All About Tea

I’ve got another tea article up at English Tea Blog: Tea Recipe – “Tea-ramisu”

I was surfing the Internet recently, just minding my own business, and I stumbled across this tidbit:

Hugh Jackman – aka Wolverine – to be the face of Lipton Ice Tea

Hugh Jackman, the actor most famous as the testosterone-fueled Wolverine in X-Men, is to show his softer side in a global advertising campaign for Lipton Ice Tea.

Jackman, who also played the rugged stockman Drover opposite Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, has signed a three-year deal to front a multimillion-pound campaign, the first he has starred in outside his native Australia.

The European marketing director for Lipton Ice Tea, Francois Bazini, said that it was Jackman’s singing and dancing performance as a host at last year’s Academy Awards that convinced the company to sign him up.

“He has a great personality liked by men and women,” said Bazini. “He is very different from many other actors. He is a true entertainer who can dance, sing and act. We will use all of his skills.”

[...]

Singing. Dancing. Hugh Jackman. For tea.
Who’s the cool kid now, coffee?

Note: The previous comment in no way implies I dislike my coffee brethren who have really cool coffee-making and coffee-drinking toys and accessories that apply perfectly well to tea too and who’ve had actors that warm my nerdy heart (*cough*Scott Bakula/Folgers*cough*) sing coffee’s praises.

Continuing the occasional cat-in-the-teacup post here:

I’ll take mine with cream and sugar – to go, please.

On a  more serious note (yes, I’m capable of that), check this out:

In a three-part series, The Phnom Penh Post (a Cambodian English-language newspaper) traces “the legacy of a royally ordained Cambodian tea plantation – plus a local strain of the popular plant.”

Khmer brew: exploring the parviflora tea strain

Today, many tea plants can still be found growing in the wild in Kirirom Park, where the old plantation used to be, not far from the King Father’s former summer residence. All teas – whether a grassy green, a buttery oolong or a hearty black – come from the same species of plant.

It’s the variety of the plant, soil conditions, altitude, rainfall and the processing that make the difference in the end result: the most-consumed beverage in the world after water.

But what happened to the tea plantation after the war?

A 1996 article in the Post recounts how 1,500 hectares of Kirirom were signed over to a private Cambodian investor, who planned to establish a tea plantation, despite the region’s being declared part of Cambodia’s system of national parks by Royal Decree in 1993. The old prewar tea plantation, which measured some 300 hectares, was part of it.

One year later, in 1997, the Rasmei Kampuchea newspaper reported that the investor had sold many hectares of the park, installed a sawmill and destroyed the plantation.

Nowadays, it’s believed that some of the surviving tea plants are harvested opportunistically, on a small scale, by locals.

[...]

However, if you’re feeling down in Phnom Penh and fancy some fresh tea leaves for an uplifting brew, there’s no need to travel to the Indian foothills of the Himalayas anymore – a short day trip to Kirirom will do the trick.

Picking your own leaves may equate to one of the more labour-intensive ways of brewing a cuppa – but it would also surely make one of the most satisfying cups you’re ever likely to taste.

See also:
Part II: Quality is their cup of tea
Part III: Making time to enjoy a cup of tea, according to tradition

I mention Star Trek in one of my posts and what doth the tea-drinking universe bequeath upon my little nerdy heart? A mug from Wil Wheaton with the (in)famous Captain Picard quote on it in big bold lettering: “Tea, Earl Grey. Hot.”

See? See!?

(There’s even a Flickr Group Pool for photos of the mug in the wild.)

Who is Wil Wheaton? Peasant! Wheaton is a writer with a talent for heartwarming stories of daily life that we can all relate to, an engaging Twtiterficiando, and an actor well known for – among other roles – his part as Wesley Crusher in Star Trek: The Next Generation. For those not familiar with Wheaton’s current success as writer I recommend reading Just a Geek – a memoir that will illuminate his trajectory from actor to writer and child to adult – as well as Sunken Treasure, a collection of gems from his almost decade-long stint of blogging. The mug is part of Wheaton’s promotion of his newest book, Memories of the Future.

Yes, yes, I know – I’ve said before that I prefer teacups to mugs.

And I do, if truth be told. It’s not just that I associate mugs with coffee, it’s also that teacups do seem to have a perfect balance between the amount of tea in the cup and the amount of said tea that is exposed to the atmosphere. Whether this really makes any difference at all to the tea drinking expereince or, more importantly, to the taste, is probably a matter for scientists. Or Mythbusters. Or somebody other than me. Regardless of actual facts, I’ve always felt that tea just tastes better in a tea cup. Besides which, the volume in a mug is usually off for estimating the cuppage (snicker) from my teapots. And yes, I just made that word up.

But never mind all that! This blog is about sexy tea things and the irrational desire to possess all things tea by a cat loving lady with too many teapots. So I eat my teacup words and declare that this mug is freakin’ hot, baby, and I must get my grubby little paws on one. Seriously! This mug looks like it could beat the pants off of Royal Albert in a cage match. (Don’t tell my mother that because I’m hoping to inherit her entire Royal Albert Old Country Roses collection someday.)

Ooh. I can even brew a cup of Serenitea: Kaylee for the mug and be in AU teanerdvana. Or is that going too far?

So I … um … forgot to mention here that I guest blogged over at The English Tea Store on Tea and Travel. (It’s a pretty nice tea blog, BTW. Check them out on Twitter too.)

So now I’ve mentioned it. You may carry on.

I just discovered funny tea-related videos on YouTube.

LOL. Videos, I haz ‘em. Let me inflect them upon you.

 


 

Oooh. Aaah. Oooh. Aaah. Ooo. Long. Ooo. Long. *jazz hands*

 


 

Yo, I’m an Earl Grey Killah! I even have it with ICE. Beyotch! (Note: Not Safe for Work – language.)

 


 

Green Tea on the West Siiide! (Okay, so this one really isn’t that much about tea. It’s hilarious anyway.)

Yes, I have yet another cute kitty in a teapot post. Honestly, this might end up being a recurring theme if I run across any more. Unlike the plaintive little kitten of the previous post, this little fuzzball appears to have originated from the Mirror Universe. See the little goatee? No?

(Mirror Universe comment brought to you by the tea-drinking Star Trek nerd that I am.)

After our 51st day of temperatures over 100 degrees here where I live, you’d think that all I’d be drinking would be iced tea.

Not so! Walk into any building around here and the air-conditioning is running full blast. It’s like a Scandinavian sauna experience in reverse all day. First you freeze your tush off in the air-conditioned indoors, then you walk outside into the blessed warmth and finally take a seat in your sauna-like car. To complete the experience simply run back indoors into the chill – it’s like plunging into a frozen lake.

So yes, it may seem strange to review a lovely spiced hot tea – one that might be better suited for sipping around a roaring fire and served by Sven The Alpine Ski Instructor (or Svetlana, depending on your preferences)  – in the dog days of summer but hey, it’s freakin’ freezing in here!

Coco Cardamom Tango (No. 935) is yet another one from SpecialTeas.com:

Full-leaf black tea with a decadent blend of cocoa bits, cardamom pods and cinnamon. Smooth and delicious.

I followed the recommendations for brewing, pouring fresh boiling water over 3 heaping teaspoons in my 3 cup teapot and letting it steep for 2 and a half minutes.

The resulting tea had a lovely smooth and medium-to-full bodied feel with absolutely no bitterness at all. The spices added a sort of “warming” feel it it all and oh-my-gosh it smells heavenly. It tasted a bit like drinking a gingerbread cookie.

I tried this one with milk too but I think it does fine on its own. In fact, I think it’s better without the milk. I didn’t try a second brewing with this one but I’d suspect it’d do just fine; the black tea seems to be of good enough quality to stand up to a second brew and the spices are hardy enough to impart their flavor one more time.

Final judgement? Heartily recommended.

Making proper Thai iced tea isn’t that hard. But given how long it took me to finally get it right, you’d think it was the most complicated procedure in the world.

Maybe it’s just me, but trying to decipher the mystery of the sweet concoction I’d savor at Thai restaurants was challenging and frustrating at first. Every recipe I consulted told me to add sweetened condensed milk to the prepared, cooled ice tea. No matter what I tried, it seemed like I could never get the right ratio of sweetened condensed milk to black tea to make it sweet enough. It never looked right either, with globs and blobs of the syrupy milk floating in my cold tea. Even thinning out the thick syrup with hot water to create my own milky version of a simple syrup didn’t work.

It wasn’t until the local Thai restaurant told me their secret that I finally figured it out. And now I shall share it with all of you (who probably already know all of this, thus making me feel all that much more silly for having taken years to figure this out). No matter. I’m too proud, happy and satisfied to be finally sitting here – in the 150 bazillion degree heat of a Texas summer – with my lovely glass of Thai iced tea to care about that.

First you need to brew up some strong black tea. Any black tea will do, but one flavored with star anise is traditional. Be warned, if you buy a “thai tea” blend at the store (you can find it easily at any Asian food mart) it may also contain a bit of red or yellow food dye, so be careful not to get any on your clothes or you’ll end up with instant stains.

I use about four heaping soup spoons of tea leaves to a full kettle of boiling hot water and pour the hot water directly over the tea leaves, giving it all a quick stir with a spoon before letting it steep – about 5 minutes.

After it’s finished steeping, I pour it through a fine meshed strainer into another pitcher and add about a cup of sugar. Stir this up and put it in the refrigerator to cool down. Yes, it’s REALLY REALLY strong and REALLY REALLY sweet. If you want to have this without the milk, you might add about a third of the same amount of water and then pour it over ice before serving.

Or hey, you can drink it straight up and then mow your yard. And the neighbor’s yard. And the side of the highway. And then do something nice and relaxing, like build a house out of toothpicks.

To serve, fill a glass with ice and then pour about two third of it full with the dark tea and the last third with milk. Voila! easy-peasy Thai Iced Tea.