Miss Neddy's Tea Blog

Warm Milk

2010-03-20T09:09:13Z

There is a particular hawker stall near my office which uses very good tea dust and a good brand of evaporated milk, and so their Teh-C (tea with evaporated milk) is very popular with my colleagues. I have tried and often failed to make a similarly good tasting Teh-C with Red Dust here in the office. Somehow, the fragrance of the milk either was not present or did not gel well with the tea.

Today, I took out the last bit of evaporated milk from the office fridge and sniffed it. I could not tell if it was still ok, so I decided to put it in the microwave to warm it up. If it had soured, I would be able to smell it then. Fortunately it was still good, and I poured it into my tea. Amazingly this time the tea tasted very close to what the hawker stall made.

I then recalled that the hawker stall (like most tea and coffee making stalls in Singapore) had a huge metal sink, almost a cabinet, constantly full of hot water, so that the stall owner can easily scoop up the required amount of water to make his orders. The evaporated milk tins were kept just above this sink, which meant that the evaporated milk was always kept warm.

So a good idea for making fragrant Teh-C: warm your evaporated milk!

New tea sea

2009-10-23T06:40:31Z

Making tea kungfu style needs a tea sea (a cumbersome translation of
the Chinese 茶海 or 茶盤). The function of the tea sea is to act as a
drip tray for all the spills that occur naturally as part of the
tea-making process.
I travel a lot and the tea sea is the most cumbersome part of a
Chinese tea set. The best ones are made of heavy ceramic and are
easily broken during transport. My last one was plastic, but even
that succumbed eventually to ill treatment, so I was pleased to see a
reasonable sized bamboo one on sale in Singapore on Mosque Street.
The rectangular packaging (compared to the traditional round shape of
a tea sea) made it easy to pack into my suitcase and bamboo is far
less likely to break than clay. The price of 25 Singapore dollars
(USD18 or GBP11) meant that if it did break, it would not have caused
too much heartache either.

Bleach

2009-08-16T08:53:26Z

Tea rapidly stains white porcelain, but plain water, a scouring pad
and elbow grease will remove them. If you have a lot of stained China,
then the fastest way of removing the stains is by soaking it in
bleach. Not all porcelain will stand up to this treatment: in
particular, painted or gilt porcelain must be overglazed or else the
bleach may damage or discolour the paint. On the other hand, I would
argue that painted, unglazed porcelain is suitable only for decoration
and not for daily use, because the heavy metals used in the
manufacture of many porcelain paints will leach out and poison you. If
unglazed porcelain is stained, then a scouring pad will also damage
the paint just as badly (if not worse) then bleach would.

Never bleach unglazed clay or pottery, because the bleach will soak
into the clay and each time you use it, your tea will hence forth
acquire the penetrating aroma of bleach.

Scent to Impress

2009-07-23T15:18:17Z

If you have a fragrant tea you want to show off, especially a fragrant
wulong, here’s a trick that will impress your friends. Use hot water to warm
your teapot or gaiwan, and after pouring out the water, put in the tea
leaves - but don’t pour any water in yet!

Instead, cover the teapot or gaiwan and give it a good (but gentle!) shake.
Make sure the leaves inside roll around a little, picking up a bit of the
residual hot water and steam. Then quickly open and tilt the pot or gaiwan
to your friends and invite them to sniff the leaves. The fragrance of the
tea should almost jump out at them.

Solitary

2009-07-09T16:49:27Z

There are many different classifications for tea, but there is one
practical classification that I use, which is this: I. teas that may
be drunk with a meal, and II. teas that are meant to be drunk alone or
with a light snack. My favourite teas are the green and light oolongs
from Taiwan (e.g., high mountain tea), but these are difficult to
drink with anything but the blandest food. A small portion of lightly
salted peanuts is will do, or perhaps after a meal; but if taken with
a full meal, their flavour is swamped and you might as well be
drinking boiled water.
It is the darker oolongs, the black teas, and the pu-erh’s that have
the body to stand up to a black pepper steak. A carefully selected
tea will complement a rich meal just as well as any wine, but it is
worth saying that the full-bodies nature of these teas mean that they
may not be pleasant to drink on their own and for my part, I’ve have
had enough after a couple of cups.
So I go back to my light Taiwanese oolongs, because they can keep me
company all afternoon. You can drink gallons of the stuff and it
never gets old.

Jade Rings Revisited

2009-07-07T05:47:05Z

Just a short entry today, as I unearthed my batch of Jade Rings from the
bottom of my office pantry drawer. I had bought 100gms of the lovely white
tea from London in August last year, and probably due to the fact that I had
kept them in a dark, cool place and in an airtight container (thank you
boss, for the Famous Amos can with airtight seal), the fragrance and
appearance of the leaves have not changed much at all.

The leaves are almost perfect rings, in chalky green when dry and turn light
olive green when steeped. I put rather too much leaves in my first cup and
the result was a little bitter. However, the white tea fragrance is still
there, perhaps at 75% of its original strength. Not bad for a tea that has
travelled around the world (China >> London >> Singapore).

Teapot Poster

2009-07-04T08:46:30Z

A few days ago, a European tourist walked into the teahouse and asked
earnestly if she could purchase a poster of teapots that was paste on the
wall near the window of the teahouse. The poster was not for sale, and it
had been purchased more than 10 years ago. She seemed so sincere and
enamoured of the poster, though, that the teahouse manager revealed that she
had a few copies of the same poster that she had squirreled away for the
past decade. This was news to both the owner of the teahouse and me!

When she took out the small roll of posters, I immediately called dibs on
one of them. The poster is entitled “The Hundred Teapots Picture” 百壶图 (băi
hú tú), which is a pun on a more traditional Chinese picture called the
“Hundred Fortunes Picture” 百福图 (băi fú tú), which portrays the word 福 in one
hundred different calligraphic styles.

The poster shows 100 teapots in a 10 by 10 grid, each one created by a
master. The name of the teapot and the creator are printed below each
teapot. Some teapots are obviously for ornamentation only, and some look
very ergonomic, but all the pieces are beautiful in their own way.

I will be putting the poster up soon in my own room and will take a picture
of it to upload.

Tidbit

2009-06-25T01:18:14Z

Here’s a little tidbit to tide you over till July. The teahouse manager, A, braved the H1N1 epidemic to travel to China recently in search of fresh spring tea. Her travel was rewarded with some excellent tea, which is now flying its way to Singapore, and she personally brought back a batch of Tie Guanyin which she states is serendipitious. The tea master who created the tea simply cannot replicate his work, though he did try with subsequent batches. So the few precious kilograms she bought are truly unique.

If I did a blind tasting, I would have sworn up and down that this was not a Tie Guanyin, and might even have mistaken it for a green tea. The tea leaves are a light but brilliant mottled green, some parts light almost to the shade of yellow. The tea is also extremely pale in colour, and with a tinge of green to it. The fragrance that emanates from the leaves and the tea is incredible, almost as if someone had spilled essence oils in the room. Taste-wise, it is not impressive, having little to none of the distinctive, almost overpowering cleansing taste of a typical Tie Guanyin - but the fragrance and the sweet aftertaste makes up for that shortcoming.

I still prefer the regular top-grade Tie Guanyin that the teahouse has, as it excels in both fragrance and taste. But it has been a privilege to try this little treasure, which may never come our way again.

Announcement

2009-06-25T01:17:59Z

Apologies for the long hiatus, as health problems and life in general got in
the way of my tea appreciation. But I will be starting up again in July,
with more tips and musings on tea. There is so much to be said about the
culture, history, and nature of tea that sometimes I don’t know where to
start, and the more I learn and experience, the more I am aware of how
little I know.

So thank you readers for your kind support and patience, and I hope to
present to you some interesting things to read about soon!

~Neddy

Stocking Tea

2009-02-20T10:42:26Z

In the West, there is the custom of drinking champagne out of ladies’ shoes (although it may be common on TV and in movies than real life); in Hong Kong, people drink tea that has been sieved through “silk stockings” (sī wà 丝袜). Unlike the Western custom though, the “stockings” aren’t real stockings; rather, they are long cloth (usually cotton) sieves which vaguely resemble silk stockings. And not just in shape; the infusion of tea through the sieves would render them a strong shade of brown, darkening with prolonged usage.

Tea dust (such as Red Dust) is very fine and cannot be effectively filtered using normal metal or bamboo sieves. So the tea dust is packed into cotton sieves, and water poured into the sieve to infuse the tea dust. Tea dust has the advantage of infusing very rapidly, so the water does not need to steep to become very rich tea. Tea dust is also fairly easy to dispose of, as one can just invert the cloth sieve to dump most of it out, and what remains can be washed off the sieve in a sink.

I’ve tried using the Aeropress to make tea from tea dust and it works quite fine, although I have to remember to use less tea dust since the water is pressed out more aggressively than a normal sieve. Normally the Aeropress is used for coffee, and does it well. I hate sourness in coffee and the coffee that is made with an Aeropress is famously low in acidity. It probably won’t work for tea leaves, but tea dust, being of a similar consistency and density to ground coffee beans, benefits from the pressure.

Close Enough

2009-02-18T14:09:48Z

My time in Thailand is coming to an end and I am running down my stocks of tea, but I have miscalculated how much tea I need and my stocks have run out three weeks too early.

I made a trip down to the local supermarket and picked up the most expensive Chinese tea I could find (38baht or US$1.10, for 100g). It is not wonderful, but it satisfies a craving. The tea is dark and astringent, the fragrance weak and dusty; but somewhere lingering in the darkness, there is a glimmer of light, a hint of smoke. It is like visiting the ruins of a great city: if you half close your eyes, you can almost see the glory it must once have been.

I never liked Chinese tea as a child. I found it a bitter, unpleasant drink and never understood why the older Chinese seemed to enjoy it so much. It was not until 1996, when I first drank Chinese tea at the teahouse in Singapore, that my eyes were opened and I realised what a varied and exhilarating experience it could be. In 1995, I would never have drunk, much less had a craving for this $1 tea, but in 2008, I am a tea addict and even this pale imitation will do. This tea tastes truly awful, but it is recognisably a dark oolong tea from Fujian. In the 18th century, the Indians were mystified by the behaviour of their colonial masters, who shipped bottled peas and sides of bacon many hundreds of miles to India, and seemed to eat them with so much relish. I cannot imagine that the British were deluded into thinking that the hard, yellow pellets tasted anything like fresh peas, but…it was close enough.

Tilting Pot and Tea Dam Cup

2009-02-13T14:13:35Z

A sharky friend of mine passed me a link to this delightful cup, known as a Tea Dam Cup. I love the different colours and how tea bags (although possibly not finer leaves or tea powder) can be left to drain on the side. Whenever I order tea and a tea-bag comes in the cup, I’m always at a loss for where to deposit the tea-bag, especially if the cup did not come with a saucer. However, at almost £15, it is a little pricey.

The cup brought to mind a teapot I have seen several times at the local Ritz-Carlton hotel. The tea-room at the ground floor serves a quite excellent high tea, and the waiter calls their interesting teapot an “elephant teapot” due to the very long spout. I found that it is more commonly known as a Tilting pot and the ingenius part of the design is a little shelf within the teapot. Lie it down, with the spout pointing upwards will enable the tea to steep. Let it stand normally, and the water inside no longer comes in contact with the tea leaves, left high and dry on the shelf. I am most tempted to buy one!

Zhao Zhou

2009-02-11T12:09:23Z

The Tang Dynasty Zen master, Zhaozhou Congshen 趙州從諗 (778 to 897 AD), was himself disciple of the Zen master Nanquan Puyuan 南泉普願 for twenty years. He espoused a school of Buddhism that taught that enlightenment can be attained through the careful attention to everyday activities 「平常是道」.

The following conversation is recorded in the Buddhist classic of Five Lamps《五燈會元》:

「師問新到：『曾到此間否?』
The Master (Zhaozhou) asked a monk who has just arrived, “Have you been here before?”

曰：『曾到。』
[The monk] replied, “Yes, I have.”

師曰：『吃茶去。』
The Master said, “Go drink tea.”

又問僧，僧曰：『不曾到。』
He then asked another monk the same question, and the monk replied, “No, I have not.”

師曰：『吃茶去。』
To which the Master said, “Go drink tea.”

後院主問曰：『為甚麼曾到也云吃茶去，不曾到也云吃茶去?』
Afterwards, the lord of the manor asked him, “The monk had been here before, and you said to him, ‘Go drink tea.’ The second monk had not been here before, and you said to him also, ‘Go drink tea.’ Why is that?”

師召院主，主應諾，師曰：『吃茶去。』
The Master beckoned the lord of the manor to come nearer, which he did;
then The Master said, “Go drink tea.”

Zhaozhou believed that the way to enlightenment was through motion and action, not through discourse or argument. Zhaozhou believed that when you encounter tea then you drink tea; when you meet rice then you eat rice 「遇茶吃茶，遇飯吃飯」: discussing the why’s and wherefore’s of these simple actions is meaningless. By discarding these distractions, one takes the first step towards enlightenment. The simplicity of Zhaozhou’s idea caused the Qing dynasty scholar, Shen Yu 湛愚 to exclaim, “these three words, ‘Go drink tea’! So direct! So joyful!” 「吃茶去三字，真直截，真痛快！」. Zhaozhou’s pre-eminence as a Zen master did much to make the drinking of tea a central part of the practice of Zen Buddhism.

Zhaozhou Congshen (in Chinese)

Set In Stone

2009-02-09T14:39:55Z

The recent Chinese New Year festivities brought several merchants from China with interesting wares to sell, such as jade sculptures, distinctive snacks, traditional embroidery and of course, tea sets. Several years ago I bought a stone tea-set. The stone is drilled into and slowly carved and polished into a teapot shape. It can be fairly hard to do since a teapot can’t be too thick, but over-polishing can easily lead to the stone cracking or a hole resulting from the stone being worn too thin.

The set I bought this time around was not as lovely as the one I bought previously, but then again, it is more than a hundred dollars cheaper. The surface is unpolished, so it looks like a murky black clay pot under certain lighting conditions. I hope to be able to nurture it into a soft velvety shine eventually. The stone used for making the teapot is reportedly high in selenium, and liquids that have be poured into the pot will be infused with trace amounts of selenium. The brochures that came with the pot extolled the virtues of selenium intake, which includes curing constipation, easing diabetes, helping with arthiritis and numerous other ailments. I would take the health claims with a pinch of…selenium, I suppose!

Pictures of the pot will be forthcoming, once I can photograph it in decent way. In my room, it looks like a vaguely teapot-shaped blotch of inkiness.

Algerian Coffee Stores

2008-12-22T12:20:12Z

One of the best places to get tea in London is surprisingly, not a
teashop, but a coffeeshop: The Algerian Coffee Stores. The name is
strangely misleading: There is only one store and not a chain of
stores. Indeed, the store is arguably not even large enough for one
store. The shop window is non-descript, cluttered, and it is
perfectly possible to walk past the shop even when you are looking for
it. It is a cramped, narrow room, half of which is taken up by a bar
from which is served freshly-brewed coffee, and the other half is
itself intruded upon by shelves stacked high with tins of coffee and
coffee cups. There is standing room only in the shop and most of the
business seems to be walk-in customers from the street side, but that
said there is a steady stream of customers.

The best stuff is not on the shelves, but behind the counter. You
actually have to ask for it from one of the assistants. It feels
almost like buying cigarettes: you have to be over 18 and know how to
ask for what you are buying (you can’t just ask for “cigarettes”).
While they have a few oolongs, their range of green teas is much more
impressive. I have tried their jade ring tea and that is particularly
impressive. It is a white tea (not really a green tea), shaped into
rings, and produces pale sweet liquor. White tea does not keep, and
that means that to keep the quantity that they have in stock, they
must have customers! I admit I have never ordered from them online,
but these are their details (caveat emptor).

Algerian Coffee Stores Ltd.
52 Old Compton Street
London W1D 4PB
http://www.algcoffee.co.uk/