Month: April 2014

Kung Fu Tea

My first introduction to tea was through the large pot that sat in the middle of our breakfast table for the first 20+ years of my life¹. Like most westerners, my family added milk and sugar to this to mask the fairly strong flavor. In my early 20’s, I next met “tea” in the US, when I stumbled across something called iced-tea, from a can… that was pretty horrific. Things started looking up in 2007, Blancs and I had a tea ceremony when visiting Beijing. I was impressed about the complexity (and science) behind what seemed like, up until that point, a relatively benign brewing process… who would have thought it was more complicated than throwing 2 bags in the bottom of a teapot and filling it full of boiling water? How interesting to know that green tea required water at a lower temperature and was best brewed in a glass cup. How odd to realize that black teas could taste better without milk and sugar!

Blanca sipping tea in Beijing (she still refuses to make this the photo for her website – I’m planning to start a public campaign at some point):

Fast forward a couple of years, B and I were living in Argentina. A friend of ours, Ale, patiently cured our mate over the course of a week or so and we were off and running. During our year there we loved the drink – it probably didn’t help Blanca’s caffeine intolerance, but it was an enjoyable way of bringing on heart palpitations. We left Argentina earlier than we wanted, so never developed our full-scale panza verde, but mate left an imprint on many friends. To this day, our friend, Flavia, still drinks it in London.

In true wannabe fashion; mate and thermos under my arm… I thought I was Uruguayo for a while:

Now that we’re living in China, it seems like a great opportunity to develop a lifetime addiction… let’s start how to brew a proper cuppa…

In contrast to the west, but similar to Argentina, the enjoyment is in the journey itself. I have friends who want nothing more than to spend their whole Saturday afternoon in their local teahouse. The process should be time-consuming. All the better to force us disconnect from the day-to-day and contemplate more profound things in life… like getting the news and stock updates on your iphone.

The pot is key in achieving this. It’s tiny. The general consensus is that it should be the size of your fist. This forces a number of things… an intense flavor, laborious brewing process, multiple brews and… patience. Yixing clay teapots are recommended for most teas (except white and green). They are better at holding the higher brewing heat and the clay actually absorbs the flavors and oils of the teas over time. The first step is to heat the pot. You next add the leaves. Typically you let them rest in the sealed pot for a while in order to absorb the heat and moisture. They’ll start to expand and release initial flavors after approximately 1 minute.

The first brew is typically fast and discarded. The most likely reason for this is also the least mystical; it’s to remove any dirt on the leaf from the harvesting process. The discarded water is used to heat the sipping cups (which are similarly small). The next brew (the first official brew) is the strongest, about 75% of the caffeine in the leaves is actually released in this brew. Brewing time depends on the leaves, Oolong and Puer are typically in the range of 30 seconds. You can overfill the pot slightly – this allows the liquid to spill, accelerating the process of absorbing flavor and color into the pot.

Subsequent brews follow a similar process – add the water, let is overfill in the pot, brew and serve. The leaves will mellow with subsequent brews, a good rule of thumb is to double the brewing time with each addition of water. You will notice is that the flavor of the tea will evolve over time – no two brews are the same. At the end (some leaves can support up to 8 brews) the utensils are cleaned with boiling water (never scrubbed or bleached) and left to drip dry in the tea tray.

The overall process is called gongfu (kung fu), similar to the martial art. Like many things in China, the name was applied so long ago that it’s exact origin has been lost, found, misinterpreted and corrupted many times in its long history. Some friends say this is because tea can make you strong and kung fu fighters drink it, others because “gong fu” means to “excel at”… with only exceptional tea resulting from the process.

Either way, it’s going to be a fun journey to addiction…

cheers, coops

¹ The Irish are the third largest consumers of tea, per capita, in the world – I don’t say that to add to either my credibility as author or consumer, well…

Tags China, oolong, tea

China Spain

I miss Spanish food

Lately I fantasize about Spanish food: the extra virgin olive oils, the Iberico ham, the gazpachos, the fresh and sweet lettuces, the olives like Gordal and manzanilla, the canned fish. Thanks to Polyvore.com I was able to create this collage about my favorite Spanish items.

China

Deciphering a Chinese Food Magazine

Post author By Blanca Valencia
Post date April 3, 2014
4 Comments on Deciphering a Chinese Food Magazine

Most foodies I know include trips to supermarkets, markets and food stores into their itineraries when travelling overseas. I also make it a habit to buy cookbooks and food magazines even if I don’t understand the language. I wanted to find a magazine to compare to some of the magazines one would find in Spain, France or the USA. Food magazines don’t reflect what people really cook but what they aspire to cook and this insight can be at times fascinating.

The newspaper stand on Youhao Square had several to choose from. There was one magazine dedicated to Schezuanese food and several others dedicated to food and travel. I chose a home cooking one that had on the cover a dish resembling a Thai curry dish or a Brazilian moqueca. In a second-tier city like Dalian, cooking food like this is really wishful due to the lack of ingredients. The magazine is called “Home Delicious Food” and it is published in Shanghai.

The pictures and food-styling are skillful and the dishes all look truly delicious, except the silkworm pupae (more on that later). The recipes of which there are over 50 are varied. These are more less these articles:

section on Brazil
a children’s section
an article about Holland
a section on baking with matcha green tea
rice stir fries
quick recipes
health section using ginseng, goji berries
a section on cooking silkworm pupae
pressure cooking recipes
a small decorating section that features an apartment in monochrome colors
a section on potatoes (I thought Chinese people thought potatoes are lowly food?)
a decoration section and a craft section very much like Martha Stewart would have

What struck me the most about the magazine was that the majority of the recipes are for 1 or 2 people . The children’s recipes are also for one as if “little emperors”, term used to describe Chinese children who get excessive attention from parents and grandparents as a result of China’s one-child policy, don’t dine twice on the same food? (I will be posting a blog about Chinese Children’s cookbooks later on in the week so I might have more answers then)

Do Chinese people not like leftovers? Or invite friends over? Or batch-cook and freeze? What is going on here? Does their legendary thirst for the freshest food really go that far? Why go through all the effort of cooking all these lovely meals for one to eat in a single sitting? What about the “four-two-one” family structure, where families are really 4 grandparents, a couple and a child?

Yes, yes I know food magazines have a huge element of fantasy and help feed our food related delusions of grandeur but I am not so sure about the Chinese. I need to investigate more. Pressure cookers seem to be very popular in China. Normally in the West pressure cooking and freezing go hand in hand. For example, make a concentrated tomato sauce freeze half, books recommend. Even though supermarkets have shelves lined with different pressure cooker models it has been hard to understand how they are used at home but I can imagine it is mostly for stews. Unfortunately no Western published Chinese cookbook has recipes and there are no pressure cooker books solely devoted to China (or slow-cooker ones for that matter). There seems to be preference for wok shaped pressure cooker, although the capacity is half or even a third of a Western one. I did buy a Chinese pressure cooker cookbook that I am also on the process of deciphering.

The silkworm pupae article is intriguing. Obviously silkworms are fairly common fare. They sell them at all the markets and supermarkets. After a little research I found that silkworm pupae is considered high quality protein with high levels of essential amino acids. Some studies show that you can get 100% of all your vitamins from eating 100 grs. of caterpillars or similar insects. My teacher Erica who is from Dalian says she only eats skewers of silkworm pupae at barbeques a couple of times a year. Now I have some recipes to try.

The ads also ignite the fantasy of a world full of Western brands of the young rich Chinese. There’s ads for rice cookers, chicken stock, Fissler pans (their prices in China are double their prices in the USA), Breville (who can afford all these “imported” appliances?), European meat, Whirlpool, California dairy products, Supor (a Chinese brand that has a very strong presence in supermarkets and appliance stores) and Thermos .

It seems this magazine is really aimed at young and very affluent urbanites and not thrifty housewives.

The cost of the magazine is 8 yuan or $1.50.