Chilled Berry Tea-Wonderful End-of-Summer Recipe

I met Katie Chin at The International Association of Culinary Professionals Annual Conference (IACP) in June. Katie is an Asian food expert, cookbook author, and TV host. Her most recent appearance was on The Cooking Channel's show
Food(ography).  Be sure to check out her blog to see that segment as well as great Chinese recipes and tips.

Katie and I thought it would be fun for our readers to guest post on each other's sites. She has some wonderful recipes with tea as an ingredient that I thought my readers would love to try. I hope you enjoy Katie Chin's guest post below.

References to tea in Chinese literature go back approximately 5,000 years so it has obviously played an integral role in Chinese culture. While I love to sip cups of tea throughout the day, I also think it’s wonderful to incorporate tea into recipes for its amazing and subtle flavor.

Dried tea can be mixed with dried rice and brown sugar to create rich and delicate tea-smoked dishes or steeped with spices to create the most elegant, layered flavors. This recipe for Chilled Berry Tea combines the freshest berries at the peak of the summer season with star anise and passion fruit tea to create an amazingly refreshing, easy yet sophisticated dessert that will have your guests raving. The hint of mint leaves as garnish is the perfect compliment to this light and delicious recipe – the perfect ending to a late summer dinner party.


Chilled Berry Tea

5 whole star anise (if using broken pieces, use 1 tablespoon)
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 passion fruit tea bags
3 cups mixed berries (strawberries, blueberries, raspberries)
½ cup bananas, cut into ½-inch dice
fresh mint leaves for garnish

In a saucepan, place 1 ½ cups water and the star anise, bring to a boil, and cook for 2 minutes. Add the sugar and stir well until the sugar is dissolved. Return to a full boil and turn off the heat. Place the tea bags in the syrup, stir, and let cool. Remove the tea bags, and the star anise. Pour the chilled tea over the berries and bananas. Place in the refrigerator until ready to serve. Garnish with mint leaves right before serving.

Thanks Katie for sharing your recipe.  I hope you enjoyed the guest post.  I will be blogging about her new book that just came out  soon. Did you know that you could make 300 recipes in a rice cooker?

Happy Sipping and End-of-Summer, Lisa

Taiwan Day 3-Tea Fields Here We Come

Today was the day our group began our study of the tea fields in Taiwan.  We headed out to the WenShan Tea District which is famous for its Pouchong teas.  It wasn't a far drive from Taipei toWenShan, so we arrived fresh and ready to learn. Although we arrived fresh, the weather prevented any of us from having good hair days!  We were blessed to only have intermittent rain as typhoons seemed to be on our heals the whole time we were in Taiwan and Japan. 

Our first stop was to a school for tea farmers called WenShan Pouchong Farm that is owned and managed by the Taipei County Farmers' Association. For me, this was so exciting because it was my first chance to see tea fields outside the US.  The school is for consumer education and also for Pouchong tea promotion.  Mr. Yang (pictured on the left with our host Thomas Shu on the right) graciously showed us around the farm.  He was excited to share with us their growing and propagation techniques including their efforts to be organic.  We tasted some wonderful Pouchongs and left for our next adventure, but not before stopping by for some wishes for good fortune.  This statue below was built to celebrate the year of the tiger.  It is the Chinese god of prosperity riding on the golden tiger to bring good fortune to all!

After leaving the tea farm with much fortune on our side, we headed to Bopiliao Culture Village.  What a treat for our group as we unloaded the bus and walked down the hill, to be greeted by the group singing and clapping for us. This will always be a special memory for me and this was not the only treat the group had in store for us.

Volunteers from all over the area had been working for over a week to prepare a wonderful vegetarian feast with all the food having tea as an ingredient in it!  If you know how passionate I am about cooking with tea, you know how exciting this was for me and I am sure it was for the rest of our group as well. This table was filled with a wonderful assortment of entrees.

This was our dessert table below.

After having a wonderful lunch and some tea, we settled in to learn about the center, the group that supports it, and their mission to train farmers about organic farming methods. I thought you might think it was funny for me to post my feet after talking about food, but I was so impressed with how clean this center was.  We were all required to take off our street shoes and wear slippers!  Not only did we have good hygiene, but I do think it was quite the fashion statement too!

The group is a Buddhist organization working with the Tse-Xin Foundation which means "mercy heart." Their mission is to promote religion, culture and life, and charity. They do this by hoping every member will have a happy and healthy life, help the environment to remain healthy, and also to promote charity with their mission. The charity work is done through their foundation that supports local tea farmers to take up organic practices in their farming. They work to help teach the farmers how to introduce organic methods such as using bean sugarcane for fertilizer instead of chemical ones. To put their charity mission into practice, the foundation will pick up 50% of the loss the farmers will sustain as they convert their farms over to organic. They had a wonderful PowerPoint for us in addition to their presentation. I believe our group learned quite a bit.

We were supposed to walk through some of the tea fields that had been converted to organic, but due to the rains caused by the ever impending typhoon, we just toured them by bus.  We then headed back to Taipei to get ready for our next adventure.  We needed to pack for two nights away as we were heading out to the Sun Moon Lake area.  We would need plenty of sleep because the next night we all would be up very late making our VERY OWN Classic Tung Ting Oolong.

In my next blog, I will tell you all about my exciting TEA-MAKING ADVENTURE!

Happy Sipping, Lisa 

Cooking with Tea - Le Cordon Bleu

photo courtesy of John O'Hagan/TeaTime

What a fun day at Le Cordon Bleu last week!  It was time for the "Cooking with Tea" contest that I had arranged with Chef Jae Gruber to help spread the word that tea is more than just a beverage.  This was not the first "Cooking with Tea" contest the culinary college has held.  The idea surfaced a few years ago with Susan McKeen, then editor of Tea Experience Digest.  Susan had asked me to be a judge for the contest she put together.  I not only had the privilege of being one of the judges the contests, but wrote the article featuring the winners of each category.

Le Cordon Bleu was still very interested in having the contest again, but we had two problems: 

• I was in the middle of writing two books in a year and didn't have time to put a contest together.
• Since Tea Experience Digest was no longer in production, there was a need to find another media sponsor.  

This is where TeaTime Magazine comes in. Once I finished with my two books, I had time to contact TeaTime to see if they might be interested in covering the story.  To the delight of Le Cordon Bleu and me, they enthusiastically said yes!  After Teas Etc graciously agreed to sponsor the tea needed for the event, things were ready to heat up. 

I chose 9 teas from Teas Etc wonderful line for the students to choose from.  I went to the school for a tasting of all the teas and did a small tutorial for them.  It was fun to watch their faces as they tasted all the different teas.  They could choose up to four different kinds to play with for their recipe.  They could also choose which category to enter: Appetizer, Entree, or Dessert.

photo courtesy of John O'Hagan/TeaTime

As a tea specialist, it is so exciting to spread the word on tea especially to culinary students.  There was so much excitement in the air as the students gathered in the kitchen for the contest.  They had one hour to prepare their dish.

photo courtesy of John O'Hagan/TeaTime

As the students began to prep their dishes, Lorna Reeves (editor of TeaTime Magazine) and I went around to talk to the students about their dishes and how they were incorporating tea into them.  The excitement for the contest was building. 

It was time to judge the students recipes.  On the judging panel was:  Lorna Reeves, editor of TeaTime Magazine, Chef Mekolites CEC, Chef Crump, Chef Gruber, Evening LCB Evening Deen, and Lisa Boalt Richardson, Author and Owner of Lisa Knows Tea. Each student brought out their dishes one at a time. They explained their dish, the type of  tea(s) they used, and their execution of tea in the recipe.

photo courtesy of John O'Hagan/TeaTime

Each one was very different and delicious, but in the end we could only have one winner from each category.  All the winners received a copy of both my books, Tea with a Twist and The World in Your Teacup generously donated by my publisher Harvest House Publishers. 

Do you want to know the winning recipes? Look for them in the January/February issue of TeaTime Magazine along with more details about the contest.  You won't want to miss it! 

Do you have a favorite recipe using tea as an ingredient?  I would love for you to share it!

Happy Sipping and Tasting, Lisa

Tea Pairing with Kashi at Sundance Resort

One of my favorite things to speak on about tea is pairing it with food and tea cuisine.  I just recently returned from the Sundance Resort in Utah where I had pleasure to do both.  Kashi was holding a symposium on health and I was asked to put together a 2 hour lunch for the attendees. 

I thought it would be fun to incorporate tea as an ingredient along with pairing teas to each course.  Working alongside Chef Mark of the Sundance Resort, we created a food and tea pairing luncheon. 

First Course

Organic Mixed Baby Green Salad

Utah Dried Cherries, Toasted Slivered Almond

with

White Rose Tea Vinaigrette

Pairing - White Rose Iced Tea with Simple Syrup

Main Course

Tea Dusted Utah Mountain Trout

with a Honey Lemon Herb Vinaigrette

served with

Kashi 7 Whole Grain Pilaf

&

Roasted Utah Beets

Pairing - Green Dragon Oolong Tea

Dessert Course

Trio of House Made Truffles

made with

Utah Amano Artisan Chocolates

Pairings - Dragon Well Green Tea, Shui Xian Oolong Tea, Golden Monkey Black Tea, Puerh Leaf Tea

After I gave a brief introduction to tea, the attendees were treated to a delicious meal prepared by the culinary team at the Sundance Resort.  For the dessert course, I wanted the attendees to participate in deciding what they thought paired best with each decadent chocolate truffle.  Working from light to dark with the chocolates as well as the teas we tasted and paired chocolate and tea.  The truffles and tea were wonderful and perfect end to the meal!

I hope this has inspired you to try pairing tea with your favorite culinary delights!