Everyone loves tea – but not many know that you can cook with it as well. Tea, in its many forms, is one of the oldest ingredients in the kitchen. The possibilities of cooking with tea are endless, including making tea concentrates, brines, braises, steeping leaves in cream or vinegar, and using the tea leaves themselves to add flavor and texture to both savory and sweet dishes.
Tea sommelier Cynthia Gold at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel and Towers, explains how tea is one of the oldest ingredients in the kitchen but at the same time one of the newest. “Within the various tea-producing regions of the world, tea has long been consumed as a food as well as a beverage, yet more often than not, these culinary preparations have stayed hidden within their cultural niches.” As a chef, she began creating foods in her restaurant in Cambridge, MA that would complement the teas she served. It then occurred to her that pairing a tea and food within a dish shouldn’t be that different from paring alongside a dish. As a result, she created culinary items such as the Fresh Tart with Jasmine Tea Pastry Cream for her cafe.
Chinese Tea-Marbled Eggs
Tea as a beverage is fast gaining popularity in the West, thanks in part to a greater availability of wonderful loose-leaf varieties and also to a growing body of research that supports the historic understanding of the health benefits of tea. It follows naturally that it would make the leap from cup to plate. Classic ways of cooking with tea (such as centuries-old Chinese Tea-Marbled eggs) already exist, as well as new recipes like Assam Shortbread.
There are myriad ways in which tea can enhance a dish and bring out its complementary ingredients. “Tea can be added dry, steeped in water, and specific styles – green, black, oolong, and white – will enhance various dishes in different ways,” says Gold. Among black teas for example, a delicate Darjeeling will work better in one kind of dish, a hearty Keemun in another, a smoky Lapsang Souchong in a third.
Either way, bringing tea into modern kitchens as a remarkably versatile, healthy, and flavorful ingredient is something that can be incorporated into anyone’s culinary repertoire.
Diana Mai
Summer 2012 Boston Food Warrior
Digestible Comestible 