Me to a Tea
One of my most favourite things to do on a Saturday morning is to grab the Saturday papers and pore over interesting happenings, current events and the odd story about a terrifically interesting person or persons. Poring over the papers discourages me from the weekday practise of gulping tea down before rushing out the door. You know we do it!
Saturday mornings for me is about savouring and revelling in the flavour. I think you notice more about the flavour of your tea in that mode. It somehow tastes more satisfying, gratifying even. When I was growing up we drank Earl Grey. Me and Captain Jean-Luc Picard the fictional Star Trek character, Batman and Winnie the Pooh’s friend Piglet. It’s the second most popular type of tea behind English Breakfast.
“As British Prime Minster from 1830 to 1834, Earl Charles Grey is credited with developing the tea that bears his name. Earl Grey according to lore received the tea as a gift when his envoy saved a Chinese official’s son from drowning. Earl Grey is black tea flavored with bergamot oil. The oil has a citrus flavor similar to orange blossoms. The oil is extracted from the peel of the bergamot orange, a small pear-shaped sour orange cultivated today mostly in southern Italy. Traditionally, Earl Grey applied only to black tea. Now, Earl Grey applies to green or white teas and describes any tea flavored with bergamot oil.
English Breakfast on the other hand is a tea blend that is designed to pair with the traditional English breakfast that includes a range of very heavy, hearty foods. This tea tends to include strong, robust varieties of tea which blend together to create a full, rich flavor. Many English tea companies produce an English breakfast blend and this tea is typically readily available in markets, in both loose and bagged form.
The varietals of tea used in English breakfast tea blends vary but Assam, Ceylon, and Keemun teas are popular along with some Kenyan teas. These teas are well known for producing robust teas which tend to be dark and strong especially when brewed on the long side of the brewing window for black teas, around three to five minutes. When brewed, English breakfast tea has a very distinctive scent which many people say reminds them of warm toast and honey, and it pairs well with cream and sugar.
The traditional English breakfast is no small potatoes, literally. It includes a wide assortment of meats and pastries, along with several vegetables and alot of condiments. Black tea can be beneficial for digestion that might be useful after eating a classic English breakfast helping people wake up and get ready for the day. This tea blend is often high in caffeine for this very reason.
The origins of English breakfast tea are a bit obscure. Tea proved to be a big hit in England and in the rest of Europe when it was introduced from Asia, although as a general rule, only the upper classes could afford to drink it. English breakfast may actually have its origins in Scotland where hearsay has it that a tea purveyor named Drysdale came up with a blend he labeled as “Breakfast” in the mid-1800s, to make it clear that the tea was meant to be paired with the morning meal, perhaps. At any rate, the concept of a “breakfast” blend caught on and in addition to English breakfast, it is also possible to find Irish breakfast tea which has a different feel and flavor.
Brewing English breakfast tea isn’t rocket science. Ideally, it’s good to use loose leaf tea because it tends to be of higher quality resulting in a better flavor and less of the tannins which make black tea so bitter. The tea leaves can either be thrown into a pot or placed into a strainer, depending on one’s taste and ideally the pot or cup the tea is being brewed in should be warmed with a quick swill of boiling water before boiling water is poured over the tea and allowed to steep for three to five minutes. I should say, that steeping it any longer to get a stronger tea will only result in it becoming somewhat bitter. I find just adding more tea leaves gets you the stronger brew your after.
Over the years I’ve made an interesting observation. Tea drinkers are a wonderfully convivial lot. There’s not the ‘great divide’ as can happen in coffee drinking circles. Let’s face it, you don’t have to be a barista to know when coffee has been burnt because you can taste it. The great shame of it is that we also accept when it’s served up to us when we shouldn’t!
The barista palate should you be endowed with such a one must be wonderful thing to say the least but not all of us are so endowed. Coffee people can be a little show-offy and there’s something, in my opinion, that borders on snobbery in coffee drinking circles that can make it quite off-putting being around them actually. In the end it’s not a question of which is better tea or coffee rather which I’d prefer at the time.
My most special treat to myself is Chai Latte. Chai (Hindi: चाय) is the pan-Indian (Hindi, Bengali, Tamil) word for tea. In English, the term is used to refer to what is more properly known as masala chai (Hindi (मसाला चाय [masālā chaiy], “spiced tea”). Chai is also a standard term for “tea” in many other Eastern languages, including Arabic, Persian, Kurdish, Urdu and Swahili as well as in such non-Eastern languages as Greek (τσάι), Albanian (qaj), Russian (чай), Serbian (чај) or Slovak (čaj). In India, chai is more popular than coffee. It is also a relatively popular beverage in coffee houses in other countries.” Actually though, it’s me to a tea.
