Adventures in Gongfu Cha

The other night I decided to treat ymself to a gongfu cha session, just as an experiment. It's something I've been putting off - partly due to a lack of confidence, and partly due to a lack of time. However, after reading Hobbes' two very encouraging posts at The Half-Dipper (see here and here) on finding your own way with tea and not worrying about 'rules' or 'doing it right' - I thought I would give it a go.

Not having a hot-plate that I could put on the table to keep water heating near my tea session, nor a suitable kettle to use on one anyway, I realised it would be actually okay to walk to the

 kitchen and back, bringing fresh water with me in a teapot. Limiting preconception #1, gone - I was off to a good start!

I set up my little Yixing teapot, set of cups, and a bowl for waste water on the table. The noise of my electric kettle seems like it would be contrary to the soothing experience I was hoping for - so I decided to heat my water in our smallest saucepan on the gas stove in the kitchen. Much quieter and more restful, especially in the gathering dark, even though it takes a lot longer; but I wasn't in a hurry, was I?

The tea I chose for brewing was my Milky Oolong from Zensation, which I've only prepared at home once before; I have a stash of samples of Taiwanese oolong sitting in my cupboard, but my crisis of confidence was still lurking in the background, and I didn't feel like breaking out a completely new tea, yet.

The aroma of the dried Milky Oolong leaves was just as heady, floral and fragrant as I recalled - a good sign, I must have sealed the packet well last time. But what did I need to do to brew it - what were the vital steps again? Well, all my tea books had been packed away in preparation for the upcoming move - no recourse there. The internet? Frankly, I couldn't be bothered. I'd just give the brewing a go anyway - 'no rules', remember - and see what eventuated.

So: warm water into the Yixing and cups. Drain. Add the tea leaves. More hot water, pour it out straight away, to rinse and slightly unfurl the tightly-curled leaves. More hot water; steep time of about 2 minutes is recommended on the packet for the first infusion. Wait quietly; candles are flickering and it's pretty dark in here, but I don't want to turn on the overhead lights yet if I can avoid it. Pour the steeped tea into the waiting warmed teapot for serving, so it doesn't

 overbrew. I can't seem to pour from my Yixing without dribbling tea everywhere. Well, that's ok for now. A steaming stream of tea from the serving pot into the aroma cup; place the drinking cup on top of that, flip. I made that dribble too.  Never mind. Inhale the peachy, flowery aroma, then sip the sweet liquid from the tiny cup.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

I only made it through two infusions at this particular session - despite what some of my friends may believe, there IS a limit to how much tea I can drink in one go - but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the flavour of the first infusion carried over quite strongly into the second; I seem to recall that it dissipated fairly quickly last time. 

I was reluctant to discard the leaves after only two infusions though, so I filled the Yixing up with cold water a bit later, and set it in the fridge overnight to cold-brew a third - which rewarded me the next day with a stunning golden infusion, still rich in peach fragrance and flavour, extremely mellow and sweet.

This tea session was a valuable lesson in, if not quite 'beginner's mind', then something very like it anyway - and it was very liberating to remember that, really, the tea police are not going to come after you. The main thing is to make your tea, and enjoy it in the moment. Sure, there are ways to make the experience more enjoyable - I can't relish a cup of green tea that's been rendered burnt and bitter by water that's too hot - but if you get caught up in the desire to 'get it right', so much that you can't relax, or are too hesitant to even plunge in at all...? Time to let go.

Thanks to Hobbes for the timely reminder and inspiration.

Pride, Prejudice, Tea

My husband and I managed to watch our way through the entirety of the BBC Pride and Prejudice mini-series (1995) last week. Amazingly, neither of us saw it when it was on TV (though I recall my friends and sister being very keen on it), and the last time I read P&P was so many years ago that I couldn’t remember the plot in any detail. Consequently each episode saw us agog to know what happened next.

And not only agog about the unfolding story either – well, at least not in my case. While I readily admit to swooning over Mr Darcy by the end (sigh!!), I also became – quite naturally, I would argue - rather obsessed with checking out the teawares that featured in different scenes. So many gorgeous patterns – and honestly, just as swoon-worthy as Mr Darcy from my perspective (although I am willing to recognise that not everyone may share this point of view).

Where else to start my search but with the omniscient Google – but even I was surprised how quickly a search for ‘china pattern bbc pride and prejudice’ returned me exactly the results I was looking for. Check out this article about the china pattern used at Longbourn, and this one about the ones at Netherfield and elsewhere – both from the highly informative Jane Austen’s World blog.

How I would love to have a single teacup – an entire set would definitely be too much to hope for – in the Cornelia Green pattern by Mottahedeh as used at Longbourn! Well, perhaps I can always keep an eye on eBay.

But what kind of tea would Jane Austen – and her characters – be drinking? That early in the 19th century it would almost certainly have been China tea – tea gardens did not really get underway in Assam, India, until after 1825, so The Story of Tea informs me. During Austen’s period, tea was generally drunk after dinner (which was usually served around 3 or 4 pm), and not as ‘afternoon tea’ – that only became popular a little later in the 1800s.

There is a great deal of helpful background on daily life in England during the 19th century (from servants, to ‘the season’, to food, clothing and social calls) in the entertaining book by Daniel Pool, What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, which I recently acquired from the library. Alas, it contains nowhere near as much detail as I would like about tea; I shall have to explore its extensive bibliography to find out more. Indeed, I am not sure how I shall resist reference works with such arresting titles as this: Movable Feasts: A reconnaissance of the origins and consequences of fluctuations in meal-times, with special attention to the introduction of luncheon and afternoon tea, by Arnold Palmer, 1952. Looks like the kind of thing I could really snuggle up with – so long as I also had a cup of tea, of course.

Brown Betty Teapots

The history of teawares is fascinating – it has been affected by, and indeed itself affected, so many different converging cultural, economic, physical and social aspects of its consumers’ lives. This was brought home to me recently by a couple of posts by Gongfu Girl, on her own blog and on The Taste of English Tea blog, about Brown Betty teapots. I didn’t realise that the name referred to such a specific type of teapot, made with a particular type of clay and glaze.

I don’t own a Brown Betty – though I do have a very lovely large pot in a similar shape made by London Pottery Co. – but I would be most interested to acquire the genuine article (and having read the above-mentioned posts, I shall be careful to make sure that it is genuine). I have seen teapots that look very much like Brown Bettys in the enormous collection gracing the high shelves at Miss Marple’s Tea Room in Sassafras – alas, they’re used for display only, and not serving tea, so I don’t know if they’re the real thing. (I will mention in passing that it is my ambition to one day own as many teapots as there are at Miss Marple’s, but it may take me some time to reach that point).

The other thing that Brown Betty teapots make me think of is a book of short stories called ‘The Dribblesome Teapots’ by Norman Hunter, which I read and loved many years ago as a child. I don’t remember the plot terribly clearly, but it revolved around the difficulty of pouring the King and Queen’s tea without it dribbling all over the place (a major royal disaster, indeed, as anyone might agree) and I have a feeling that the only teapot capable of doing the job was the trusty old Brown Betty. I may be misremembering though, and will have to try and find myself a copy of the book to be sure.

Tea and Health?

I try not to read too much about the health benefits of tea. (Yes, I know I just wrote a couple of posts about how good ginger and chamomile are for you… and they ARE good for you… and so is regular tea, particularly of the green variety… but I don’t really think that my comments fall into the tea-vangelical category that many other tea-and-health postings on Camellia sinensis do.) As someone with a background in herbal medicine, who is also often stubbornly resistant (still) to taking Panadol for even the most blinding headache, I am fascinated by the capacity of plants to do us good.

Yet the most tea-vangelical of the tea-vangelists (and I may be thinking here about some of the lovely people at T Ching, who are clearly passionate about their tea, but sometimes a little obsessed; witness some of the comments posted to articles on their blog) often decry the practice of drinking black teas – particularly with milk, heaven help you – and portray green and white tea drinkers as the chosen few who will inherit the kingdom of good health… and woe to anyone who dares to touch a nice cup of English Breakfast with milk and a bit of sugar… (cue thunderclaps, lightning, and the howling of wolves)

Ok, so maybe that was a bit extreme, but truly, I find all this information a little bit depressing, which is why I tend to avoid it. I like my black teas (with milk, depending on the kind) equally as much as my greens and whites and oolongs, and nothing spoils enjoyment of something so much as being told that it isn’t good for you. Well, nothing spoils my enjoyment more, anyway; I imagine there are some quirky perverse spirits out there who would revel in such information and indulge with all the more relish in the ‘guilty’ pleasure.

I can certainly see why adding milk to black tea (or any tea, mind you, though that would largely be yukky instead of potentially delicious) may inhibit its health benefits: tea derives many of its healthful properties from flavonoids which, as I understand it from my herbal medicine classes, are bound by proteins (such as those in milk) and rendered less active. But honestly, so what? There are many many other sources of health-giving plant nutrients in the world, and so long as you’re consuming a variety of them I don’t think anyone should be too fussed about their tea consumption, of whatever sort.

There are also vast differences between an infusion of a plant, which is drunk, and the individual constituents of that plant extracted in a laboratory and then concentrated, made into creams and applied topically, or sold as tablets to be taken. MarshalN makes this point beautifully in a recent post at his Tea Addict’s Journal. What’s more, there are oodles of other reasons to drink tea of all kinds, completely apart from any health benefits that might accrue to you: it’s warming or cooling, depending on the type and how it’s brewed; it’s refreshing and thirst-quenching; it can be a pleasant social ritual or a soothing quiet time on one’s own; and it comes in so many myriad shapes, colours and flavours that you could probably spend the rest of your life exploring them. I certainly intend to…

Gingerly, gingerly...

I have been suffering from the most rotten cold over the last week or so. I thought I might be going to escape the plague that was sweeping my work area, but alas, it was not to be. I’m through the worst of it now, but up to probably the most annoying stage – where you’re clogged and coughing but, unfortunately, unable to dislodge anything useful by blowing your nose. Very irritating – but fear not, I shan’t continue with any more detailed dissection of my symptoms, it is quite safe to read on.

So needless to say my sense of taste is rather shot at present, which means that only the strongest flavoured teas are of any use to me… I’ve been having quite a bit of peppermint (indeed, I am drinking some greedily as I type), but my current favourite morning tipple is ginger tea with lemon and honey, guaranteed to soothe my throat and refresh me after a night of sniffle-interrupted sleep. I am normally quite a fan of just lemon-juice-in-water first thing in the morning (that’s my inner naturopath for you), but it’s 2 degrees or less in Canberra when we get up at the moment so something rather more warming is called for, and ginger tea hits the spot.

Ginger is a very therapeutic herb, whether as tea or as part of the diet. It reduces nausea, soothes the digestion, warms the stomach (promoting better digestion that way as well), and improves circulation to all parts of the body, particularly the hands and feet. It also appears to have strong benefits for the other parts of the circulatory system, helping to reduce blood pressure and cholesterol, as well as being anti-inflammatory.

Ginger tea is a funny thing for me, though. It has to be plain, or combined only with other spices – I cannot bear it mixed with lemongrass, which is a very common combination and it is almost impossible to find ginger tea bags that are unadulterated with lemongrass. (Don’t get me wrong; lemongrass is delicious on its own or with other citrusy-flavoured herbs, but add it in with ginger and it makes me sick. I believe I am rather unique in this respect.)

Fortunately, at the health food shop where I used to work in Melbourne, Health Reflections ‘Just Ginger’ tea bags are available (this is one case where I prefer tea bags, as I think dried ginger makes better-tasting tea than fresh, but the powdered stuff you use for cooking is too fine to be much use). I bought myself a couple of packets in the early stages of my pregnancy, during a trip back to Melbourne, to help with the nausea – ironically, as it turned out, the very idea of ginger tea made me even MORE nauseous, so I never drank any (should’ve got the capsules instead). However, I’m super-glad that I had it on hand because it has been terrific for helping with my cold.

Liquid Gold

I read a Terry Pratchett book some years ago – I can’t remember which one it was now – in which he described a sunrise as flowing over the land like molten gold. This was followed by a footnote which explained that, given that actual molten gold would be very very hot, very heavy and set things on fire in short order, the sunrise actually wasn’t that much like molten gold, really. This is the kind of thing that simultaneously amuses and irritates me about Terry Pratchett’s writing, but obviously it was a snippet that stuck with me, seeing as how I remember the lines something like 15 years after I read the book.

So, if we are going to be as literal about it as all that, chamomile tea is not actually THAT much like liquid gold either, but taking a metaphor as a metaphor, it could certainly be worth its weight in gold,* for all its usefulness and good qualities.

Chamomile is an excellent calming tonic for the nerves; many herbal books point to its use by Mrs Rabbit when Peter comes back all upset after his escapades in Mr MacGregor’s garden to indicate its soothing qualities and suitability for children (and rabbits, presumably). It can be used for anxiety and sleeplessness (it is not a sedative, just relaxing). It also is excellent for digestive upsets and bloating, particularly those of a nervous or stress-related origin, but also on its own merit because of its volatile oil content and somewhat bitter taste.

(Just to crack out my inner naturopath for a bit, bitter foods tend to be underappreciated in this day and age, despite the many benefits they have. The bitter flavour stimulates the digestion, promoting the production of digestive juices such as stomach acid, and it cleanses and cools the liver; it draws energy into the centre of the body, rather than leaving it out at the periphery, and thus has a calming effect on the fight-or-flight response, in which circulation is diverted out to the muscles. The liver-cleansing properties of many bitter herbs and foods also means that they can have useful secondary effects on other conditions, such as skin and hormonal problems. But ok, that’s probably enough information for now and I’ll leave off my rave. The take-home message is: don’t be afraid of bitter foods and drinks; welcome things like radicchio, dandelion, endive, grapefruit, chamomile, even Angostura bitters into your life!)

Chamomile is also anti-inflammatory, and the tea can be used to soothe skin inflammations and sensitive skin. Chill it and soak some cotton pads in it to make a very refreshing eye mask, or use as a toner after cleansing.

Chamomile blends well with other relaxing herbs such as rose petals, lavender and lemon balm; or for a stronger digestive effect, mix equal parts chamomile, peppermint and lemon balm.

Some people who have an allergy to plants in the daisy (Asteraceae) family may not tolerate chamomile – but for just about everyone else, it’s great!

* although, given how light and fluffy chamomile is, you might get an even better deal if you were able to wrangle it so that you received its volume in gold… now that would be something

Hiatus, explained (with sincere apologies)

Gentle readers (assuming there still are some, and you haven’t all given up on checking this blog, out of despair at my two-month silence) – I am still here. I apologise MOST sincerely for the lack of posts. However, I offer what I think is a reasonable excuse: I’m pregnant with our first baby (!!!!) and due to bizarre hormonal changes, the mere thought of making, or drinking, a cup of tea of almost any kind has made me feel ill…

Cruel fate!! It has in fact been two months of very little joie de tea for me. I have not read my TeaMail… in fact I have been unable to face even reading about tea online anywhere, let alone opening one of my beautiful books about tea… the idea of writing about it has been making me nauseous… I haven’t been inspired to cook with it…* My gorgeous teawares have been languishing unused… water and the occasional orange or apple juice have been my only tipples.

Nonetheless, while I have been very afraid that I shall never be the same again, I hold out hope that my joie de tea is slowly returning (as my overall queasiness also, fortunately, subsides)… Witness: I can drink peppermint, fennel, chamomile, and other (safe in pregnancy) herbal tisanes daily, in fact several times a day now… and while I haven’t yet been able to bring myself to make or drink any kind of green tea, or the new oolongs that I mentioned in my last post, I can manage – a few times a week – a cup of something black and relatively milky. So perhaps I shall gradually make my way out of this long dark tea-less time of the soul after all. Please stay tuned… I will be back!

PS – and for those who are interested, the baby is due at the end of October… just past the 12-week mark and all seems to be well!


*although the sight of the delightful looking chai tea cakes with Earl Grey syrup that feature in the May edition of Notebook: magazine is extremely tempting, and may inspire me next weekend (the recipe isn’t up online yet, but I’ll keep an eye out and draw your attention to it when it is).