A Massive Haul of Tea Leaves

In an effort to return to the world of blogging after a brief yet busy trip to Ireland and the weeklong rush of activities that followed (including a stubborn case of jet-lag, which seems to get worse with each passing year), I thought I'd offer a few photos on a not-totally-unrelated-to-Ireland topic - tea.

A friend was generous enough to come over and make us a large Chinese-themed meal last night, as a show of appreciation for the many meals we've shared over the last year. He prepared "soaked chicken," a simple yet amazingly tasty preparation that filled our kitchen with the wonderful smells of soy sauce, ginger, lime and cilantro. I've included the recipe below for those curious (featuring his idiosyncratic directions and vocabulary), and will add that our Peruvian friend mentioned multiple times that the longer one cooks the chicken is directly proportional to how white (culturally speaking) one is. Green beans and a spicy dipping sauce accompanied several bottles of German wheat-doppelbock ale and an after-dinner snifter of Connemara peat-smoked Irish whiskey. Yeah, it's a pan-cultural household over here.

Our friend's generosity didn't end there, however. In addition to later politely watching several short abstract films by avant-garde master Stan Brakhage, he left us with a heaping bag of various teas that had been left in his care by what I think he said was a previous fellow boat-dweller off the Silver Strand near Coronado. Whatever the provenance, the armful of teas (mostly from the online purveyor Adagio Teas) was a welcome gift, especially given my own ignorance of the world of tea, Jane's love of the brewed leaves, and our own recent experiences sampling wonderful Irish "high tea" sessions.

I suspect I'll always prefer iced tea over traditional tea, mainly because my taste in hot beverages begins and ends with coffee, and partly because I'm a sucker for anything with ice. In this, I am a true American. My general ignorance on matters of tea may have quite a bit to do with my Yankee genes - I wonder how much the general American disinterest has to do with long-lingering hurt feelings over the British Empire and such provocations as the Boston Tea Party. I was recently startled to learn that tea bags are quite a recent American invention, first released in 1908 by John Sullivan. The overall lower quality of tea found in tea bag varieties says much about our obsession with time-saving measures and gadgetry and willingness to forgo taste for speed.

So, we'll see how deeply I dive into the various flavors of tea now arranged across our kitchen table. Some of the flavor names are quite charming and whimsical...

...others rather straightforward, if specialized....

...and others make me wonder whether I'll be tasting kippers and black pudding when I take a sip.

Our sampling of tea in both County Clare and County Galway last week was often accompanied by a tower of cakes, pastries and other goodies. I can't say how much these Irish "high tea" sessions were original to the region or merely straightforward imports from England, but it did give me pause to consider the fact that we were experiencing a ritual imported from a previously ruling Empire which had, in turn, imported the practice from another colony. Again, pan-culturalism at its best and worst.

I don't yet get the same pleasurable rush from inhaling the dried leaves of tea as I do from inhaling a freshly ground serving of coffee beans, yet it probably is time to set aside any petty dislike and begin sampling what a large majority of the world turns to in order to soothe spirits and calm the mind.

Our Friend's Very Delicious Soaked Chicken Recipe


Ingredients:

1 whole chicken. Note: a whole chicken’s worth of pieces doesn’t count, it has to be whole.

2 or 3 stalks of celery (you don’t really need an entire plant but that’s usually how they come)

One bomp of green onion

A small ginger root

At least a cup (8 flozzes) of soy sauce

1 lime

Just a bit of cilantro (but you know they only sell it by the entire forest. It’s okay a forest costs like 12 cents unless you are in New York in which case it's ridiculous)

Sesame oil

Directions:

Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil. Massage the chicken with sesame oil, remove the offal and stuff it’s cavity with a couple celery and a few slices of ginger. Insert the whole chicken and let it set in there for an hour. If you are concerned that it won’t be cooked enough then after 30 minutes you can turn the stove on really really low; the lowest of the low, for 10 or 15 minutes. Don’t let it boil again or the chicken will get all F’d up. Try sort of flipping the chicken halfway through. Not upside down, just kinda rotate it maybe. To make the soaking sauce mix about 8 flozzes of soy sauce and squeeze in one half or even a whole lime. Peel the ginger and dice up about 4-6 slices and add along with one or two green onions chopped up (omit the really wispy part of the stems, the part far from the bulb). Pluck the leaves off of about 5-10 cilantro stems and mince those up and add them to the sauce. You can add a serrano pepper up in that business too if you are daring or Peruvian or daring AND Peruvian. Taste the soaking sauce and add more of whichever ingredient you would like more of to make it taste how you want. When the chicken is served you will dip it in this sauce and it is delicious.This goes well with white rice and a fun Asiany vegetable that has been stir fried with a bit of oil, soy sauce, and corn starch (or rice starch too). Some good ones are Broccolini, Bok Choy or those really ridiculously long green beans from China that aren't called green beans, they are called something else that I forget.