The Art of Tea…

In this current climate with social distancing and advice to stay home due to COVID-19, people are doing different things to pass the time.

I decided to make a cup of tea. Well, flower tea to be exact. And I decided to try it the sous vide way, just to see how it would turn out. I did not compare this sous vide tea with those that are boiled over the stove for 30 minutes though. I decided to make it the sous vide way because I did not want to ‘burn’ the ingredients by boiling the water to 100C.

The quickest way to make this is here. I linked this video because it was the easiest to make. There are other videos where the ingredients are boiled for 30 minutes.

This sous vide way was what I attempted. The ingredients used are similar, depending on where you live.

Baby chrysanthemum, dried gojiberries and dried longans.

I had tried this combination at a restaurant and found it delightful. However, I wanted to drink more of it and decided to make it myself. So here is my attempt. This tea is made up of baby chrysanthemum, dried gojiberries and dried longan. For those who are familiar with the Chinese concept of ‘heatiness’ and ‘cooling’, chrysanthemum and gojiberries are normal in that they are neither heaty nor cooling. However, longans are a tad heaty so if you are a person who cannot stand hot weather or heat, take less of these. A person with a ‘cool’ base can generally tolerate hot weather a bit better than someone with a ‘heaty’ base and vice-versa.

Dried gojiberries

Dried baby chrysanthemum

Dried longans

According to the lady at the shop where I had bought my ingredients from, these gojiberries were a better variety and they were larger. The dried longans are from Thailand and after boiling them, they can also be eaten if there is still any taste left in them. There wasn’t much taste left in mine after two rounds of sous vide but I still ate them.

Two sous vides going, the one at the left was at 185F for the dried longans while the one on the right is set for 70 Celsius for both the chrysanthemum and gojiberries. I had not changed the temperature on the left Anova to Celsius so I used it with the preset Fahrenheit readings. The right Anova has the temperature readings in Celsius.

I sous vide one bottle with the ingredients in it and the other jar had only plain water. After 30 minutes, I emptied the jar with the tea and put the ingredients back into the other jar which already had water at the correct temperature, for another 30 minutes.

Ingredients:
I used the following amount of ingredients:
Gojiberries – 1 1/2 tablespoon
Chrysanthemum – 1 1/2 tablespoon
Dried longan – 15-16 pieces

The above were for six cups of water, with another six cups on standby as I wanted to sous vide the ingredients twice.

The rehydrated dried longans

Rehydrated gojiberries

Rehydrated chrysanthemum flowers

Tada! After the sous vide, I mixed the water from the three ingredients together. The first brew is on the right as you can probably tell by the stronger colour. I wanted to brew a third time but decided against it after tasting the second attempt which is the one on the left.

Top view with bits of the three ingredients in it.

I decided on 70C for the flowers and gojiberries because I thought that they were more delicate and therefore did not require too high a temperature to bring out their flavours. The longans were sous vide at 85C as they seemed like more hardy ingredients. I have no idea if I am right. I am just basing this on what I had read about temperatures for making teas.

I love longans so I decided to filter out the rest and left the longans in the glass for eating.

The tea was a little weak. But it was still nice and had antioxidant goodness from the gojiberries. I will add more chrysanthemum flowers the next time. Some people add rock sugar to their tea for greater sweetness. The taste from the chrysanthemum needs to be a tad stronger but I do not need the extra sweetness from rock sugar.

Would I sous vide again? I may not differentiate the temperatures the next time. I liked the sous vide way because I feel like I am not overboiling the ingredients at 100C. But folks without sous vide equipment can make a nice cup of tea just the same. I wanted something to put my mind to while manoeuvring this period of social distancing without resorting to counting rice grains!

Enjoy your cuppa!

Update:

I was hankering for a hot drink and didn’t want anything caffeinated. Then I remembered my tea. Scooping a teaspoon of gojiberries and some longans into a teapot, I poured hot water into it and allowed it to steep for 30 minutes. The pot was sufficient for only two cups.

Tada! Tea is served! I poured in more hot water into the little pot while I savoured this!

Ahhh! Life has meaning after all!

Tabemono 6: Thai food @ Shinjuku

We had not intended to eat Thai food but we came across two restaurants who seemed to be doing very good business during lunch hour and we decided to try one of them. The first thing I noticed was the size of the noodles in the Pad Thai. They were finer than the usual thin noodles. In fact the size was closer to fat bee hoon size than the thin rice noodles we usually have in Singapore.

Basil Chicken rice

Pad Thai with the much thinner rice noodles.

Both orders came with a small side dish.

The meal was surprisingly good and the food actually tasted better than the Thai food we normally get in Singapore. And no, I did not take a picture of the restaurant front. This was in the side lanes of Shinjuku.

A pleasant flight

After traveling on budget airlines several times lately, flying a normal serviced flight turned out to be quite pleasant. It helped that the plane was in good condition, the flight was not full and the stewards were well-groomed and spoke well. I’m not usually a fan of airline food but the food on this flight was not too bad. I ordered an omelette and asked for chicken noodles after trying the omelette. The egg tasted somewhat synthetic though the potato pieces that came with it were good. I passed on the sausage. The coffee too was decent.

I was a little surprise at the amount of turbulence on this short flight, which meant we had to be seated for a rather long while. I started to wonder if we would ever get to eat after a while. A 40-wink nap helped me pass the time as I woke up to clear blue skies.

It was a pleasant flight and I should fly this airline a little more. It’s not known for its quality and price (although this flight was really good value) for nothing.

Singapore Airlines

Red, White and Blue: Yak and Yeti, no, not their meats!

We were longing for Indian food and my friend brought me to her favourite Indian restaurant in town. So off we went to this place. A yak, I know. But a yeti? Two drawings on their signboard showed a deer or goat-looking animal and a gorilla. The yeti must be a gorilla, or something similar and a Google search resulted in another term, ‘apeman’. Since both animals are known in the Himalayas, I concluded that the food must be North Indian, if it is Indian. As it turned out, some of the food was Nepalese and Tibetan, housed in the oldest Victorian house in Arvada! We ordered Indian.

Being more familiar with Indian food in South East Asia, I was especially surprised at the size of the samosa, which was about twice the size of what we got in Singapore. But food portions are usually larger in the USA to begin with. The taste of several of the dips seemed less pronounced than what I was used to. I liked the meat dishes though the meats were cooked just right and not overly spicy. The weather too played a part as the dryness made some things like the pappadams taste really nice. I liked the Naan bread as well.

Yak and Yeti, 7803 Ralston Rd. Arvada, CO 80002. Te+1-303-431-9000. http://www.theyakandyeti.com

Pappadam entree with four dips

The pappadams were great – crunchy and fragrant with spices.

Vegetarian Samosas that were larger than what I was used to.

I am used to skin that are thinner as the skin or wrap here was rather thick. But I do not know if such skins are the standard here in the USA though.

This was like set meal for one person but we ordered it to share between two people which turned out to be a great idea. The rice was of good quality and fine. The meats were not too spicy – we asked for medium spiciness – and the dessert of rice pudding, which I did not know was a dessert at first, balanced out the meal perfectly. The sweetness of the dessert balanced out the spiciness. I then wondered if perhaps in Indian food, the dessert was eaten at the same time and not later, like in western meals.

Chicken masala

Plain naan bread which was nice too.

Red, White and Blue: Yankee noodles

I was craving for some Asian food to take away when I came across this franchise. I ordered the Pad Thai and my craving for Asian food was satisfied. This little franchise serves decent noodles and the noodles are authentic enough considering that they serve many different types of noodles, not all Asian. It was good enough to satisfy my cravings but not as authentic as what you would get in a Thai restaurant, and understandbly so. Portion wise, it was huge!

Noodles and Company may be located via here.