Let’s go there, shall we?

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I’ve been drinking an unusual (for me, anyway) amount of herbal teas lately. I used to drink them all the time; then I started getting more into black and green teas, and my love affair with herbal simples and blends fell by the wayside for quite a long time. But I’ve been feeling my way back into drinking them again lately, partly because I’ve been growing quite a few herbs that are good for making into tea, except when the *insert expletive of choice here* possums or caterpillars or snails get them first.

That’s beside the point though, for the moment.

The thing is: I call them HERBAL TEAS.

Regardless of whether they contain Camellia sinensis, or not.

I base my definition of ‘tea’ on the preparation method, rather than the ingredients. Unapologetically. I regularly see people having other people jump down their throats before they can even have a sip of their lovely herbal tea, because the herbal-tea-drinking people called it tea rather than a tisane or an infusion. How tedious.

Let’s be inclusive, not divisive. Let’s go there.

 

A travesty

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So much of one, in fact, that I’m not even going to commit the obvious pun.

From our trip to the supermarket this morning, Exhibit A:

How many things can YOU see that are wrong with this picture? It’s the berry flavoured one that particularly distresses me.

Luckily I’d had a proper cup of freshly brewed real!chai at the farmers market before I saw this, or I may not have survived.

Bronze fennel tea

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I haven’t had a huge amount of success with growing fennel this year, although more than I’ve had with growing chives, which despite allegedly being the world’s easiest herb to grow will not even SPROUT for me, no matter what brand of seeds I use. Yes, I am bitter about this. At any rate, I have managed to grow a couple of decent plants of herb fennel – the bronze-foliaged kind, which is extremely pretty.

 

And when I decided to pick some and make it into tea, imagine my unexpected delight when I found that the infused liquor is PURPLE. Yes, true purple! Isn’t it gorgeous? It feels incredibly exotic to drink something that is such a lovely colour.

ETA: the spent leaves are up green, all the bronzey colour washed out :)

Such a dreadful brew

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I’m currently enjoying some of Kerry Greenwood’s mystery novels featuring her flapper heroine-detective Phryne Fisher; great literature they are not, but definitely a nice relaxing read, and being set in Australia in the 20s, there is plenty of tea being drunk all over the place as a sovereign remedy for just about everything.

Here’s a lovely little quote from Ruddy Gore; Phryne is taking breakfast with her Chinese lover, Lin Chung, who has just had congee and tea brought in for her:

An attendant girl poured out some tea for her. It was a bracing brew with an under taste of metal. ‘And this is what you gave me yesterday – was it only yesterday, Moon Lady? Iron Goddess tea. Later in the day we might try chrysanthemum. Tea is a cult in China.’

‘I’m not even going to ask what you think of Western tea with milk and sugar.’

‘To such a dreadful brew milk and sugar must be added; they mitigate the taste,’ he said politely.

Snerk.

Weird tea dreams

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Relatively often, tea friends from Twitter make an appearance in my dreams – in particular Ken (@lahikmajoe), Geoff (@lazyliteratus) and of course Robert (@thedevotea). We don’t always drink tea – in fact I rarely remember exactly what we get up to, though one time Ken and I were travelling around Australia or something like that. In any event, a good time is usually had by all, which is naturally what you’d expect in such convivial company.

Last night, or more precisely, early this morning just before I woke up, Robert, Ken and I were in a cafe of some sort. Robert had ordered some tea, but not just any tea – a coffee-flavoured tea, which arrived in one of those very standard, never large enough, too-thick-rimmed cafe coffee cups. The tea seemed to consist of what looked like cinnamon sticks and leaves and there was a white marshmallow in it. Shortly all these bits of flotsam dissolved to make what looked more like a cup of hot chocolate than tea. Robert didn’t like it; he may in fact have hurled it away.

I don’t recall precisely what occurred next, but in due course Ken was leaning towards me saying, ‘Take a look at the review he wrote,’ and he retrieved a piece of crumpled paper from the floor. It seemed to be (somehow, mysteriously) printed on that cafe receipt paper your bill always comes on, and I am not sure of the exact wording, but it was extremely vulgar, so I probably wouldn’t be repeating it in this blog’s mixed company anyway. I’m sure Robert would never say such things in real life.

Now I thought I might try some of this coffee-flavoured tea for myself and see if it really was that bad. Mine arrived in a teabag which contained green-looking tea leaves, which I thought was a bit odd given what Robert’s had looked like, and it smelled so stongly of coffee there was no way I could drink it.

Anyway by this stage Robert had come back from wherever he’d just been and was calling over the waitress/cafe owner/whoever it was and showing her the review, saying ‘Hey, have you seen this review I wrote?’ (a rather ill-advised, not to mention tactless, move, I thought) and the waitress told him that she’d received his email but that his turn of phrase was far too indecent to publish on the Internet, so she had deleted it.

I woke up shortly after that.

O Christmas tea, o Christmas tea…

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I was lucky enough to receive an enchanting surprise gift from Xavier (@teaconomics) just before Christmas – a packet of ‘Zar Alexander’ tea by the London Tea Co. This unusual sounding tea is a blend of Darjeeling, Assam, jasmine and Lapsang Souchong; in the note that accompanied it Xavier said that the mix of cultures and histories reminded him of TeaTrade itself, and how right he is. Like the site, this tea is a melting pot blend that cannot fail to delight tea lovers everywhere… Or so I reckon, anyway.

I was blown away by the scent as soon as I opened the packet, and rapidly fell in love with the taste of the this tea, the floral notes of the jasmine, the smoke of the lapsang, the briskness of the Indian teas… Just simply delicious. And I loved it so much that I ended up serving it on Christmas Day at lunch as an iced tea.

I’d found a recipe online at taste.com.au for an apple iced tea that I wanted to offer as a non alcoholic tipple but I was a bit unsure as to which tea I should use. The original recipe called for two English Breakfast teabags – it’s ok @thedevotea, I don’t actually have any so don’t have a meltdown – but what to substitute? Ceylon, too fruity. First flush Darjeeling, too mild. Daintree, too biscuity. Nilgiri, too robust. I was a bit stumped, frankly.

And then! I had the inspiration to use Zar Alexander. And let me tell you, dear readers, that mixed with some apple juice, apple and lemon slices (I didn’t end up bothering with the rest of the recipe, due to lack of time and space) – this tea moves from the sublime to the absolutely bloody fabulous.

Everyone, everyone, everyone LOVED it. If you too are lucky enough to have some of this on hand (and I believe a few of you have also been the recipients of Xavier’s generosity), brew it up regular strength, let cool, add an approximately equal volume of clear apple juice, and enjoy.

I hope you have all had equally lovely Christmases and that a very happy New Year awaits you…

The best kind of Storm in a Teacup

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Imagine my delight when I saw a tweet from Sarah Cowell (@teasense) the other week saying that a new tea bar was opening in Melbourne that night.

Then imagine my near-hysterical level of excitement when I discovered that said tea bar, Storm in a Teacup, is situated a mere 15-20 minute walk from my house. I’d be surprised if you hadn’t heard the shrieking as I sent poorly spelt and excessively exclamation-marked emails to my husband, sister and best friends saying ‘we hav to go!!!!!!’

Ahem. Well. You get the idea I’m sure.

I finally managed to get there today, and let me tell you, this is the tea drinking location of my dreams. A lovely selection of teas, some of which I’ve never tried before! and most of which are impossible to come by in a retail setting. Staff who brew the tea for you, at the right temperature, correctly timed and strained. Second infusions offered!

In a cafe world where ghastly metal contraptions with leaking, uncloseable lids masquerade as teapots (shudder), and where even teas served in proper pots are delivered to you with no means of telling how long the contents have been steeping and no way to strain them properly either… It was like being transported to tea heaven.

I love everything about Storm in a Teacup, from the lovely Hannah who owns it and was so pleasant to chat with, to the quirky semi-retro decor, to the eclectic mix of teawares running the gamut of chunky, kawaii and delicate (some for sale, too), the tea books for sale or browsing, and oh yes, the cake. Tea infuses everything, from cakes to smoothies to cocktails.

So what did I drink? I opted for a Korean green, sejak, because that’s a tea I’ve never tried before. It was delicious and delicate through two infusions, reminding me very much of a dragonwell. Tennant had a Keemun Mao Feng, served to perfection in one of those stylish stemless wine glasses, très cool. Pippin had some milk in a teensy tin mug and tried to draw on the menu.

‘Meeting mummy in teashop!’ he said enthusiastically numerous times. Yes my boy. There will be a lot of that in our future now that Storm in a Teacup is on our scene.

I’d apologise for all the superlatives in this post, but in good conscience I can’t quite bring myself to do so. I’m so over the moon about having Storm in a Teacup around. Read more about it here, or visit their website, or better yet, drop me a line and let’s meet up for a cuppa.

A eulogy

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Mmmm biscuits

Anyone else miss the updates and biscuit news on the cheerfully British site Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down? It has been so long since anything new was added…

 

Where now are Nicey and Wifey? Where is the tea that was brewing?

Where are the cake and the biscuits, and their stalwart reviewing?

Where are the dunking and sipping, the slurping and the chewing?

They have vanished like steam from a kettle, like the dregs from the teapot;

There are archives rather than updates; new content will be not…*

 

I love their book (I have the ‘classy hardback’, a most welcome gift from Tennant some years ago)… nothing gives me greater cravings for biscuits. It is through the work of Nicey and Wifey that my love for chocolate HobNobs was both discovered and validated.

Come back, Nicey and Wifey. The world of tea and biscuits (and a spot of cake) needs you!

 

*with apologies to JRR Tolkien and the Rohirrim… but the format was too good to pass up.

 

Not so cosy

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In the grand tradition of @lahikmajoe and @thedevotea, I present you with a bit of a rant, tangentially related to tea!

I am sure that MANY of us here are well on-board with the joys of snuggling down with a cup of tea and a good book. Could there be anything better? Ok, maybe a whole pot of tea instead of just one cup and a REALLY GOOD BOOK by a FAVOURITE author which often actually includes TEA as well! But even your bog-standard cup of tea, sit down and book is a pretty winning combination.

In this vein, there is rarely anything I like better than sitting down with an Agatha Christie alongside my tea and getting caught up in a good old-fashioned ‘cosy mystery’, particularly when it’s one I haven’t read for ages and I can’t remember how it all turns out. I am quite likely to do a little skip and a jump (not while I’m holding my tea of course) on my way to the couch.

I started reading Aggie Chris (as Dame Agatha, Queen of Crime, is affectionately known to me and my sister) at the ripe old age of eight, when I used to pinch ‘The Seven Dials Mystery’ off my mum’s bedside table. By the time I was twelve I think I’d read just about every one of her works. Gosh how I loved them and, obviously, still do. Except that, on my most recent re-readings (at the much, much riper and slightly wiser old age of 32) I am vastly more aware of the extremely racist, classist and misogynist aspects of these otherwise very fun books. Of course Aggie Chris was a writer of her time, and many, if not all, of her works hark back nostalgically to a Golden Age (for the privilieged, anyway), even if that Golden Age was in fact itself mostly fiction, a bit like the world of PG Wodehouse.

But enough with the post-modernism (or whatever intellectuals are up to these days, it’s a while since I studied literature at university). It’s just that some of the more uncomfortable moments in the books offend me more than others and I need to get it out of my system.

For example, in ‘Taken At the Flood’, which I just finished the other day, the main(ish) female character, having nearly fallen for the handsome, devilish ‘bad lot’, ends up back with her steady, stay at home fiance of seven years, realising that he actually IS her one true love after being nearly strangled to death by him.

Yes, really!

Her fiance almost chokes her to death for the excellent reason ‘If I can’t have you, no one can,’ and (once rescued in the nick of time by Hercule Poirot), she decides that she will in fact marry him because living on the edge of potential domestic violence at any time will actually be quite exciting and shows he is a REAL MAN!

Wowsers. Crikey. Yow.

It’s taken quite a lot of tea to wash the taste of this out of my mouth.

Singbulli Autumn Queen – a most unusual Darjeeling

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I haven’t had a Darjeeling tea quite like the Singbulli Clonal Autumn Queen (autumn flush 2010, which I got from Thunderbolt Tea) before.

It’s definitely a ‘queen’ tea, nothing princessy or lady-in-waiting-like about this one. It’s savoury – that’s the only way I can think of to accurately describe it. It has some of the fruitiness I associate with Darjeelings but this is a very subdued characteristic to my palate. ‘It is full bodied mellow and malty at the same time’, the Thunderbolt Tea write-up states. This sounds about right. ‘Highly nutty’ is another phrase applied… well, that could equally well be said about me, no wonder I like this tea so much (I’d prefer not to be described as extremely vegetal though, thanks).

I’m becoming quite the fan of autumn flush teas, probably because I like quite strong teas, and this is a really robust cuppa, about as potent as I like them without milk; I find it particularly welcome at breakfast time when I don’t fancy a pot of milk-in-first Assam or Daintree.

Have you had this tea? Did you like it? Tell me more!