http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/index/ en alnedra.mofi@gmail.com Copyright 2010 2010-03-20T09:09:13+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/warm_milk/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/warm_milk/#When:09:09:13Z 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! Tea, Black 2010-03-20T09:09:13+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/new_tea_sea/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/new_tea_sea/#When:06:40:31Z 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. 2009-10-23T06:40:31+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/bleach/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/bleach/#When:08:53:26Z 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. 2009-08-16T08:53:26+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/scent_to_impress/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/scent_to_impress/#When:15:18:17Z 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. 2009-07-23T15:18:17+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/solitary/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/solitary/#When:16:49:27Z 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. 2009-07-09T16:49:27+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/jade_rings_revisited/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/jade_rings_revisited/#When:05:47:05Z 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). 2009-07-07T05:47:05+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/teapot_poster/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/teapot_poster/#When:08:46:30Z 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. 2009-07-04T08:46:30+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/tidbit/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/tidbit/#When:01:18:14Z 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. 2009-06-25T01:18:14+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/announcement/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/announcement/#When:01:17:59Z 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 2009-06-25T01:17:59+00:00 http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/stocking_tea/ http://www.leavesofjade.com/index.php/tea_blog/stocking_tea/#When:10:42:26Z 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. Tea, Black 2009-02-20T10:42:26+00:00