Global Tea Time

Tea tasting I drink a lot of bagged tea at work. It's cheap and convenient. What can I say, my office is not set up for brewing a nice pot of loose leaf. While the dedicated tea heads of the world preach staying away from the bagged stuff because it is low quality, and doesn't taste as good, bagged tea is very popular around the world. So, after ransacking my cupboards for random bags of green tea (I have several boxes that are consolidated from boxes that had just a few tea bags left), I came up with 7 different teas to try. I actually did my tasting in 2 batches because I found 2 other tea bags after the fact. So, how did I do it? The blue thing on the bottom of the cup is a piece of tape with the name of the corresponding tea bag on it. Then I placed the tea bags in the cups, and cut off the tag. Then I mixed them up. Even with the trial of 2 cups, it's easy to lose track of which is which if you pay attention to something else, like a program that you are...

Chad Today we travel to Chad for a spicy cup of herbal tea. At first I wasn't sure if I would find anything for Chad. I kept coming up with videos of guys named Chad doing stupid things. Then I started Googling Chad Africa, and found this gem of a recipe. 1 tablespoon (4 grams) hibiscus flowers, 2 cloves, one cinnamon stick, and some ginger. Bring 2 cups (500 ml) water to a boil, add the above ingredients, and simmer for 5 minutes. I'll admit I let this keep steeping while I drank my first cup of tea. Let me tell you, this tea smells great (and tastes great, too). Cloves, ginger, and cinnamon mingle well with the hibiscus. It had just the right balance of cloves, cinnamon, and a hint of ginger. I'll admit to using this concoction to make poached pears as well. They were fantastic! There were a few countries that I really didn't find much or any tea information about. For the Central African Republic , all I found was black tea with canned milk and sugar. W...

Congo Okay, I know that there are a couple of countries that have "Congo" in their name. My apologies for lumping you together. Finding information about tea culture in this region is a bit difficult. There is a lot of information about conflict in the region. I certainly remember this being in the news for years, but there's always more to people and a region than the conflicts that make the news. There is the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. I did manage to find a video on YouTube of a young woman showing what she makes for breakfast on her cooking vlog. I decided that this was the best resource I was going to find. She held up the box of tea so people could see what brand she used. Unfortunately it was a bit blurry on my screen. I think it looked like Lipton, so that's what I went with. Lipton with milk. Pretty easy. She said she liked 50/50 milk to water, but use whatever ratio you want. Heat by your favorite method (can you say ...

Bissap (hibiscus tea revisited) Burkina Faso and Ghana (just south of Burkina Faso) love their hibiscus tea. I think it's interesting that these neighbors with similar tastes had different colonial rulers. Burkina Faso was French, and Ghana was a British colony. According to the internet, Ghana changed from driving on the left side of the road to the right to match their neighbors. I seem to recall that they changed sides of the road they drove on as a snub to their former colonial rulers. Regardless of this aside, Ghana was the first Sub-Saharan country to gain its independence Ghana listed hibiscus and ginger (which I made for Egypt ). Burkina Faso also likes to add mint. 1 tablespoon (4 grams) of hibiscus, some chunks of ginger, a few mint sprigs, and 2 cups (500 ml) water. I put them all in a sauce pan and simmered for 5 minutes. Now I have a little note about the ginger. I normally keep fresh ginger in the freezer because it keeps longer, and is really easy to grate...

Equatorial Guinea Today we go to Equatorial Guinea , which consists of "Rio Muni" - Continental Equatorial Guinea, and 5 small islands known collectively as Insular Equatorial Guinea. When researching this country, I found "osang" tea. I found the name only, no instructions on how to make it. Mystery tea Upon doing some research, osang is a generic name for African milk tea. I couldn't pin down any specific flavors used for this region, just a general description of how people all over Africa make this tea. The base is black tea with milk. The suggested add ins are shown below. Tea Masala (thank you Indian food store), ginger, cardamom, or lemongrass. No, don't use them all together. Today I'm in the mood for cardamom, so that's what I used. The one blog I found about making this suggested a 1:1 ratio of milk and tea. I used 3/4 cup (about 200 ml) of each, with 3 cardamom pods. As usual, you can add sugar to taste. I decided to add the c...

Ivory Coast Today we travel to the Ivory Coast ! Sorry, I don't know how to put my French accent marks in here to spell it as it should be. You'll have to follow the link for that. I found a really great recipe for hibiscus tea to represent this country. They value using local ingredients to make a really good cup of tea. How do I know it's a good cup of tea? Because I tried it. Unfortunately, my idea of local produce is a little different from theirs, but it still works even if you don't have hibiscus flowers, pineapples, and lime trees growing in your neighborhood. I did get the sprigs of mint locally. My mint plant is still growing on my window sill. Since I've been keeping a mint plant, I've learned that they are really sticky. I've also learned how to get good flavor out of the mint leaves in tea since my first experiment with Moroccan Mint Tea . I didn't have my water hot enough that time. That won't be an issue today! I started by boilin...