light a match. They burn 'em in a giant, gnarly red bonfire. It's a celebration of Twelfth Night, with throngs of people gathered 'round, usually warming themselves appreciatively on a frigid night. I always loved the idea that this funky new-year baptism/orgy of pagan fire was sponsored by the municipal government in Oral Roberts' hometown.

You'd think there'd be a lot of pipin' hot coffee and such served at such an event, but the only warm beverage peddled from a cart at Tulsa's Twelfth Night is an unusual creation: hot Dr Pepper. I know, sounds revolting. Hot Coke, for instance — I've tried it, absolutely God-awful. But whatever the secret ingredient of Dr Pepper really is, it works well warmed up. The trick, though: you have to add lemon. The soda-maker's official recipe calls for a mug o' Dr Pepper heated (on the stove or the microwave) to 180 degrees and poured over a slice or two of lemon added.

Try it. Trust me. As a friend of mine loves to say, we can't hide from our white-trash heritage. This is a mulled wine for the American masses.

Several inches of fresh powder

A friend of a friend owns and operates a lovely gelato spot here in Chicago (they have a yummy Chinese Green Tea flavor, and I even crave the Turkish Roast Coffee), and she threw me a couple of samples from the coffee and tea vendor they use. The company is Big Train, supplying restaurants and coffee houses with powdered drink mixes. It's a weird thing pouring powder into a tea mug and filling with hot water. It's a weird taste, too.

The Matcha Mist, for instance, can be prepared two different ways. As mentioned: powder in mug, fill with boiling water, stir. Not recommended. Looks like Swiss Miss, tastes like Swiss Miss. The other option is to pour milk into a blender, add the powder mix, add ice and blend. Not bad. The mix is basically matcha powder, powdered milk and powdered sugar, but it makes a nice smoothie-shake. (I also tried the Khoi-Na rooibos mix, which managed to squeeze out a decent honeyed flavor, both hot and cold.)

Still, it's easy to make this yourself: Into a blender (I love my Rocket Blender for quick, easy individual smoothies), add milk and/or yogurt (yogurt adds body, plus you can use complimentary flavors from fruit to vanilla) and some ice cubes. For fun, add fruit if you want, or a flavored syrup. Blend it, then add the matcha powder toward the end. (For maximum blending, whisk 1/2 teaspoon of matcha with a couple of ounces of hot-not-boiling water, then add that to the mix.)

Your dog wants some mmmmmatcha

I crave ice cream any time of year, but before it gets too cold here's an easy recipe for green tea ice cream. Don't ask me why there's a dog on the counter with this woman, or what's up with the narrator's quirky, robotic voice. Nothing surprises me from Japan anymore. [via Teatropolitan]

Sweeping up some links from the tea tin

• When I met with Rod Markus of the Rare Tea Cellar a while back, he described himself as the kind of guy who seeks out the rarest of anything. "If I saw a $30 doughnut, I'd try it," he said. Perhaps he's already tried the most expensive tea in the world. Here's an article about such a tea, Yellow Gold Tea Buds, just more than $100 for 50 grams. What makes it so expensive? It's harvested on one mountain, on one day — with golden scissors. Wait ... it's also painted with gold flakes. How'd you like to have the gig of painting the tea leaves? Yeesh.
• This sounds kinda cool: Coca-Cola is test marketing a machine for restaurants that allows customers to brew single servings of tea, almost like going to the fountain for a soda. Tea on demand.
• How do Cylons make their tea?
• The milk-first/tea-first debate continues to rage in England. Here's a sharp and convincing argument for milk-first, with great animation. (Thanks, Dave!)
• How'd you like to have tea in bed with "Top Chef's" Padma Lakshmi?
• Bill Daley at the Chicago Tribune caught up with the buyers behind Ineeka, one of the better local tea companies. Nice story, with good sidebars about brewing and an intriguing black-tea barbecue recipe. (See Lainie's latest Ineeka review.)
• Elsewhere in newspaper profiles of small tea businesses, here's one piece about Tea District, and another. Who's ready to launch a tea biz?!
• Reports from the first World Tea East — from World Tea ... plus an interview with World Tea's George Jage (includes a recipe for Darjeeling vinaigrette!).
• Mmmmm, coconut water green tea!
• A contest for baseball-loving tea drinkers. Terry Francona likes a cuppa?!
• Several weeks ago, an 18-year-old bright guy in Texas made tea — from poppy seeds. And then promptly died. His father is now speaking out about the dangers.
• Beautiful photos of snow in Darjeeling.
• And, finally, here's a lil' video from the Art of Tea folks, so good you can almost smell the stuff ...

Art of Tea Promotional Video from One Lens Media on Vimeo.

Chainess is nice

Chai season is here! Here's a fantabulous illustrated recipe for lattes on the cheap, from Lucy Knisley (via Tea Finely Brewed) ...

(Click it for the Venti-sized goodness!)