My dear partner, the Lady Marjorie, has turned more and more into an unabashed an unashamed tea freak. Here in Seattle -- a town with a coffee shop every half block, the town that started Starbucks, after all, and a town that is generally blamed for the caffeine jitters throughout the country -- she’s embracing the national drink of England even tighter. Not only is she known to haunt the tea shop in the Pike Place Market, and others scattered throughout the ‘burbs, she even merchandises with a specialty shop in Boston (a town well known for a certain colonial days Tea Party.)
Couriers have been seen parking their delivery trucks at the curb and then racing to the front door with a package underarm to deliver to my partner her latest tin of Earl Gray with Lavender Flowers. I jest at her tea addiction.
It is hard to ignore the evidence that tea is somewhat good for you. Long seen simply as a reason to relax or as a folk remedy for colds and digestive problems, tea may actually cut the risk of some serious illnesses, including heart disease, cancer and osteoporosis, mounting research suggests.
Wanting to know more about the popular beverage, I found the answers as close as our kitchen bookcase. In amongst the wall of cookbooks, I also found some volumes devoted to tea. “A Proper Tea,” by Joanna Isles, tells us that tea was first introduced into Britain in the 1650s, when it was carried from the East in Dutch ships and sold in London coffee shops.
“Teatime,” by Aubrey Franklin, continues the tale by telling how the beverage was also brought, at about the same time, to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam here in America. Tea quickly became fashionable in New Amsterdam despite the fact that it cost from $30 to $50 a pound. The food-loving burghers of New Amsterdam were probably the first people in America to try the new beverage that was then so popular in Europe.
In Massachusetts, the English colonists began to use tea to a limited extent, probably as early as 1670. When tea first arrived in America, few people knew how to prepare it. Considering what they did with the little dried leaves, it is a wonder that tea ever became popular. In Salem, Mass., tea leaves were boiled until a bitter brew resulted, which the colonists drank without milk or sugar. Then they salted the leaves and ate them with butter!
Aubrey Franklin, the “Tea Ambassador” for the Tea council of the U.S.A. Inc., suggests that the way to make a perfect cup is to do the following:
1. Rinse out the kettle of its contents and start with fresh, cold water.
2. The trick is to bring the water to its first rolling boil. NEVER OVERBOIL! Overboiling takes the oxygen out of the water, which in turn creates a flat beverage. Turn the heat down.
3. Take the teapot to the kettle immediately and rinse out the pot with the hot water from the kettle. Never take the kettle to the teapot, as you lose one degree of heat per second, and hot water for tea must be 212 degrees.
4. Use one teaspoon of loose tea (or one teabag) per cup. Leaves enter the warm pot and the infusion starts as the leaf starts to open up.
5. Pour hot water, gently, over the leaves. (Never bruise the leaves.)
6. Allow the tea to brew for a minimum of three to five minutes, according to the blend of tea and how strong you like your tea. (This method has been approved by the Lady Marjorie.)
“It’s in the brewing that you get the aroma, fragrance and flavor. You can then serve the perfect cup of tea,” says Franklin.
My Anglophile partner tells of how her loose-leaf brewed tea ritual had often been ridiculed by her past fellow workers as they have paraded past her, obnoxiously dipping their tea bags into their cups.
One officemate even used to confess, “I’ve gotten a full day’s worth of dunking out of this tea bag.” The Lady Marjorie would just shudder.
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