Tea

Green tea on your salad? Yes, it makes a great base for this Asian-style dressing, which lets you duplicate the flavor of restaurant salads at home without all the extra salt. Toss the dressing with a variety of salad greens and raw vegetables for a side salad or add grilled chicken, shrimp, or lean beef strips for an entrée.

Smoking duck with tea is an Asian tradition. This recipe uses a fragrant brew of Darjeeling tea, fresh ginger, and star anise for roasting rather than smoking. The tea brine gives the duck a dark, smoky flavor. My favorite way of roasting the duck is in the La Caja China box roaster. The duck comes out a beautiful mahogany color and is succulent and moist, with a smoky taste and a crisp skin. An Asian-influenced basting sauce is used as a mop a few times over the course of roasting. Tea brine can be made with other black teas, such as oolong or Earl Grey. It can also be used for roasted chicken or even pork.

The first time I had gâteau basque, I was living in the southwest of France and trying, in my little spare time, to sample as many of the local treats as possible. Gâteau basque, a very moist, buttery cake with a certain je ne sais quoi, was by far my favorite. Despite its name, it’s not really a gâteau, or cake, but rather two layers of buttery, crumbly crust filled with pastry cream. As it bakes, the crust and filling meld into one delicious whole. This rural dessert has many interpretations, with fillings that vary from almonds to raisins to fruit jams. For this version our first pastry chef, Sara Lauren, came up with a pastry cream spiked with an unusual combination of Armagnac, rum, orange-flower water, and almond extract. The cake doesn’t taste like any one of those flavorings, but together they somehow evoke that unforgettable flavor of the Basque country.

This tea-infused vermouth was developed by EO bartender Milos Zica for the Quiet Storm cocktail (page 118). Also known as rooibos, South African red bush tea is a robust herbal tea with a rich mahogany color. We recommend the Silence rooibos tea blend from T Salon, which is where the cocktail’s name partially derives from. Like the Vermouth de Provence (opposite), this vermouth is created with the hot infusion method that requires steeping the tea and other ingredients in a small amount of vermouth to make a concentrate. The color of this infused vermouth is a rich pumpkin orange.

These cupcakes get their flavor from a traditional Indian spiced tea, known as masala chai. The tea is often lightened (and sweetened) with condensed milk; here, condensed milk is used to make the glaze.

Season: winter. It may seem somewhat unnecessary to preserve dried fruit, but I love having a few jars of this compote on the shelf. The once-shriveled fruits become plump and luscious and are quite delicious served alone for breakfast or with yogurt or crème fraîche as a dessert. I like to make this in early November, when newly dried prunes, figs, and apricots are available. Keep on the lookout for small, dried wild figs, which will plump up perfectly to their original shapely selves. The glistening black prunes from the Agen area in southern France are also key players–I prefer to use these un pitted because they infuse the compote with an almondlike essence. A simplified version of the oven method is used–everything is cooked and hot to start with, so the jars don’t need to be heated for an extended time in the oven.

The addition of Earl Gray tea in this recipe gives the cookies the slightest hint of bergamot orange flavoring. Grind the tea leaves in a small food processor or a spice grinder.

This sweet-tea cocktail from the Patterson House includes lime juice and honey for a modern front-porch favorite.

Iced tea mixed with lemonade—also called an Arnold Palmer—is incredibly refreshing. This version is made with a hit of spicy ginger syrup and basil so it tastes a bit more complex, but it’s still really simple to make. You’ll want to drink this all summer long.

Health claims aside, this is delicious, hot or iced, sweetened or not. You can make another interesting tea by omitting the lemongrass and serving the brew with milk instead of lime juice.

Like most iced teas from Asia, this has no caffeine and is not a true tea—more an herbal infusion. Because of the natural sweetness of lemongrass, it needs less sugar than most other iced beverages.

In Thailand, this refreshing drink is served at many stands in little plastic bags with straws so you can drink it on the go, but Thai iced tea has soared in popularity at Thai restaurants across America—and for good reason. Thai tea leaves, which can be found at most Asian groceries, combine black tea leaves, star anise, orange flowers, vanilla, cloves, and cinnamon. This blend gives the tea its distinctive taste and orange color, but the technique and style of the drink will work with any good black tea, or you can use black tea with added herbs, in the style of chai (page 668).

One of the national beverages of India, chai—often called masala chai—is simply sweetened tea with milk and spices. Which spices? Ah, there’s the question. I like a simple, minimal mix; other people use complicated spice mixtures; many would eliminate the fennel and use a mixture of cloves, cinnamon, and ginger.

This is a gentler version of the preceding Indian Masala Chai, perhaps better suited to the palates of Western Europe. Yet it remains exotic and delicious, as does cardamom-spiced coffee (still consumed in the Middle East). Wonderful iced.

Tea is usually served black in Russia, with preserves. You can add milk or cream if you like. Also completely optional, but not inappropriate, is a bit of vodka, brandy, or rum.

This is special-occasion food for many Chinese, served as part of large meals. The eggs simmer in their special dark liquid, and eager hands reach in to retrieve an egg, peel it, and devour it. The smoky flavor and pretty patterns on the eggs are mysterious looking but easy to create. By all means, make these ahead of time, as you would any hard-cooked eggs.

This “house wine of the South” is literally drunk by the gallon during the spring and summer months here in Memphis. We add mint and simple syrup to ours, to give it the right amount of flavor and sweetness. It’s a refreshing “knock-back,” and can also be used as a mix for a cocktail (add a little rum or vodka).

When Southerners say “tea,” they mean basic black—as in Lipton or Tetley, not English Breakfast or Earl Grey—iced and sweet. It is the ubiquitous, unofficial drink of the South.