Pair your food with tea

Tea readies and refreshes the palate to savour the next course in your meal

From HT Brunch, November 10 2013

The next time you are invited to attend a food pairing session, be warned. ; there’s a good chance the session will be all about pairing food with tea. 

Since when did plain old chai become so fancy? “We have tea and biscuits or tea and pakoras,” says tea sommelier Neetu Sarin. “But we never think about whether it tastes good with ‘a particular’ kind of food, perhaps because we didn’t have too many varieties of tea. But today, there’s a wide range to choose from [masala chai, green tea, Arabic tea and even white].”

The science
Tea pairing more or less follows the same principle as food pairing, so lighter teas like green tea work better with lighter foods like salads, while the stronger black tea pairs best with more strongly-flavoured and spicy foods. Many tea brands now suggest specific foods you can eat with their teas. They’re also roping in chefs to create special menus that showcase the versatility of the beverage.

Tea brand Typhoo got chef Vicky Ratnani to create a distinct menu that could be offered with different teas. “Not everyone drinks alcohol or wine,” says Ratnani. “And flavoured tea offers a variety of taste and enriches the accompanying food too. Tea is like any small mid-course palate cleanser, a great flavour bridge from one course to the next.” It refreshes and readies the palate to savour the next course and is a healthier accompaniment to food than wine.

Pairing tricks
Ratnani pairs Moroccan spiced cottage cheese or chicken with mint tea. “Moroccans use a lot of mint in their food, so I thought mint tea would go well with this cuisine. Similarly, something like Oolong tea would go nicely with grilled Oriental food, and jasmine tea with, say, grilled chicken,” he explains.

Cha Bar, the tea café chain, also pairs their wide in-house variety of teas with different kinds of food. “Whenever we have a cup of tea, we like to have something with it whether it’s a cookie, a toast or our favourite pakoras,” says Priti Paul, owner of Cha Bar and a passionate tea aficionado herself.

Lighter teas like green tea work betterwith lighter foods like salads

“So after talking to various tea drinkers, we decided to work out the combinations so that the next time you want to have chai with something, you know exactly what to ask for. So, while our masala chai or the chai Hindustani works with pakoras, the breakfast teas work best with patties or tea cakes, the Arabic tea goes well with kebab wraps and hummus and organic tea with basil pesto and vegetable panini.” 

Similarly, Typhoo, which also has a wide range of flavours, offers interesting suggestions about what to pair your favourite tea with. Says the brand’s spokesperson, Renu Kakkar, “Typhoo Darjeeling goes excellently with creamy desserts, while Typhoo Classic Assam is perfect with rich red meats, pastas and samosas. You can sip the English Breakfast with your egg bhurji and aloo paratha while the Earl Grey is good with mild English cheeses, lemon-flavoured cakes and desserts, like rabdi, falooda and kulfi.”

Unusual matches
Interestingly, the brew that most of India has with biscuits is also a good match with a variety of chocolates. According to Rajesh Variyath, corporate chef, Radisson Blu MBD, Noida, most heavy, rich chocolates go well with light teas. “You can pair an orange truffle chocolate with honey-ginger tea,” he says. “In case you are trying a dark chocolate then go for strong black tea like Oolong, or Earl Grey with more fruity fillings. Light teas like jasmine and chamomile also go with most chocolate flavours.”

However, don’t go by the book. “In the end you should just go by what suits your own palate,” says tea sommelier Anamika Singh.

Tea....Some Things You May Not Have Thought About

 

Published on March 18, 2012 by A Bromley in  "Food"

Tea has been around for a long, long time, since about 3000 BC, 2737 BC to be more exact and it was discovered by the wife of a Chinese Emperor by the name of Shen Nung and later became a domesticated crop during the Shang Dynasty (1600 BC to 1100 BC (approximate dates). 


The legend is that the emperor’s wife was boiling some water in a pot to prepare refreshment to serve her husband and guest when some leaves from the bush nearby fell into the boiling water.  Before the leaves could be removed they began to steep or brew and from it wafted a deliciously sweet aroma that pleased the emperor’s wife but she feared serving this beverage to the emperor and his guest with leaves it. She would have to start over; she thought to herself but worried because the guests were expecting to be served shortly.  


The emperor’s wife had no time to prepare new water since the guests were already waiting so she quickly skimmed away the leaves and served what she had prepared with the water she already had.  The result was that the emperor and guest were so pleased and delighted with this wonderfully different refreshment that they questioned the wife as to how she had prepared such a delicious and soothing drink.  


Reluctantly she confessed what had happened and fully expected her husband’s wrath to fall upon her but instead something quite different happened; her husband and his guests praised her for her ingenuity and the word was spread throughout the countryside about the delicious brew the emperor’s wife had served and tea before long became the most popular beverage on the planet aside from plain water.
 

Leaves of Camellia sinensis, the tea plant. 
Soon the leaves of the camellia bush were being collected and brewed into this wonderful beverage all over China.  The camellia soon became known as “the tea bush” and over the years several distinctive teas have been developed from the leaves of this fragrant and beautiful plant.  It all originated in China but soon moved into India and later Japan and other places; and this is where our cup of tea began.


The word “tea” comes from China and is a word in the Xiamen dialect “te” pronounced “tay” and meaning any heated beverage. 


 Even a hot cup of water without any sort of seasoning or perhaps just honey and warm water would still be called “te” or “tay” in Xiamen Chinese. 
 

Fresh tea leaves of different sizes. The smaller the leaf, the more expensive the tea
 This is why all these herbal teas we have today can still justifiably be called tea even though they are not officially tea from the camellia or tea bush. 


 In India this drink is called “tay” which later was translated to the English word “tea,” this drink not being introduced in Europe until the mid-16th and early-17th centuries and was introduced to those tea-drinking Englishmen by the Dutch.

Benefits Of Tea

Source :Money life :Tanushree Kar

Tea has many healthy properties. Tanushree Kar describes some of them

Whether cutting chai or full cup – an average Indian consumes about five cups of tea per day; so it might be a good idea to talk about the health benefits of tea. Tea is the most commonly consumed beverage in the world after water.

 Whether it is black, green, or red (oolong) tea, they all contain polyphenols which give tea its antioxidant properties. 

Antioxidants help protect our bodies from free radical damage. Indeed, tea ranks higher than many fruits and vegetables in the oxygen radical absorbance capacity score that measures antioxidant levels of foods. 

The more processing tea leaves undergo, the darker they turn. Green tea is the least processed tea – the leaves are simply steamed quickly. 

Black and red teas are partially dried, crushed and fermented. Regardless of the processing method, all teas contain polyphenols. Numerous studies have demonstrated the anti-cancer properties of polyphenols. Some studies, indeed, have suggested that tea’s polyphenols may reduce the risk of gastric, oesophageal and skin cancers, if one consumes four to six cups daily.

 Other laboratory studies have shown that tea has the capacity to lower stress hormone levels. According to a study published in the journal Psychopharmacology drinking black tea helps in recovering more quickly from life’s stresses. The study showed that 50 minutes after a high-stress event, subjects who drank four cups of black tea per day for a four-week period experienced less stress compared to people who did not drink tea at all.
 
Apart from polyphenols, tea also contains other ingredients that are beneficial to one’s health. These include (amino acid unique to tea), vitamins, minerals and methylxanthinen.

 These are components of the sources of tea’s healthy properties. They are known to help fight against mutagenic agents, delay aging, fight high blood pressure, fight against viral and bacterial infections, and improve the functions of the digestive and excretory systems. Hence, by drinking four cups of tea a day, you can reap the numerous curative and preventive benefits of tea.

There is no evidence that tea consumption is harmful to health. However, some research suggests that tea can impair the body’s ability to absorb iron from food, meaning that people at risk of anaemia should avoid drinking tea around meal times.

Tea is a healthy beverage offering many benefits if you can skip adding milk and sugar. German researchers have found that the relaxing effect of a few cups of ordinary black tea on the arteries is almost completely wiped out when milk is added to it. Healthy benefits of tea drinking are most clearly seen in East Asia, where one normally drinks tea without milk. You must learn to brew your tea for at least three to five minutes to bring out the beneficial polyphenols. Brewing brings out the aroma of tea, especially if it is of the leafy Darjeeling variety.

Some researchers also suggest that the microwave oven may destroy some of the antioxidants present in tea. Lower temperatures will draw antioxidants out from tea leaves, while high temperatures will destroy them. The temperature of boiling water is 212 degrees Fahrenheit or 100 degrees Celsius. 

Microwaves generate much higher temperature. Boiling tea on the stove is also a bad idea. That makes high temperature last too long. The best method is to just take a ceramic tea-pot, put the tea leaves in it, pour the boiling water on the leaves, cover the pot, let it brew for three minutes, stir the contents, strain and pour it into a cup.

 The chai from pavement tea stalls in India, where the chaiwallah does his acrobatic act with the long handled spoon, ladling the tea to make an outrageously sweet, milky, frothy concoction, may possibly not have any benefits. But one cannot deny the pleasure people on the wooden bench feel when they sip from tiny clay cups or from thick glasses. One can hardly forget the immortal scene in the movie Shri 420 – the pouring rain, the black umbrella, Raj Kapoor and Nargis under it and the chaiwallah with his kettle.