Apart
from sipping while solving life’s problems, tea has many uses. Any
American historian will tell you dumping tea into a harbour is a
great way to start a revolution. Fortune-tellers swear the swirl of
leaves in the bottom of a cup hold the secrets of your destiny. Ask a
chef and you may be surprised to learn that the fragrant quality of
tea adds wonderful flavour to food, whether you are marinating,
tenderizing, braising, infusing or baking.
Fresh tea is bitter and
astringent, designed by nature to keep creatures from eating it. But
nature didn’t bank on humans using mild heat, pressure and time to
let the enzymes in tea transform the raw material into something
delicious. And the fact that its phenol compounds are lauded for
their antioxidant health benefits hasn’t slowed the consumption of
this revolutionary drink in North America.
February
isn't the only month for sentimental celebration.
Every day can be Valentine's Day. You are even forgiven for splashing red hearts and pink blush all
over the place. During the festival of perfect love, marriage or just
a pas de deux, the
same principle applies to drinks. They are allowed to be pink and
pretty and to dance divinely on your tongue with compatibility,
creative interpretations and with ingredients and flavours that make
for a beautiful relationship.
Put on
the cocktail music and, instead of flowers, why not enjoy the aroma
and romance of cocktails of love?
Most of us think that tea probably grows in those perforated bags. Not so. Loose leaf tea is making a huge come back in recent years as tea shops open around almost every corner. Here is a primer done by Le Gourmet TV.com, to help brew the perfect cup.
“The
Korova Milkbar was a milk-plus mesto… what they sold there was milk
plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor, but
there was no law yet against prodding some of the new veshches which
they used to put into the old moloko, so you could peet it with
vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom or one or two other veshches which
would give you a nice quiet horrorshow fifteen minutes admiring Bog
and All His Holy Angels and Saints in your left shoe with lights
bursting all over your mozg.”
—Anthony
Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Or
maybe a moloko with
knives in it to warm your guttywuts and sharpen you up? Perhaps, sir,
you’d be more satisfied with a chalice of Romulan Ale to put
additional spring into your galactic galliard, eh? Beam me up,
Scotty.
The
reality is that you don’t necessarily need to resort to fantasy to
experience some rather out-there tipples. The following is a short
list of some of those coming to, available at or never to be seen
(mercifully) at your local hooch purveyor.
No
one has yet come up with a satisfactory explanation as to why Scots
and Canadians call the beverage distilled from malted barley
“whisky,” while Irish people and Americans spell the same thing
“whiskey.” An easy way to remember the correct form according to
its derivation is that Scotland and Canada have no e in their
name— whereas the United States and Ireland do.
For
gourmands, the pairing of regional food with regional drink is pretty
much a requirement: Chianti with high-acid tomato sauce; Muscadet
with belons oysters;
aquavit with pickled herring; spit-roasted lamb with red Rioja; Port
and stilton (okay, Port is
from Portugal, but the Brits invented it); Scottish smoked salmon and
malt whiskey (if you must); Retsina and Greek salad; Guinness and
Irish stew.
But
Champagne and caviar? Caspian fish eggs with a bubbly wine from
northern France? Whaddup? Okay, the first real caviar retailer set up
shop in Paris, so there’s the connection, but really …
Generally
speaking, things have gotten easier for us. It’s easier to phone
than, say, to send a smoke signal. It’s easier to order in than to
hunt in the wild. It’s easier to drive than to walk. (Okay, given
what I encounter on the street every day, that might be a stretch.)
And it’s way easier to use the latest Windows (insert trademark,
copyright, etc. sign here — whatever keeps us out of court)
operating system than it was to navigate MS-DOS (those of us that use
the Mac OS probably wonder why anyone, anywhere, would ever use
either, but that’s a whole other story for someone who’s even
more of a geek than me).
Generally
speaking, things have gotten easier for us. It’s easier to phone
than, say, to send a smoke signal. It’s easier to order in than to
hunt in the wild. It’s easier to drive than to walk. (Okay, given
what I encounter on the street every day, that might be a stretch.)
And it’s way easier to use the latest Windows (insert trademark,
copyright, etc. sign here — whatever keeps us out of court)
operating system than it was to navigate MS-DOS (those of us that use
the Mac OS probably wonder why anyone, anywhere, would ever use
either, but that’s a whole other story for someone who’s even
more of a geek than me).
Yep,
things are easier these days. With the possible exception of
understanding Scotch. Trying to come to terms with it requires some
extremely sober cognition.
Eschewing
the “pretentious twaddle that’s crept into the industry” (the
result, he claims, of one too many free PR trips to distilleries),
British whisky expert Jim Murray is a refreshingly candid man, who
calls a spade a spade and refuses to suck up to the industry he not
only writes about, but to which he also acts as a consultant.
No such
thing as bad whisky? “If anyone tells you there is no such thing as
bad whisky, either they are an alcoholic or working in the industry.
Or both.” How about combining whisky with food? “No. I think more
pretentious rubbish is written and spoken about this than any other
factor concerning whisky … It’s a load of crap.” Does
chill-filtering really strip out a whisky’s flavour? “Yes.”
What about “cask-strength” whiskies? “Whisky the way God
intended.” How about ice in your whisky? “Never
— unless you are in Kentucky, humidity is at 400 per cent
and the bone and muscle in your legs turn to jelly the moment you
step outside of the door.”
Drinks 
For
gourmands, the pairing of regional food with regional drink is pretty
much a requirement: Chianti with high-acid tomato sauce; Muscadet
with belons oysters;
aquavit with pickled herring; spit-roasted lamb with red Rioja; Port
and stilton (okay, Port is
from Portugal, but the Brits invented it); Scottish smoked salmon and
malt whiskey (if you must); Retsina and Greek salad; Guinness and
Irish stew.
