I always source as much local food as I can to use at the cooking school and tea and coffee is no exception.
We are very fortunate to have high quality products right here; Tamborine Mountain Coffee plantation is only 500 metres away, and to get tea I only have to go over the border to Murwillumbah for exceptionally delicious Madura Tea.
Tea Fruit Bread
Ingredients
- 350g mixed dried fruit
- 2 cups (500ml) cold tea (Madura Assam)
- 125g caster sugar
- 125g butter
- 1 egg
- 1 1/2 cups (225g) self-raising flour
- 1 tsp mixed spice
Method
Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grease a 25 x 10cm loaf pan.
Preheat the oven to 170°C. Grease a 25 x 10cm loaf pan.
Drain the dried fruit and discard the soaking liquid. Place in a saucepan with the sugar, butter and 150ml of extra tea. Bring the mixture to the boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes. Allow to cool, then sift in the flour and mixed spice and add the egg, stirring well to combine.
Place in the prepared loaf pan and bake for 60-80 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean. If the top of the fruit cake is browning too quickly, cover with baking paper or foil. Cool for 20 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool completely. Slice and serve with butter.
Recently with the Tamborine Slow Food group I visited the Madura Tea plantation and it got me all excited about tea.
The plantation is open for tours twice a week and our guide was Michael. What he didn’t know about tea wasn’t worth knowing!
He took us through the camellia bushes - yes tea is a camellia!
He took us into the packing plant and showed us the intricate way teabags are made.
I asked Michael what his favourite tea is.
He said it was "Pure Assam", so I tried it and now it’s my regular brew too.
I used to be an “English Breakfast” tea drinker and now I am hooked on all their herbal blends too including Lemon Myrtle, Chai and their white tea, to name a few.
White tea has the most antioxidants as it is the growing tip of the tea plant.
The benefits of drinking herbal blends are healthy as well as delicious.
Peppermint is great for digestion and chamomile helps sleep, but my favourite is the lemon myrtle - I can feel it doing me good in every sip.
Australian Lemon Myrtle contains the world’s richest known source of citral comprising 90-98% of the essential oils within the lemon myrtle leaf.
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A peeled tea egg shown with shell. PHOTO/Wikipedia |
Citral is highly anti-bacterial, anti-microbial and anti-fungal.
Having an exquisite flavour and aroma, akin to a blend of lemon and lime, lemon myrtle herbal tea can also be used in cooking.
I have to confess that since drinking a lot more tea my wine consumption has dropped, which is a good thing!
Besides drinking tea, it can be used in all sorts of cooking.
Cooking with tea is as old as the history of tea itself.
Iced Lemon Tea
Ingredients
- 4 Madura Premium Blend Tea Bags
- 4 teaspoons of honey or sugar
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 2 cups filtered water
- Lemon slice and ice to serve.
Method
Make up 1 cup of tea using 4 teabags
Infuse for 3-4 minutes
Remove tea bags and cool
Pour tea into a large jug and combine with sugar, lemon and water.
The ancient Chinese used dried pungent oolong leaves to stuff fish before steaming it.
They added tea leaves to the fire source for smoking duck.
They also infused boiling water with tea leaves to give eggs a distinctly marbled appearance on the whites when hard boiled.
Prior to the final minutes of cooking, the eggshells are slightly cracked, thus allowing the teas to seep through and create this magical "marbled" effect.
In the recent Master chef shows hardly an episode went past without someone “tea smoking” something, always with delicious results.
Clever French chefs use tea in their sauces and jus to give them depth of flavour and colour.
Cooking with tea reminded me of simple “Tea Fruit Bread” that I used to make, and have now resurrected it. See our 'Weekly Recipe' above.
There’s nothing quite as refreshing as iced tea on a warm day and there’s nothing quite as healthy as iced tea made from pure, clean black tea.
With summer just around the corner, I will be experimenting with all sorts of flavours.