The Foodie E-Book

James Steen

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 255

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Join award-winning writer James Steen for a feast of facts, stories, recipes and tips about food and drink. Delving into forgotten corners of gastronomic history, Steen reveals what Parmesan has to do with broken bones, why John Wayne kept a cow in a hotel and how our attitudes to food have changed over the centuries. Laying bare the secrets of the kitchen, he concocts the ultimate hangover cure and explains how to cook perfect rib of beef with the oven off. With much-loved cooks including Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood sharing their passion and know-how, this mouth-watering miscellany will sate the appetite of every kitchen dweller, from the masterful expert to the earnest apprentice.

Leseprobe

The

FOODIE

Other miscellanies available from Icon Books

The Collector’s Cabinet: Tales, Facts and Fictions from the World of Antiques

How to Win a Roman Chariot Race: Lives, Legends and Treasures from the Ancient World

The Science Magpie

The Nature Magpie

The

FOODIE

Curiosities, Stories and Expert Tipsfrom the Culinary World

JAMES STEEN

This edition published in the UK in 2015 by Icon Books Ltd.

Previously published in the UK in 2014 as The Kitchen Magpieby Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,39–41 North Road, London N7 9DPemail: [email protected]

Sold in the UK, Europe and Asiaby Faber & Faber Ltd, Bloomsbury House,74–77 Great Russell Street,London WC1B 3DA or their agents

Distributed in the UK, Europe and Asiaby TBS Ltd, TBS Distribution Centre, Colchester Road,Frating Green, Colchester CO7 7DW

Distributed in Australia and New Zealandby Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd,PO Box 8500, 83 Alexander Street,Crows Nest, NSW 2065

Distributed in South Africa by Jonathan Ball,Office B4, The District, 41 Sir Lowry Road,Woodstock 7925

Distributed in Canada by Publishers Group Canada,76 Stafford Street, Unit 300,Toronto, Ontario M6J 2S1

ISBN: 978-184831-839-7

Text copyright © 2014, 2015 James Steen

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

We believe the information contained in this book to be accurate. However, neither the author nor the publishers can accept any responsibility for any personal injury/illness or other damage or loss arising from the use or misuse of the information and advice in this book.

Typeset in Fournier by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK byClays Ltd, St Ives plc

In memory of my mum, the original Kitchen Magpie.

This book is for Louise, and for Charlie, Billy and Daisy,with their ever-open beaks.Let’s eat in Prague!

CONTENTS

Introduction

1. The first aid kit

On burning or scalding the skin

On curing a headache (and jet lag and wrinkles)

On bee and wasp stings

On cuts to the hand

On curing a cold

On ‘curing’ the Black Death

On breaking a bone, or bones, in Parma

On the subject of bladder stones

The tansy: a must-have for the medicine box – and hey, you can make a pudding with it, too!

Paul Hollywood, what is the food of love?

2. The teapot

Who invented tea?

So what do we know for certain?

Tea: the wine connection

The arrival of clippers

A word about ‘caddy’

Growing tea in England

Tregothnan Earl Grey Sorbet

How to stop a tea bore boring you

Ken Hom, what is the food of love?

3. The coffee machine

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Coffee Cantata

Honoré de Balzac’s day went like this

Coffee is for men because …

Drinking coffee

How to make Dublin Coffee James Joyce

The rise and fall of saloop

On the subject of baristas

Antonio Carluccio, what is the food of love?

4. The oven

On the Beeton track

The reign of Regulo

Roast beef with the oven off – how is that done?

The resting period

The trivet

The chef in the life of Florence Nightingale

The haggis: myths and legends

Pizza without the oven

A shoulder of lamb …

A leg of lamb …

The roasting of turkey

The ‘juices running clear’ myth

Marco Pierre White, what is the food of love?

5. The table

The Roman feast

Nap, map and kin

In posh restaurants

To be read out loud

To the manner born by Matthew Fort

The peculiar tale of the maitre d’ who gave his life in pursuit of the perfect banquet

Lent when Lent was obeyed

Food, taste, and our palates

Meet the Poles: The Foodie’s diary of feasting in Poland

6. The cutlery drawer

The traveller who returned with the fork

7. The fridge and freezer

Freaky fridge facts

What did we do before we had the fridge?

Ice cream comes to the streets

How to stop an ice cream bore

Famous last words

The cows of St James’s

The cow that was milked the most (by an ad agency)

The cowboy’s cow of Hollywood

Bacon’s final experiment

8. The store cupboard

Bovril: the soldier’s sustenance

On matters concerning the salt pot and pepper mill

Ketchup

The hot dog by ‘Hot’ Doug Sohn

What on earth do astronauts eat?

Jason Atherton, what is the food of love?

9. The spice rack

The science of heat on the palate

Three recipes for Mauritian chutney

Dealing with spice bores

The mysterious curry cookbook

Francesco Mazzei, what is the food of love?

10. The toaster

The Grand Dame

Can toast be drunk?

Toast Day

Michel Roux, OBE, what is the food of love?

11. The fruit bowl

The Banana by Marcus Wareing

Which month, which orange?

On the subject of apple sauce

While sauce is on my mind…

How to stop a fruit bore

Five ‘different’ fruits to grow at home according to botanist James Wong

Why do the best raspberries come from Scotland?

Strawberries and cream

Pierre Koffmann, what is the food of love?

12. The locked larder

Turtle

Ortolan: the thumb-sized bird beneath the napkin

The most mind-blowing recipe

Frogs’ legs? I always walk like this.

Do we eat horse? Neigh.

The delicate subject of foie gras, by James Martin

Michel Roux Junior, what is the food of love?

13. The wine rack and drinks trolley

Floydy and Blanc and the subject of cooking with wine

What makes Champagne bubbly?

From water to wine

The oldest wine cellar

The wine of prisoners

What to know about wine

What wines to drink from where

Passing the port

How to stop a whisky bore

The men behind the blends

Hangovers

The Amis novelists on hangovers

The Foodie’s hangover cure: perchance the world’s greatest remedy

Women and wine

Don’t buy fake

Turning your home into a winery

The birth of AA

14. The vegetable rack

Salads of the 17th century

Dressing for a salad

The fashionable salad maker

On the subject of calories

A bit more about walnuts

Carrots and the battle to get us to eat them

The Smith recipe for a salad dressing

The potato

On garlic

On the prevention of tears when slicing onions

The perfect roast potatoes

Raw vegetables and the Hemingway diet

The veg pie that became carnivore’s delight

Talking fennel with Mary Berry

Kai Chase, what is the food of love?

15. The fish kettle

The poaching of the wild salmon

Cock crabs and hen crabs at a glance

Jellied eels

Some tips about SHELLFISH and FISH

On the subject of prawns by Pascal Proyart

Antony Worrall Thompson, what is the food of love?

16. The egg basket

For the perfect poached egg

For the perfect fried egg

How Scottish are Scotch eggs?

Hungry soldiers

Do you like perfectly soft boiled eggs?

Ant eggs

Strange uses of egg timers

Adam Byatt, what is the food of love?

17. The cake tin

The king of cooks

Mary Berry’s favourite cakes

The chocolate myth

The reluctant cook who wrote a bestseller

On buttermilk

Anton Mosimann, what is the food of love?

18. The window box

Medieval herbs

A tribute to coriander

Coriander, cooking with it and the cure for colic by Manpreet Singh Ahuja

Does coriander reduce flatulence?

On finding snails in your window box

Marcellin Marc, what is the food of love?

19. The cocktail shaker

The golden ratios

Let the good times roll

Sour

Berry sour

Collins

20. The truffle drawer

On the subject of truffles

The Great English Truffle Correspondence, and the master forager Eli Collins

Truffle wisdom

José Pizarro, what is the food of love?

21. The (coco)nut bowl

Worshipping the coconut by Manish Mehrotra

Dhruv Baker, what is the food of love?

22. The cheese board

Cheese gifts

Why can you eat mould in blue cheese and not on bread?

The world’s most expensive cheese

Can cheese be frozen?

One of the smelliest cheeses

Eric Chavot, what is the food of love?

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

INTRODUCTION

Tie thy napkin!

‘Never eat more than you can lift.’

—Miss Piggy

Foodies are unlike normal people.

They are obsessed with food and drink, to the point that nothing else really matters to them. They will pretend that other things are important, but, truth is, they are instantly aroused and distracted by the sensual pleasures of food, be it the whiff of a ripe Époisses, the fragrance of a tiny strawberry or the bashing of a meat mallet on veal.

When discussions arise concerning the subjects of politics or religion, foodies make good listeners. That is because they are immersed in thought, painting colourful layers of foodie-ness over the dull subjects: silently contemplating Abraham Lincoln’s love of apples or how Pope Sixtus (was it the fourth or fifth?) drank not a sip, but a whole glass of wine in between mouthfuls of food.

Most foodies divide their attention between past, present and future, i.e. the last meal, the one that is currently being consumed and one that will be made or served soon.

Foodies are not discriminating. Foodies can be tall or small, young or old, or of medium height, medium build or middle-age. Anyone can be a foodie. Some people go through life with no interest in food. Then, one morning, they awake to discover a love of cooking, and they raise their hands to the heavens and say, “I was blind but now I can see the oven.”

Come inside the mind of a foodie …

Imagine, God forbid, that an epidemic were to erupt on the Australian island state of Tasmania. World leaders and decent human beings would be concerned, naturally. Foodies, however, would also find a food association. They would dwell on the effect of the epidemic upon Tassie’s sustenance enhancers, and they might ask themselves these questions:

What will happen to the Bruny Island Cheese Company and its heaving shelves of pongy Jack’s Dad or soft, white Saint?

Will the crop at Tas-Saff (a farm of fine-quality saffron) be neglected?

How will the epidemic affect wine production of Jansz’s sparkling wine (the vines thrive in the free-draining basalt soils in the Piper’s River region)?

(Oh, by the way. Be sure to try Tasmania’s pinot noir if ever it reaches your end of the table.) The point is, if a survey were conducted, nine out of ten foodies would admit to thinking only of food and drink; one out of ten foodies is a liar.

Foodies have existed since the beginning of time, but they did so without a name. The word ‘foodie’ was coined around 1980, when the world’s population of foodies had yet to boom. In those days, foodies dreamt of prawn avocado, over-poached salmon and lumpy chocolate mousse. Today, the foodie still dreams of all those things.

This book began life in hardback form as The Kitchen Magpie. The magpie, incidentally, is a scavenger, looked upon with great favour by the Tudors because it kept the streets of the City free from filth. The bird is deemed ‘unclean’, but it is edible. McDonald’s has yet to pluck it and pattie it, but in the late Middle Ages magpie beaks were all the rage. Worn around the neck, they prevented toothache, but that doesn’t work anymore.

I want to thank you for finding the (valuable) time to read this slim but well-fed miscellany of morsels about food. Its content is inspired by the modern-day kitchen and the items that we take for granted as conveniences: oven, fridge, freezer, kettle, wine rack, even the fork. These accepted luxuries – and many more – provide the foundation of the chapters. The kitchen as we know it will not exist for much longer. Everything – fridge, cutlery, kettle, you name it – will be hidden from view within the next decade or so. The Foodie’s quest is pleasure: to celebrate what is on sight today and, perhaps, tomorrow.

Speaking of kitchens, my career has taken me into scores of professional ones, not to cook but to interview great chefs and accomplished cooks on a variety of subjects. As part of the delightful process of compiling, collating and writing The Foodie, I have drawn upon thousands of hours of interviews, revisiting tapes, digital recordings and wine-stained shorthand notes. Food, every part of it, is best when shared. On that basis, I was driven to share what amounts to a feast of culinary knowledge, the food memories and the thoughts of Britain’s best-loved characters in gastronomy.

For this book, I also asked a number of gastronomic idols and icons to answer one single question: what is the food of love? It is a question with no boundaries or limitations, and the responses, which are sprinkled throughout the chapters, are insightful and often surprising. These chefs and cooks, you see, opted not for so-called aphrodisiacs, but for the simplicity of comfort food – such as baked beans, roasted pigeon, and a ripe peach picked from the tree.

We can all play this game. My own food of love is ham and eggs, which my mother made when I was a child. One thick, sweet slice of honey-roasted ham beneath a fried egg, and there you have it: the contrast of runny, yellow yolk and firm, pink meat; the mix on the palate of hot egg and cold ham. Give me that humble dish for breakfast and my wife’s shepherd’s pie for lunch and the day is heading towards perfect.

Within these highly appetising pages you will also come across old recipes that have been forgotten. They have been gathering dust upon kitchen bookshelves and deserve to be remembered. I hope you agree. These recipes offer a swift, reassuring connection to all of our ancestors. You will read them, feel hungry, and will want to devour them straight from the page.

Though please do not eat this book yet.

1. THE FIRST AID KIT

Before embarking on the preparation of dishes, essential information for cooks regarding possible injuries and ill-health.

On burning or scalding the skin

Charles Francatelli, chef to Queen Victoria, suggests ‘thoroughly bruising a potato and a raw onion into a pulp, by scraping or beating them with a rolling pin; mix this pulp with a good tablespoonful of salad oil, and apply it to the naked burn or scald; secure it on the part with a linen bandage.’

(Downside: this is terribly time consuming and painfully fiddly if the burn is on your hand.)

On curing a headache (and jet lag and wrinkles)

Don’t reach for the aspirin: have a dozen cherries instead, especially if your headache is in British cherry season (between June and July). Cherries contain anthocyanins, which are also potent antioxidants to fight cancer. Sour cherries such as Morello contain significant amounts of melatonin, a hormone produced in the brain that slows the ageing process and fights insomnia and jet lag. It’s also being studied as a potential treatment for cancer, depression and other diseases and disorders.

On bee and wasp stings

Do not bother searching for a dock leaf to rub on the sting. The search could take hours, or days. Instead, rub a wasp sting with vinegar. This will soothe, stop swelling and reduce pain. Apply bicarbonate of soda to a bee sting. Poppy leaves are also said to work for both.

On cuts to the hand

Scream. Then hold your hand(s) under cold running water for a couple of minutes. Then hold hand(s) above the head to reduce bleeding. Don’t lose your temper with those who laugh at you for looking funny. This bit sounds odd, but it is better to be cut with a sharp knife than a blunt one, so keep your knives sharp. Sharpen a knife at 45 degrees with even pressure from tip to heel.

Knife tip

Always carry a knife pointing towards the floor. Unless lots of people are lying on the floor.

On curing a cold (Isabella Beeton, 1861)

‘Put a large cupful of linseed, with ¼lb of sun raisins and 2oz of stick liquorice, into 2 quarts of soft water, and let it simmer over a slow fire till reduced to one quart; add to it ¼lb of pounded sugar-candy, a tablespoonful of old rum, and a tablespoonful of the best white-wine vinegar, or lemon juice. The rum and vinegar should be added as the decocotion [mixture] is taken; for, if they are put in at first, the whole soon becomes flat and less efficacious. The dose is half a pint, made warm, on going to bed; and a little may be taken whenever the cough is troublesome. The worst cold is generally cured by this remedy in two or three days; and, if taken in time, is considered infallible.’

On ‘curing’ the Black Death

In the highly unlikely event that you have an outbreak of this 14th-century pandemic in your kitchen, revert to the medieval cures. These include: avoid foods that go off, such as meat, fish and milk; take a live chicken, pluck it, and hold it next to the swelling; mix together roast egg shells (of a hen, if possible), marigolds and treacle and a pot of ale, heat over a fire, and drink twice daily; drink two pots of your own urine, one in the morning and the other before bed.

On breaking a bone, or bones, in Parma

First, a few words about the city of Parma in northern Italy. It is home to two of the country’s most celebrated foods: Parma ham and Parmesan. Parmesan has been part of an astronaut’s diet. Without gravity, the body’s calcium levels drop and bones become weaker. Spacemen eat Parmesan because it is full of calcium and not affected by the environment, although it can spread its smell through the spaceship. We will come back to the food of space at a later point.

Meanwhile, authentic Parmesan must be stamped with the mark of Parmigiano Reggiano. If you try to pass off pretend Parmesan as real Parmesan then you will wake up with a horse’s head on the pillow beside you.

When grating Parmesan cheese only very slight pressure should be exerted. Forgive my rusty Italian, but la grattugia deve baciare il formaggio, which (fingers crossed) translates as ‘the cheese grater should kiss the cheese’. The point is, grating Parmesan should be a gentle action, not a bicep-building exercise.

But I promised you a tale of broken bones.

Sometimes when inhabitants of the region of Emilia Romagna break bones, they make pilgrimages to Parma’s Parmesan dairies. It’s an ancient custom. There, they will announce to the cheese-maker, ‘Giuseppe, sono venuto per riparare le ossa rotte’ (‘Giuseppe, I have come to mend my broken bones’).

Assuming the cheese-maker’s name is Giuseppe, the sufferer then plunges his cracked limbs into the basins of whey. Apparently, the Parmesan producers do not have a problem with this. Think I’m making this up? I’m not. Broken feet are first washed before plunging. Or are they?

NOTE: If Parmesan dairies are closed, head for A & E at the city hospital in Piazzale A Maestri.

On the subject of bladder stones

There is a connection between food, drink and bladder stones. Too much of the first and second eventually leads to the creation of the third, they say.

Bladder stones are mineral deposits which form in the bladder and disrupt the flow of urine. Try to pee and it’s incredibly painful.

Sure, you can try to flush out the smaller stones by drinking lots of water but chances are you’ll resort to one of three options of surgery: if my memory of surgery serves me well, a transurethal cystolitholapaxy, a percutaneous suprapubic cystolitholapaxy, or an open cystotomy. Correct me if I’m wrong.

That’s a great deal of lengthy words but sufferers should be grateful that modern medicine offers these few options, plus heaps of anaesthetic. Consider for a moment the options that were available in the 17th century. There were two: either you existed in agony or endured an agonising operation.

Samuel Pepys, the great diarist who magnificently recorded his life between 1660 and 1669, was afflicted by a bladder stone, or even stones, in 1658. Gluttony may have caused it. Who knows? He underwent the operation, and one can hardly imagine the excruciating pain he endured, using only herbs, alcohol and perhaps opium for anaesthetic.

It is pertinent that, like the true gourmand he was, Pepys realised that the operation gave him an excuse to eat and drink even more. He would hold ‘stone feasts’. These were annual tributes – well-oiled sessions with his mates – in remembrance of the stones and the success of the op. A bit like memorial services, but in a pub rather than a church, and with booze and food instead of prayers and hymns.

On Wednesday 26 March 1662, he records this diary entry about the stones and the commemorative meal: ‘I had a pretty dinner for them, viz., a brace of stewed carps, six roasted chickens, and a jowl of salmon, hot, for the first course; a tansy and two neats’ tongues, and cheese the second; and were very merry all the afternoon, talking and singing and piping upon the flageolet. In the evening they went with great pleasure away, and I with great content and my wife walked half an hour in the garden, and so home to supper and to bed.’ Went home for supper? (By the way, flageolet is a small flute; Pepys never ate the flageolet bean, which was a French creation of a couple of centuries later, its name deriving from fagiolo, the Italian for ‘bean’.)

A year later Pepys was on a mission to better the first event: ‘Very merry at, before, and after dinner, and the more for that my dinner was great, and most neatly dressed by our own only maid. We had a fricasee of rabbits and chickens, a leg of mutton boiled, three carps in a dish, a great dish of a side of lamb, a dish of roasted pigeons, a dish of four lobsters, three tarts, a lamprey pie (a most rare pie), a dish of anchovies, good wine of several sorts, and all things mighty noble and to my great content.’ Supper isn’t mentioned.

The tansy: a must-have for the medicine box – and hey, you can make a pudding with it, too!

Samuel Pepys mentions that he had tansy. It is a plant, often common in meadows. It has yellow, button-like flowers and is also known as cow bitter and mugwort. It is bitter and slightly minty in taste.

Before it became a pudding it was a medicine. It was the Greeks who started using tansy for medicinal purposes and by the 10th century AD it was being used to treat intestinal worms, rheumatism, digestive problems, fevers, sores and measles. During the Middle Ages it was used to induce abortions. Then, just to confuse matters, it was eaten by women who wanted to conceive or prevent miscarriages.

In the 15th century, tansy was all the rage with Christians, who would serve it with Lenten meals to commemorate the bitter herbs eaten by the Israelites. Tansy was thought to have the added Lenten benefits of controlling flatulence brought on by days of eating fish and pulses, and of preventing the intestinal worms believed to be caused by eating fish. Tansy was a popular face wash (to purify the skin), a bathing solution (to cure joint pain) and was used to treat fevers, feverish colds and jaundice. You might have some growing in your garden. I have. Careful though, it can be toxic.

It was also used as an ingredient in the dish called tansy, which is like an omelette and can be savoury or sweet (made with apples or seasonal fruit). After several centuries, the herb fell out of culinary fashion and strangely was no longer an ingredient of the dish to which it gave its name. In his Dictionary of Daily Wants, published in 1859, Robert Kemp Philp offers the following recipe for apple tansy (containing no tansy):

Peel, core and slice thinly four choice pippins. Fry them in butter.

Then beat up four eggs, a teacupful of cream, twelve drops of rosewater, half a teaspoonful of nutmeg and a quarter of a pound of powdered loaf sugar.

Pour this over the apples and fry the whole till brown. Garnish with lemon and strew with powdered sugar.

This looks very much like an apple omelette, and if you were to separate the eggs and then beat up just the yolks with the cream and sugar then this dish would be getting close to apples and our modern-day custard.

What is the food of love?

‘When I was a toddler, still with my bib, I had my first iced bun rammed in my mouth. I’ve eaten a lot more since then and, each time, the first mouthful evokes memories of my childhood and my love for my mum and dad. So for me, iced buns are the food of love.’

—Paul Hollywood

2. THE TEAPOT

‘Arthur blinked at the screens and felt he was missing something important. Suddenly he realized what it was.“Is there any tea on this spaceship?” he asked.’

—Douglas Adams,The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Who invented tea?

In short, no one knows.

Granted, it’s not a great start to a chapter. The myths of tea, however, are compelling so please don’t skip this section.

It is said that in the 3rd century BC, a ruler of China called Shennong (aka Shen Nung) discovered tea when leaves burning on a twig beneath his cauldron were carried upwards by flames and landed in his vessel of boiling water. He tasted. He liked. There is also the story that the leaves fell from a tree into his cauldron. Again, he tasted and liked.

Both are neat and plausible stories, one of which may well be true. Before drawing a conclusion, though, consider other tales about Shennong. It is said that he spoke his first words within three days of being born, walked within a week and was ploughing fields at the age of three. Throw into the mix that he is also said to have been the inventor of the plough, perhaps when he was two, and that his body was transparent with the head of an ox.

He is credited with inventing the axe, the hoe, the Chinese calendar, acupuncture and agriculture … and so the list goes on. Shennong is a well-worshipped, mythical deity who introduced the Chinese to herbal medicine, tasting hundreds of herbs to test their medicinal qualities. He has various titles, including ‘God of Five Grains’ and ‘Great Emperor of Medicine’. One day the poor chap tasted and died before he could swallow the antidote.

The tale of Shennong could be too much to swallow.

Then there is the alternative story of the Bodhidharma, the first patriarch of Zen, called Daruma by the Japanese. He sailed from India to China, went to Shaolin Temple and began a course of meditation that would last seven or nine years, depending on which barfly is telling the story. He was into year five, or was it six, when he momentarily nodded off. When he awoke he was so upset with himself that he sliced off his eyelids.

Pause.

Yes, he sliced off his eyelids so that he could meditate without falling asleep.

Where his eyelids fell, the compassionate deity Quan Yin caused tea plants to grow. Then Bodhidharma made some tea, and noticed that the brew prevented him from feeling tired. All who came after him drank tea as an aid on the path to enlightenment. Indeed, the Japanese characters for tea leaf and eyelid are the same.

A third story is more succinct. A Buddhist monk called Gan Lu (Sweet Dew) went to India, discovered tea, and brought it back to China.

Take your pick.

So what do we know for certain?

All tea comes from just one plant that is called Camellia sinensis. Though India has an indigenous tea plant, the Camellia sinensis var. Assamica, which comes from the Assam region of India and gives us Assam tea, the original tea bushes planted by the British in Darjeeling were the native Chinese tea plants, the Camellia sinensis var. sinensis.

The different styles of tea (white, green, yellow, oolong, black) are a result of processing the leaves with different levels of oxidation. Meanwhile, Pu-Erh tea is a living, changing entity; due to microbial action it develops over decades to become mellower and sweeter. Pu-Erh can only be classified as Pu-Erh if it comes from Yunnan, from the broad leaf varietal of the tea plant, and it is sun dried.

Tea should be stored well in a sealed container. It is hygroscopic so will absorb perfume and humidity from the surrounding atmosphere.

Good water is important for making good tea. Ideally, it should come from the spring where the tea bushes grow. Admittedly, that could be a tough mission to accomplish.

Tea: the wine connection

Think of tea as being similar to wine. The role Buddhism has played in the history of tea in Asia parallels the role of Catholicism in the history of wine in Europe. Their respective beverages assumed ritual significance and those who were faithful to both traditions became devoted consumers.

For instance, Catholic monasteries became centres of grape-growing and wine-making. Similarly, Buddhist monks took up tea-growing and evolved increasingly sophisticated methods of tea manufacture.

Vinous innovations like champagne, invented by the monk Dom Perignon, had their parallels in China. Buddhist monks in China gradually developed the various types of white, green and oolong tea.

The quality of both tea and wine depend on climate and soil, or terroir. The drinks both need the skills of good producers, and both drinks contain tannins, which can be softened or mellowed. With wine we use a decanter. In the case of tea, pouring boiling water on the delicate, un-oxidised green and white tea leaves can dissolve the bitter tannins in the leaf. Brewing it cooler brings out the flavour without the astringency.

When sampling tea, slurp it with plenty of air, just like wine tasting: the characteristics of both can be experienced better around the tongue and palate. You can taste more flavour in the tea liquor when it is a bit cooler. Very hot and you cannot pick up all the nuances of the liquor.