tea cuisine

I'm really enjoying Tonia George's Tea Cookbook:  Sweet and Savory Recipes for Tea Lovers (Ryland Peters & Small, 2008).  Beyond tea-time treats of Earl Grey Biscotti and Chocolate Oolong Tea Loaf, there are main course recipes like Green Tea, Tofu, Noodle and Cress Soup, Mint Tea Couscous, and a Tea-Smoked Sea Trout that uses the rich flavor of Lapsang Souchong, which is indeed a smoky leaf.  There are quite a few other innovative recipe ideas as well, though it is a slim volume of just about 65 pages.  But surely well worth the current price of $5.18 on Amazon, especially because it has what so many of us who love cookbooks crave, i.e., beautifully-styled photos, these in particular by Martin Brigdale.  Another great thing about the book (besides the Chamomile Hot Toddy and Blackberry Tea Vodka) is that it puts you in the mindset of cooking with tea and using it in unique culinary ways, which truly does open up a whole new tea-flavored world.  There are lengthier tea cookbooks to aspire to, like Cynthia Gold and Lise Stern's Culinary Tea: More Than 150 Recipes Steeped in Tradition from Around the World, or Robert Wemischner's Cooking with Tea, but as just a simple intro this is a good bet -- and my copy is already being coveted by friends and family, tea-drinking or not.

tea with gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is a classic of course, and soon to be a movie again, but it's also a wonderful summertime read.  It takes place in the summer; it has gorgeous summer imagery along with irony and occasional humor; and it has a tea scene that's pivotal to the plot.  When Daisy and Gatsby reunite after so many years, it's at Nick's not so lavish little rented house in the shadow of Gatsby's mansion.  And it's for the pretense of tea, and since the tea is at Nick's it probably wasn't much more than orange pekoe with lemon slices and sugar cubes.  Not champagne, not bootleg gin, just tea.  Then "[a]mid the welcome confusion of cups and cakes a certain physical decency established itself", and fates really start to intertwine.  You might want to try the iced version of the classic pekoe tea and lemon while reading or rereading The Great Gatsby, like maybe the old standards of Lipton or Red Rose, brands that had and have been around since the late 19th century.  But just remember, you can drink the old school brew but you can't repeat the past, old sport, no matter how you try.

Pictured:  Deco Tea by Michael L Kungl -- click here to buy a copy of your own at art.com!