Cooking With Tea - Barm Brack

I didn't think I would ever find a tea-soaked fruit cake that I would like better than my beloved Marmalade Tea Loaf, but I have. It's the Barm Brack recipe from (appropriately enough) the Nursing Mothers' Association of Australia cookbook.*

Barm Brack is an Irish fruit loaf, often served with a cup of tea in the afternoon; it may be yeasted, or not.

The version I made is unyeasted, and could not be simpler. You are meant to soak the fruit in the tea overnight; I wasn't that organised but it didn't seem to matter (thought I should probably do it properly next time). The recipe in the NMAA book says you can use mixed dried fruit or a single one; I opted for currants and soaked them in a strong cup's worth of Ceylon tea - although I suppose Irish Breakfast would be most appropriate!

Here's the recipe as I made it:

500g currants

250ml strong black tea, hot

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups self-raising flour

1 egg

Mix the currants and sugar together and soak in the strained hot tea for an hour or so (or ues cold tea and soak overnight).

Preheat oven to 150C and thoroughly grease a large (9in by 5in) loaf pan (if it's not non-stick you may want to line it as well just to be sure)

Stir the flour and the beaten eggs thoroughly into the fruit mixture. Pour into the prepared tin and bake at 150C for about 2 hours (mine took about 1 hour 50 minutes). 

Allow to cool for 15 minutes in the tin, then turn out and cool completely.

Serve sliced with butter and a cup of your best black tea.

I can't tell you how well this went with a pot of Margaret's Hope 'Silver Moon' second flush Darjeeling (from Thunderbolt Tea) - the currants and the muscatel flavour of the Darjeeling were perfect together.

*My mum cooked lots of stuff from this when I was little, and still goes to it for many cakes, which are all delicious. She bought me a new copy just before I had Pippin; it is unchanged - and I mean unchanged, curried sausages with sultanas and all - from the original 1975 version. I'm not game to make the curried sausages as I have less-than-fond memories of them from my childhood, but the cakes and slices really are excellent.

Cooking with Tea

A while back I borrowed Eat Tea from the library, and managed to make a couple of the recipes before I needed to return it... although I really need to borrow it again so I can copy some of them down.

I convinced my husband to put his ice cream maker to use to make the Vanilla Tea Sherbet, which is a combination of strong-brewed vanilla black tea, sugar and buttermilk (we used my Vanilla Basic Black, which you could win some of - along with a couple of my other teas - here!)... delicious and refreshing, not too sweet, not too creamy... although my sister thought it tasted like cough medicine. All I can say is, I wish that I'd ever had cough medicine tasted like that.

Here's the process in pictures -

The ingredients:

The mixture:

The end result (well, what was left of it):


I also made the green tea and ginger tea bread (no photos, sorry, it all got eaten before I remembered to take any, though I suppose that's a good sign), a sweet eggy tea-loaf with sencha, candied ginger and lemon zest in it - the lemon and the ginger could have been a little stronger in flavour, but it was very tasty nonetheless, and looked pretty cool too - the little flecks of ground-up sencha were very attractive.

And then today, feeling at something of a loose end with nothing specific on my schedule I decided to make these little Earl Grey Tea Cakes... super-easy recipe, and it worked perfectly with only one egg instead of two (I only had one and couldn't be bothered to go to the milk bar to get any more). Naturally I used proper loose-leaf Earl Grey... almost the last of my supply, soon I will have an excuse to go and buy some from Lupicia. The tea leaves made pretty flecks in these small cakes as well.

Here they are before being iced...


... and after:


I had one of these with a pot of Earl Grey... but I think they would also go very nicely with some second-flush Darjeeling or rooibos too.

Smooth Chamomile

I was intrigued by this recipe for a chamomile, peach and ginger smoothie from the moment I saw it on Taste.com.au - I know I have written about using good ol' C. sinensis in various smoothies but chamomile? Hmm.

But peaches are in season (yay!) so earlier this week I decided to brew up a strong pot of my Chamomile Sunburst blend and use that (instead of the plain chamomile and the ginger) to make a version of this smoothie. (I thought that the Chamomile Sunburst blend would go well in this because of the dried apricots it contains, complementing the peachy flavour). I also used some homemade (very runny) yoghurt instead of the milk, and added a tablespoon of chia seeds instead of the optional wheatgerm.


Verdict = YUM! Definitely give this one a try, either in the original or the revised version ( the Chamomile Sunburst is available in my Etsy shop...) ;)

Moroccan Mint

A lovely, sunny, warm weekend in Melbourne has just passed, and today it has continued mostly warm and sunny (and also exceptionally windy; it's now clouded over and I think there will be storms on the way). Having a bunch of fresh mint in the fridge, I decided to brew up some Moroccan Mint tea... Here's the recipe I made today:

Just under a cup of fresh mint leaves, loosely packed
1.5 teaspoons gunpowder green tea (I used Temple of Heaven brand from one of the local Asian grocers)
2 teaspoons honey
2 cups boiling water
Ice cubes (optional)

Put the mint leaves into a 2-cup teapot and steep in the boiling water for 3 minutes. Add the gunpowder green tea and steep for a further 2 minutes. Have the honey in a heatproof jug and after the tea has steeped, strain it into the jug and stir well to dissolve the honey. You can drink this hot as it is, or if you would like something a little cooler, add about a half a cup of ice cubes and stir til dissolved (this brings it down to about room temperature), or otherwise let it cool and then refrigerate for later.

Enjoy!

Tea Drinks: Not for Purists, II

A while ago on Twitter, Linsey from The Necessiteas sent me a recipe for a drink called a 'London Fog', which is a combination of Earl Grey tea with vanilla syrup and steamed milk. It sounded delicious and I really wanted to try it. Here's Linsey's original recipe, which I would think serves two people:

* 250ml strong brewed Earl Grey, hot

* 250ml steamed milk

* 3-4 tablespoons vanilla syrup (that's American tablespoons; if you're using metric, make it 2-3)

Combine the Earl Grey and the vanilla syrup in 2 tall glasses or mugs, then pour on the steamed milk. Stir and enjoy.

I decided to make my own vanilla syrup, combining equal parts sugar and water and scraping in the seeds from a fresh vanilla bean. Sounds great? Well, I wouldn't know because while I was waiting for it to cool, ants infested it... and it's very difficult to tell the difference between ants and vanilla bean seeds when they're both floating in clear syrupy liquid... so I had to discard the whole lot.

Slightly discouraged, I decided a few days later to have a go using some vanilla extract and a little vanilla sugar in place of the syrup. The result was extremely tasty, perhaps a little on the sweet side for my taste, but a very nice desserty type drink.

A couple of weeks after that I thought I would try using some T2 French Earl Grey (a sweeter, more flowery Earl Grey) instead of Twinings regular old Earl Grey (yes, I know it's a boring supermarket brand, but I happen to like this one, so long as it's not in teabags), no sugar, and soy milk instead of regular milk. The result was perfect. I made another one for myself this morning, and the recipe follows below...

It's a bit of a mixture, I guess - a 'London Fog' made with 'French Earl Grey', in Melbourne (!) and so in honour of the damp, grey morning that I woke up to today, I have renamed this version a 'Melbourne Mist'. This quantity serves 1 person (if that person is me).

Melbourne Mist:
* 250ml strong-brewed French Earl Grey from T2 (I used about 2.5 tsp to one cup water, brewed 3 minutes), hot

* approximately 125ml soy milk, heated and frothed

* 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Combine vanilla extract and tea in a tall glass or mug, pour in the frothy soy milk, stir and drink.

This would preferably be accompanied by wholemeal toast with tahini and homemade marmalade. The perfect breakfast? I think so!

Tea Drinks: Not for Purists, I

I've been experimenting with a few different blended tea drinks lately, and I'll be posting about those further when I've had slightly more success with them and am able to take some decent photos. In the meantime, I thought I'd post a recipe for the delicious matcha smoothie I whizzed up for myself today - just what I needed for a mid-morning snack-and-tea-in-one, especially after a night of insufficient sleep; it really picked me up and kept me going til the mid-afternoon.

You will need:
A blender
A ripe banana
A glass of milk (about 300ml)
Vanilla extract (to taste; I like lots)
1 tsp matcha powder

Put the milk, banana and vanilla extract in a blender and blend until smooth. With the blender still going, add the matcha powder and mix until thoroughly combined and a uniform greenish colour is achieved. Drink and enjoy!

Quest for summer sanity, via iced tea, continues

It's a relatively cool evening, thanks to the delightful breeze that's wafting through the open windows (it doesn't seem to be wafting too many mosquitoes through the tatty flywire at the moment, an added bonus). 

It's been a relatively lazy weekend which saw me and my husband and our cat piled on the couch for a post-lunch snooze this afternoon... although I did get up early to do some baking: inspired at the prospect of having blackberry-basil iced tea at breakfast, I decided to make some blackberry muffins to accompany it. They were very good; and the tea was fantastic.

The recipe for the blackberry-basil syrup is courtesy of the delightfully whimsical TeaSpot NYC blog and I knew I just had to try it as soon as I read about it. It's a beautiful balance of sweet and tart and the colour is amazing - I should've taken photos, but was too busy enjoying my breakfast to bother. (There is some blackberry-basil syrup left, though, so I still have the option - maybe tomorrow.)

The tea itself was a Ceylon single estate tea, Nandana Orange Pekoe, which I bought in NZ from T Leaf Tea, cold brewed overnight. Cold-brewing this tea yields a beautifully pale amber liquor, very mild (it's redder and stronger tasting when hot) and combined with the syrup it was truly a taste sensation. The basil added such a striking spicy, aromatic note. I think it would also go well with strawberries if blackberries aren't available (mind you I used frozen ones).

Then this afternoon I made myself a pot of spearmint and hibiscus (a teaspoon of each herb per cup), hot-brewed, steeped strong and then poured over ice. Minty and sour, 100% refreshing.

And now I'm finishing off the day with a few glasses of iced Haru-Poro-Poro (cold-brewed over the course of the day). This is a combination of sencha, green rooibos and raspberry flavouring - it's astringent (in a good way), sweet and the raspberry flavour is not overpowering. It really is delicious iced. It's from Lupicia - a wonderful shop in Melbourne which I visited at Christmas time.  They have loads of beautiful oolongs and greens that I would love to try; I'll have to see if I can schedule another trip when I'm next in Melbourne.

Iced tea for maintaining summer sanity

Over the long weekend I decided to try out an iced herbal tea recipe that I found on Taste.com.au and which looked intriguing: Chilled Sage and Herb Tea. Here’s the link to the original recipe.

Sage is plentiful in our garden at present, and I had lemons; but I had no mint and no fennel seeds. What to do? A rapid survey of our spice shelf in the pantry revealed some star anise; and then I remembered that the garden also contained a couple of small patches of lemon balm. This turned out to be a little the worse for the heat and for being past flowering, but I still managed to cull enough to make a couple of batches of the tea - which was, as it turned out, absolutely delicious – delicately lemony and sweet with a very refreshing herbal aftertaste.

The next day I acquired some fennel seeds and decided to make a batch using these instead of the star anise. This was also good; a slightly darker colour, not quite as sweet. I think I preferred my first version, and so for good measure here is the recipe:

1/3 cup fresh sage
1 tablespoon fresh lemon balm
1 tablespoon whole star anise
1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

Lightly crush the fresh herbs (you can do this by just squeezing them in you hand) and bruise the star anise in a small mortar and pestle (you could also put them between a couple of layers of paper towel and whack them with a rolling pin or something, just a little bit).

Place the herbs, star anise and lemon zest in a large teapot or heat-proof jug and pour on 1.25 litres freshly-boiled water. Cover and set aside to steep for about 15 minutes.

Strain liquid, let cool and refrigerate for at least an hour. Serve as is, or you could add honey to taste (I didn’t bother), and/or ice.

If you don’t have access to fresh lemon balm, don’t bother using dried; they taste nothing like each other. You could substitute a small amount of lemongrass (fresh or dried) instead.

Happy quaffing!

A couple of random tea notes

Some of you may remember that a while back I wrote about making some Earl Grey tea-soaked prunes. I can safely report that they are delicious! The overall flavour is more subtle than the Nigella Lawson ones that I’ve also made, but that’s mainly because there just is less stuff in this version, plus there’s no added sugar or alcohol. They’re a really nice addition to breakfast but they would also be lovely served with a dessert of some kind, even just the liquid would be great poured over some ice cream or something like that. Once I’ve worked my way through this jar I think I’ll make another… perhaps with orange rind instead of lemon rind, and a few added spices. Lightbulb moment: this could be a good addition to our Christmas hampers this year!

My brother has very kindly pointed me in the direction of an essay written by George Orwell (originally published in 1946) entitled ‘A Nice Cup of Tea’ (and what more enticing heading could there be, I ask you?). In this article Orwell outlines his personal rules for making tea – noting that some of them are controversial. I particularly agree with his assertion that one should always drink tea out of a cylindrical cup rather than a wide flat one, because the latter makes the tea get cold too quickly – and, at the risk of entering a highly-charged debate, I also will come down on the side of putting the tea into the cup and adding milk, rather than the other way around; it’s just too hard to judge the right amount of milk if you put it in first!

I confess I am also intrigued by Orwell’s passing reference to ‘sweeping the carpet’ as a ‘subsidiary use for tealeaves’… what on earth does this mean? The rest of the items on this list make sense, but that one is a mystery to me. Anyone who can answer my question, please feel free to post in the comments…

Cooking with Lapsang Souchong and Earl Grey

A while ago I posted about some Lapsang Souchong that I’d bought and found a bit difficult to drink, but that I intended to use it in some cooking (see the original post here). Shortly after that my husband and I tried out the Black Bean Soft Tacos (one of the recipes I found which uses Lapsang) but I kept forgetting to mention it here. We did take some photos, but unfortunately they turned out a bit blurry and rubbish, so I won’t post them (I do wish I had more skills of a photographer).

Anyway, we made the tacos and I really quite enjoyed them. They were extremely easy and quick to make (almost always a bonus in my book) and the pineapple salsa that accompanied them was delightful – really fresh and zesty. The recipe called for canned black beans, but as I had some dried ones at home I soaked and cooked them the regular way, then followed the recipe, which involved making up a strong brew of Lapsang Souchong and cooking – well, heating/steeping really I suppose - the beans in that.

This resulted in a lovely subtle smoky flavour to the beans – it wasn’t overpowering at all. I wouldn’t have minded if it had been a bit stronger, either – if you happen to have some chipotles (dried smoked jalapenos) lying around, as my husband naturally does (!), you could chuck one of those in there as well to add a bit of extra smoke and spice.

The recipe was very low in fat because the beans were just cooked in water – I think it would also work quite well though if you cooked the onion (and chipotle) with some olive oil and maybe some garlic as well to make the flavours a little stronger before you add the beans and the tea. Overall I thought it was great and I intend to make it again and experiment with it a bit.

A while ago when we had a bunch of people over for dinner, we made Nigella Lawson’s recipe for tea-soaked prunes, which she recommends serving with either custard or crème brulee (urgh), but which we served with ice cream and amaretti biscuits. The recipe for these prunes comes from Nigella’s book How to Eat, and involves turning some strong Earl Grey tea into a syrup with orange peel, spices, brown sugar and marsala, then steeping the prunes in it for a couple of days (or more). It is very simple, and absolutely delicious, whether as a dessert or for breakfast (I had some for both, I confess).

Because of the strong flavours mixed with it, I found it a little hard to detect the presence of the Earl Grey per se (a Twinings’ loose leaf from the supermarket, though the recipe itself called for teabags – shame, Nigella!). Consequently I am interested to try a recipe which my husband found in a slow-food book (whose name I can’t recall), which involves sticking the prunes in a jar, adding a couple of Earl Grey tea bags and a couple of strips of lemon zest, and pouring boiling water over to cover. Then you seal it and let it sit for a couple of weeks. I think that this method would let the flavour of the tea shine through a bit more. All I need is a decent jar to try making it in…

Also speaking of Earl Grey, earlier in the week I had a pot in conjunction with a piece of a particularly nice chocolate cake that I made – now Earl Grey and chocolate is a really good combination, I highly recommend it, indeed.

New Tea - Lapsang Souchong

I spent last weekend in Melbourne, where I was lucky enough to be able to make a trip up to the Dandenongs (where it snowed!!) with my family for lunch, after which I stopped in at Tea Leaves to have a browse and possibly a purchase. I came away with a couple of different teas, a couple of tins to store them in, and a tea cosy (pictures to come soon!). The teas I bought were Lapsang Souchong, and a honey-flavoured sencha. I haven’t had the chance to give the sencha a proper go yet – the water at work would ruin it, I should think – but I brought in the Lapsang to give it a try.

Well. It’s powerful stuff, that’s all I can say. Lapsang is a black tea from Fukien province in China, and it is smoked over cypress and pine branches, which gives it an amazingly intense smoky scent and flavour which lingers in your throat and nose a bit after you’ve swallowed – not in an unpleasant way though. You get the taste of lovely fresh woodsmoke without the scratchy, choking feeling of breathing it in. It’s a little medicinal-smelling in the cup too – that would be from the pine branches, I suppose.

I haven’t been brewing the tea very strong, but even so it’s a bit overpowering and I’m finding I can only drink it in small quantities and quite slowly. At the moment I’m having some of it mixed with rooibos, which takes a bit off the edge of the flavour and rounds it out a little. Still, at present I feel that, for me at least, this is not a tea that drinks particularly well on its own. I did just finish off a cup while eating some bread and baba ghanoush (smoky eggplant dip), and that was excellent. So I think I will be saving this up mostly to drink with strong-flavoured foods.

A Google search suggests that Lapsang is a tea that people like to use in cooking quite a lot. Here are a few links to recipes which I found (and may try soon – especially the tacos and the truffles, they sound great!):

Lapsang Souchong Smoked Quail

Black Bean Soft Tacos

Luscious Lapsang Souchong Seitan

Lapsang Souchong Chocolate Sauce

Lapsang Souchong Chilli Truffles

Gyokuro II and a Tea Recipe

Good morning all

Apologies for being so absent over the last week or so - what with moving house and having a very busy week at work I just have not had time for tea blogging, and barely time for tea, indeed (though I've still managed to fit in quite a bit). Right now it's a chilly early Sunday morning in (relatively) sunny Canberra. I thought I would get up early and make some more gyokuro tea, but using the method I described somewhere below - i.e. a much higher proportion of leaf to water.

Well, I did, and I'm not entirely sure if I did something wrong (e.g. the water was too hot, I steeped it for a bit too long), but the method produced only a tiny amount of tea (most of the water got sucked up by the tea leaves, which now closely resemble lawn clippings) which was so astringent and strong I couldn't drink it - a very sad thing. 

I added more, slightly cooler water, in a larger quantity, and poured myself another cup after only about 30-45 seconds, and this is better but still largely (to me, anyway) undrinkable. The aftertaste is very pleasant - green and relatively sweet - but the tea itself is just so grassy and astringent that I can barely get it down. It's like drinking your lawn. Anyway, I'm rather disappointed - I was really looking forward to it this morning, but I just can't drink gyokuro like this. So even if it is inauthentic, I will go back to doing it the old regular 'two teaspoons to a pot' method... I feel like such a philistine...

I won't throw out the remaining liquor though, I'll save it to use on my face - I feel like making a mask or something this morning, so I'll use the tea instead of just plain water... Meant to be very good for your skin, green tea, being anti-inflammatory and so on...

On to more happy news: last Sunday I made a Marmalade Tea Loaf, the recipe for which can be found here at taste.com.au. This reminds me very much of the cup-of-tea cake that my mum always used to make when I was little (although I don't think hers had marmalade in it) and as a result brought on quite a fit of homesickness and nostalgia... It's a particularly good cake, very moist and fruity, and really easy to make - you do need to soak the fruit in the tea the night before (and you don't need to wait until the tea's completely cold, either, if like me you are putting it on just before you go to bed and are too sleepy to hang about), but apart from that it's just a very quick mix. You can't taste the tea in it terribly strongly, of course, so you don't need to worry too much about using your finest tea - although I am quite interested to try making it again with some Earl Grey instead of plain black tea... And it is, of course, an extremely fine accompaniment to - guess what? A nice cup of tea...

Tea Recipe - Chai Masala Muffins

This is a variation on a delicious recipe I found at Vegweb - it makes about 12 smallish muffins (they don't rise much). They are really moist and tasty, and fairly sweet. You will need to keep them in the fridge, but as long as you do that they should last about a week. They are best, however, eaten warm with some soy chai with sprinkles...

1 cup wholemeal flour

1/2 cup oat bran

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon or chai sprinkles

2 tsp good quality chai masala, brewed 

in water to make 1 cup liquid

1 cup apple sauce

1/2 cup maple syrup

1 tablespoon olive oil

Preheat oven to 180 deg Celsius

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl

Add tea, apple sauce, maple syrup and oil, and mix well

Spoon into non-stick muffin tins and bake for 20-25 minutes 

or until firm and golden on top