[Sca-cooks] Re: Tea

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Also sprach Laura C. Minnick:
>But I have to say- sorry, Master A- Unless I'm in a Chinese restaurant,
>I prefer mine like the Brits. With milk. No sugar, just milk. Irish
>Breakfast, strong enough to look like coffee, a little milk so it turns
>a rich pecan... yum!

So, um, when I'm in one of the many fine English restaurants in my
area, I'll have it with milk.

Hey, don't get me wrong. Of the --oh, I don't know-- ~10 different
teas in my kitchen at any given time (not counting the various herbal
medicines my wife keeps on hand), three or so of them are of a more
or less IN-jah, empire-builder,
one-spoonful-per-cup-and-one-for-the-pot types. Let's see:

	Pu erh/Pu ni (good stuff)
	Lok On (overall, my favorite for general use)
Iron Goddess of Mercy (allegedly picked by monkeys, carried in a
suitcase from China... the tea, that is, not the monkeys, although I
can buy it in New York, too -- for special occasions)
	Generic export-grade gunpowder tea (like the IGOM, a green,
whole-leaf tea, also excellent)
	Yunnan brick tea (needs to be steamed and separated before
use, as do most versions of Pu Ni and Lok On, also very good)
	Generic Oolong (good, assertive, basic black, good but too
finely ground to stand up to repeated infusions)
	Jasmine Oolong (same as above but with jasmine flowers, very
nice but also not up to repeated infusions)
	Chrysanthemum tea (which I wouldn't include in this list
except it is sometimes mixed with Pu Ni for brewing, otherwise it is
almost always sweetened with rock sugar)
	Generic Chinese Green Tea (finely ground and pretty similar
to Japanese green tea)
	Japanese Green Tea (virtually a powder, it comes in a can and
storage in the freezer is recommended)
	McGrath's Irish Breakfast (a neighborhood standard, not bad at all)
	Fortnum and Mason's (a gift; a blend allegedly designed to go
with New York City's rather hard tap water -- this stuff definitely
_needs_ some kind of addition, milk, sugar, maybe lemon to mask the
tannin; probably a good thing it's so finely ground that if you even
approach it with a second consignment of boiling water it runs away,
yipping, into the morning mist)
	Some species of Thai tea, similar to Oolong but much more finely ground
	We're all out of Russian tea, but I usually have some on hand...

Lapsang-Souchong is not allowed in my home, unless it arrives already
in the stomach of a yuppie, 80's time traveller, track-lighting
salesman.

This doesn't count the various decafs, never-were-cafs, and tea bags
which seem to breed spontaneously in cabinets. Nor the three or four
different brands of yerba mate.

I just don't think of "tea" as being a copyrighted, proprietorially
English institution, bound or defined by those traditions, any more
than KFC should decide for the world how chicken should be prepared.
The world is far too big for that, and far too much of it has been
drinking tea in a very non-English manner for far too long for the
milk-and-sugar crowd to use propriety as a justification. Taste is
taste, and if you like it that way, that's fine. If you like it with
cough syrup or pickled martini onions, that's fine, too, but if you
do, inclusion in The Exclusive Veddy Proper Tea Society shouldn't be
your primary motive.

However, getting back to my main point, I think the whole sweet,
milky tea thing can be classed with Worcestershire sauce and curry
powder [as sold and used in Europe] -- English colonial imitations of
Indian institutions, but not necessarily really good imitations.

I do, however, like a good cucumber sandwich ;-)

Adamantius (not opinionated in the least)