Archive for category Observation
The other side of tea
Posted by Dima in Chinese, Observation, recipe on December 21, 2009
I grew up in places that consume a lot of tea. First it was Russia, where tea is pivotal to practically any gathering (at least this is how I remember it). Then it was Israel, where tea is also important, even if it was a slightly different kind of tea. In both cases I experienced the tea, but never had a chance to think about it and reflect on it as a cultural practice. Now, living in Singapore, I had a chance to get exposed to the Chinese approach to tea in a somewhat more systematic fashion.
Last weekend, Veronica and I were to the Tea Chapter, an organization that aims “to promote and enhance the understanding of Chinese heritage” through “tea appreciation”. I think they started as kind of a society and have eventually grown into a serious commercial enterprise. The place we’ve visited had a shop where they sell teas and (very expensive) tea accessories on the first floor, and a coffee shop combined with sort of an educational center at the upper levels.
The place has three kinds of seating: Chinese, Korean, and Japanese; we are in the Chinese seating space.
The woman who brought us tea spend half an hour explaining us about the process of brewing and appreciating the tea, which was a lot of fun and quite educational. She kept referring back to the need to enjoy and value the tea just the way we appreciate wine (a comparison that is probably the easiest to comprehend for Westerners like us). According to her, the idea behind tea drinking situation is primarily to relax. She explicitly avoided the word “ceremony” and said that in the Chinese culture it is not as ceremonial as it may be in the Japanese or Korean cultures.
The tea set (from left to right): on the tray you see fair cup, the tea cups, and the fragrance cups; hot water kept hot on a burner; and a set of wooden utensils including tea scoop, tea spoon (not to steer the sugar, but to clean the tea pot from leaves that prevent the water flow), and tea clip (used to drain the cups after heating them with hot water)
But there is a process that is generally followed. First, you warm up the cups and the tea pot (missing from the picture above) by pouring hot water on them. This is something I remember was also done in Russia, however there it was done to prevent cracking the vessel from pouring really hot water into it. Here this is done to enhance the flavors of the tea.
After preheating, you put in the tea leaves using a wooden tea scoop. We had the house tea, which was semi-fermented (we heard a lot about the different levels of tea fermentation) and we filled a third of the tea pot with leaves. After adding the leaves you add the hot water, but you poor it out immediately. This is done to clean the leaves and also to let them open, so that they would give the most flavor when you add the next batch of water. The temperature of the water is decided according to the type of tea you are having. As a rule of thumb, the lighter (read less fermented) the tea is, the cooler the water should be and the longer the brewing time. It reminded me of the use of exposure and diaphragm in photography – they balance each other to create the best final outcome.
The teapot full of leaves that opened from the hot water: The teapot itself is the central technological peace of this arrangement; it is made out of a porous clay, which absorbs the water; with time it also absorbs the flavors of the tea, so usually people who care about their tea have separate pots for different kinds of tea (decided primarily by the degree of the tea fermentation).
After pouring the second batch of water into the pot, you let it brew for some time depending on the kind of tea. In our case we had to wait for about 20-25 seconds before we transferred the tea into the tea receptacle. Transferring the tea from the pot to the receptacle stops the brewing process. According to the lady who explained the process to us it allows the tea to give us all the taste, aroma, and the vitamins (did you know that green tea has vitamin C in it?), but not the caffeine and other unhealthy stuff. This last point is not completely clear to me, because in one tea-drinking sitting you may refill the tea pot a number of times before you change the leaves. So, what happens to the caffeine on the fourth and fifth iteration of brewing?
Pouring tea from the fragrance cup (look how small everything is).
Transferring the tea from the pot to the receptacle also assures that when poured into cups, the tea is evenly brewed. Otherwise, when you pour directly from the pot, the tea will be brewed to different levels depending on how long it remained in the pot. Once in the receptacle, the next step in the process is pouring the tea into the fragrance cups. Those are tall narrow cups that remind shot glasses in the West. Unlike the tea pot, the fragrance cups (as well as the receptacle and the tea cups) are made of porcelain so that they would not absorb any flavors and could be used with different kinds of tea.
As their name suggest, the fragrance cups are used to appreciate the aroma of the tea. This part really reminds fancy wine tasting, but at least as we were told, there is no pretension to explain the tea based on that – just to enjoy it. In addition, the white color of the cup allows you to appreciate the color of the tea. Not sure if there is anything to it more than the aesthetics, but that is the purpose.
Finally, after you are done appreciating the aroma and the smell, you can pour the tea into the tea cup. In fact, once you did this whole process once, you can skip the fragrance cup, but it is still fun to do that and it also cools the tea down, which can be nice in some cases. The small size of the tea cup assures that you won’t drink its entire content at once, but instead would sip it slowly while enjoying the flavors, the natural sweetness (no sugar is added), and the warmth of the tea. Again, this part does remind of wine tasting.
The tea is served - enjoy! Together with the tea we had sugared peanuts, which was something I have never tried before.
Whether or not we were sold a touristy version of tea drinking or this is really close to the actual thing, both Veronica and I found it really relaxing and enjoyed this quality time together a lot. I personally found it pretty interesting how the simple act of having tea embraces so many cultural influences. The idea of focusing on the little things and appreciating the details seems very traditionally Chinese to me (sorry if it sounds stereotypical and please feel free to correct me) and is very different from how we used to drink tea back in Russia (or in Ithaca for that matter) – a large cup of super hot and lengthily brewed black tea, which you drink many times to get warm. Also the communal aspect of tea drinking is very nice, but that I think is commonly found in the way tea is consumed both in Russia and in the Middle East.
"Mmm... so good...."
Anyway, on the way back we bought a bunch of teas to take with us back to the States and are now pondering about whether we need/can have a Chinese tea set (those in the coffee houses are really expensive and we do not trust those sold in the touristy market).
That was our experience of the other side of the tea :)
Erik’s Buffalo Wings
Posted by Dima in Observation, recipe, USA on June 8, 2009
A few weeks ago Veronica and I visited Eric, who has exposed us to his version of Buffalo wings. In our eyes, the fact that Eric is actually from Buffalo, gives him some authority on the subject. So, this post is dedicated to his recipe and our observations of him making it.
There are a few stories of how the Buffalo were invented, but most of them surround the Belissimo family from Buffalo, NY and extreme conditions such as unexpected guests or excessive supply of chicken wings. Regardless, the wings became a very popular at competitive events, where snacks are appreciated :)
According to Erik (confirmed by Wikipedia), traditional wings are “deep fried and then coated in sauce.” In our case this was a slightly “healthier” version, as no deep frying took place. Also, according Wikipedia (confirmed by Erik): “Typically, the wings are deep-fried, drained, placed in a bowl with the sauce, tightly covered, and shaken until the wings are evenly coated.” In our case, the process was really different, which in my view produced better results than what I have tried a couple of times in restaurants.
So, what is it all about?
Ingredients:
As you will see, the quantities are not precise as are the names of some ingredients. Hopefully, the pictures will help make things clearer.
- wings – not sure about the quantity, but they should be small wings, not the huge chunks of meat (Erik finds them only in Costco)
- 2 sticks of butter
- 32 oz of hot sauce (based on cayenne pepper)
- 3 tea-spoons of minced garlic
- 3 table spoons of honey
- 2 table spoons of molasses
- 1 tea spoon of onion powder
- add a dash of Thai pepper sauce
- add a little ground cayenne powder
- add a little salt
- add a little lime juice
The process:
Erik started with heating a deep pan with the two sticks of butter. I think my levels of cholesterol started rising only from looking at those two slowly melting in the pan.
Without waiting for the butter to melt completely, Erik added the rest of the ingredients, starting (I think) with the hot sauce. The mixture became very colorful and he let it heat up until it started to simmer.
While everything was simmering, Erik started with oiling a couple of pans and spread the wings. At that point, the wings were actually frozen. I don’t think i have ever cooked meat straight off the freezer, but according to Erik, this is part of the process. In fact, as you will see very soon, freezer has additional functions in this recipe.
Next, with abilities of a real artist, Erik coated every single wing with the sauce, using a BBQ brush. It takes some time and can be somewhat messy, but it is important to be thorough and make sure there are no blind spots. As Erik put it: “Love your chicken, so it would love you back” :)
Then the wings went into the oven (preheated at about 400F) for about 20 minutes. After that, Erik took them out, flipped them, covered them with sauce again (on the other side) and returned them back for another 20 minutes. So far so good and the smell was great.
Now the really interesting part of the processes began. Without even letting them cool down properly, Erik put them in Tupperware and returned the baked in sauce wings to the freezer. According to the chef, this is the true secret of his version of the dish. The wings sit in the freezer for 24 hours (yes, some planning ahead needed if you think about making those) and whatever happens in the freezer supposedly makes them so soft and juicy, when they are eventually made.
24 hours later, the wings, thrown on a preheated skillet, looked like this:
The last stage was continuing cooking the wings on the skillet until they are brown and warm.
That takes some time, because first of all they had to defrost. All in all, as you can see, that was a pretty time consuming process., But the result was worth it. As I’ve written before, these were probably the tastiest wings I have tried so far. They were especially good when taken together with a blue cheese sauce.
In Russian, when you eat something very good, you say that it is so tasty that you would lick your fingers. Well, in this case, you literally had to do that!