Rare Tea

This morning in The Independent Mark Hix wrote a brilliant recipe for:
Loganberry leaf and silver-tip tea jelly

Serves 4

I had a panna cotta flavoured with blackberry leaf a little while back and thought what a great idea it would be to carry out a similar experiment with the leaves of the loganberry bushes growing in my garden in Dorset. I’ve used silver-tip tea here from the Rare Tea Company (rareteacompany.com), but you could use any good silver-tip tea.

500ml water
120g caster sugar (less if the juice is sweet)
A couple of good pinches of silver-tip tea
A couple of handfuls of loganberry leaves
A few sprigs of mint with some of the small leaves reserved
3 sheets of leaf gelatine (11g)
100-120g logan or tayberries

Bring the water and sugar to the boil and stir until the sugar has dissolved, stir the tea, loganberry and mint leaves and leave to infuse for 1 hour. Strain the liquid through a fine-meshed sieve and leave to cool but not set.

Meanwhile, soak the gelatine leaves in a shallow bowl of cold water for a minute or so until soft. Squeeze out the water; heat about 100ml of the liquid and stir in the gelatine until dissolved then stir into the rest of the liquid. Put the jelly somewhere cool, but do not let it set.

Fill individual jelly moulds, or glasses, or one large mould, with half the loganberries, then pour in half of the cooled jelly. Put in the fridge for an hour or so to set, then top up with the rest of the loganberries and unset jelly. This allows the berries to stay suspended and not float to the top. Return to the fridge. Serve with thick cream or ice cream.

If you have any Loganberry leaves in your garden please send them to me. I’d love to try it…

I got a lovely message from New York today from Maria who is pregnant.
She says the Jasmine Silver Tip Tea is really helping with her morning sickness.

Both staff and customers who have undergone grueling chemotherapy recommend drinking silver tips -not just because they contain the highest levels of antioxidants but because they are so gentle on a delicate tummy. Now we know the same is true for pregnancy.

Which all very nice but really I’m just rubbing my hands with avaricious glee. The baby will arrive addicted to the good-stuff. Another customer hooked.

1. Tea Pot
White tea is very delicate. A silver or metal tea pot can taint the tea as can your favourite tea pot that has been used over and over for black tea.
Its best to use a clean glass or ceramic pot.
2. Water temperature
If you can catch the kettle just before it reaches the rolling boil that makes the best white tea because the amino acids responsible for the lovely grassy flavours dissolve at a lower temperature. John Lewis sell their own brand kettle that has two temperature settings with the lower one being perfect for white tea.
3. Brewing time
White tea needs longer. Well, the good stuff does. If you buy a whole leaf tea like my Limited Edition Darjeelings or the tightly furled Silver Tips it takes time for the water to penetrate deep into the leaf. They are not chopped and broken like black teas which have high surface areas and rapidly give up their flavours. It takes time for the water to penetrate the whole leaves of these white teas. They wont become bitter like black teas because the tannin has not been developed through oxidization.

Lastly I recommend brewing white tea in small batches with a high leaf-to–water ratio.
To make one cup of tea take a good pinch of tea and infuse it with just one cup of hot water. I measure the water with the teacups before I pour it into the tea pot so I am sure I have the correct amount of water. Infuse for roughly 4 minutes and then pour all the tea leaving the leaves at the bottom of the pot. Because they are no longer steeping they will be perfect for a second infusion and a third. You can keep re-infusing the leaves by adding fresh water. This will reveal wonderful subtleties of flavour instead of swamping the leaves in one big pot of water the way one makes black tea.

I hope this helps