This is what I drank after a long hot sweaty bike ride in Beijing.

I have a $25 one-speed from the local Carrefour which I am supposed to leisurely pedal. Cheap one-speeds are not meant to go fast. Sometimes I forget this, especially when I go to my favorite grocery stores that happen to be half an hour away by bike. My tendencies to zip by old men on their Flying Pigeons and come home glowing with perspiration I blame on having commuted to work by road bike on New York's Greenway, alongside the multitude of spandex-clad cyclists. Here, there is no spandex in sight to make you feel the need to ride fast. Everyone just glides gently along with grocery-filled baskets.

So until I learn to slow down, I am keeping a pitcher of something cold and a tray of ice cubes ready in the fridge. Today I cooked down a pound of black cherries, added some lemon juice and sugar, infused the liquid with a bit of star anise, and mixed in some strong black tea. The star anise adds just a touch of unexpected spice to the fruity tea. This batch should hopefully last a few days.

The hardest part is not snacking on the cherries before you start making the tea.

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Other summer coolers:

(Tanqueray No. 10 Martini)

Beijing hardly ever sees rain, but the first part of the weekend we had an enormous showers followed by drizzling rain. The nice part is that the air (finally) gets cleaned. The bad part is outdoor activity becomes limited. On Saturday I was invited to the Ritz-Carlton Culinary Coin Festival, an indoor food and wine event I had no objections to attending.

(The "coin" part refers to the hotel's location on Beijing's Financial Street.)

The impression I got from some ads was that the event was all about Champagne and chocolate, but fortunately there was a lot of savory food to line the stomach pre-sugar and pre-alcohol. The food was a mix of French, Italian, Chinese, and Japanese, keeping in line with the Ritz's restaurants. I filled myself up on cheeses, prosciutto, soba noodles, roast duck in pancakes, an interesting quail egg shooter topped with aspic gelée, caviar, and chive oil. Chocolate made an appearance in the form of a fountain, where you can dip grapes and marshmallows, in bonbons, and in a mini soufflé topped with chocolate or vanilla ice cream. Although, for me, the dessert highlight was a chocolate-less basil ice cream.

As much as I love writing about cooking and restaurants, the food geek in me gets the most pleasure from going straight to the source of any food product. I had already been to a number of wineries, breweries, organic farms and Big Ag farms. But tea fields had always been on my list of unfulfilled dream destinations. Some people fantasize about sunbathing on tropical beaches, I fantasized about hiking up terraced hillsides in muggy climates to see tea farmers in action.

Two weekends ago, when I was in Hangzhou, I was surprised to find out just how accessible the nearby tea fields were. I knew that Hangzhou was well-known for producing Dragon Well, or Longjing tea, one of the most prized teas in China. But for some reason I had imagined the tea plantations to be far outside the city, and that visiting required either booking an overpriced tour or days of advanced planning.

I have to admit I've been on an iced drink kick lately. Shanghai's muggy weather and our lack of AC makes it hard to muster up enthusiasm for standing in front of a hot stove. Lately I have just been whipping up quick pasta dishes, then rushing to the freezer to pull out ice cubes for a cold drink.

Lemonade is hard to beat as the de rigeur summer beverage. That is, unless we're talking about lemonade with alcohol. Basic lemonade may be necessary for an afternoon in front of the laptop, but come nightfall, I'd much rather have something like Jean-Georges Vongerichten's Vodka-Thyme Lemonade. I have never been to Perry St. in NYC where this is served, so I can't say how this recipe compares to the actual version. What I can say is that it's pretty simple if you account for the few hours for making thyme-infused syrup.

Just make sure to hide this from the kids. 

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Other summer coolers:

Alcoholic:
Apple Soju Cocktail

Virgin:
Ginger-Mint Lemonade
Mango Mojito
Yangmei Iced Tea
Coconut and Lime Lassi, Mango and Cardamom Lassi

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Will ginger help my cold and general under-the-weather-ness, which has been lasting for more than a week and a half?

Jacob and I are in Shanghai right now, house-sitting, and the weather is pretty hot and muggy. I needed something ice cold to ward off heat fatigue, and something gingery to kickstart my immune system. A ginger-mint lemonade off the web sounded so good I bolted to the market to get ginger, lemons, and mint. I came back only to realize that the house, which belongs to Jacob's boss, doesn't have an ice tray. Bugger.

Another trip to the store later, I came back with some semi-fancy Japanese ice tray that makes round ice balls instead of cubes. (It was the cheapest one.) Oh well, ice is ice. A few hours later, after the water finally froze, I finally got to prepare the lemonade.

This was so needed on a hot afternoon. As to whether my immune system appreciated it, only time will tell.

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'Tis the season for blueberries and raspberries in the US, and 'tis the season for yangmei in China. These little purplish red berries with a knobbly surface are all over the indoor and outdoor markets here in southern China, and I'm sure I'll find them in Beijing when I get back. They are also known as yamamomo in Japanese and red bayberry or waxberry in English. A new juice company has rechristened them as "yumberries", since cute names tend to sell previously unknown or odd-sounding foods (calamari, anyone?)

The poor berry has so many personalities that I'll henceforth refer to it as yangmei, as the Chinese has known it for ages. The taste is more tart than raspberries and blackberries, more like pomegranate juice. There's a pit inside the size of a cherry's. They are loaded with vitamin C and antioxidants and make a perfect snack for anyone under the weather, like I am right now.

Pu'er (sometimes spelled Pu-erh) is a complex tea with a huge following. It is the caipirinha of teas...drunken for centuries in its native land, and just now become ultra-popular to the outside world. The NYTimes recently had a good story on how farmers in Yunnan province are benefitting from the the rest of China and other countries discovering their native tea.

Pu'er originated in Yunnan but is also grown in neighboring Burma, Vietnam, and Laos. You may know it as the tea that's compressed into disks, bricks, or little dumpling-shaped cakes. Sheng Pu'er, also called green or raw Pu'er, is the kind most sought after by tea connosieurs. Like a good Bordeaux, it is aged for years, sometimes decades, and has a rich earthy taste that is particular to the land it grew on. Shou Pu'er is darker, oxidized after harvest to resemble the aging process Sheng Pu'er naturally undergoes. It can be drunken immediately and is much less expensive, but has a less complex flavor. 

With my computer's hard drive still in malfunction state, and months of work on the verge of being lost forever, I decided to make myself feel better with a mojito. Beer has the reputation of being a drink to drown your sorrows in, maybe in a dim bar with sad, sad music in the background. A mojito is a little sunnier, a "hey, cheer up!" kind of drink.

Incidentally, I just watched Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, about Dorothy Parker and writers of the Algonquin Round Table. Aside from the nice flapper dresses and jazz that always plays in the backdrop of everyday life, I am in love with the twenties because people didn't think anything of having a drink in the afternoon. Even with Prohibition in full swing. If you must spend your afternoon slaving away in front of a typewriter, you might as well have a cocktail to ease tension and writer's block.

I didn't have gin or scotch in my liquor cabinet, but I did have Bacardi rum. (Hell, I don't even have a liquor cabinet.) And the ripe mangos on the windowsill were just begging to be pureed and mixed into a drink. Purists may scoff at adding fruit to mojitos, but I personally love new takes on classic drinks. I'm sure if Dorothy were a working writer in 2008, she wouldn't mind a sip.

The first days of spring usually means two things: time to stuff the winter clothes away, and the start of many months of extensive blender use. Sure, during the winter I break out the blender now and then, for ginger tea, homemade almond milk, and all that good stuff. But when the sun is beating down on my face anytime I go outside before 6, I develop serious cravings for cold frothy drinks. Daily cravings.

I love getting mango lassis at Indian restaurants, so I tried my hand at making them at home. Jenny Lou's, one of Beijing's import stores, carries tubs of fresh, locally made, and sugarless yogurt (for less than 7 kuai) that's better than the big brand yogurts around China. My mango lassis was pretty basic: just yogurt, sugar, chunks of ripe mango, and a pinch of cardamom. Then I tried making a coconut lime lassi, which probably isn't even a traditional flavor, though I've seen it on restaurant menus here and there.

(Apparently sweet lassis are more of a recent invention. Salted lassis, cumin lassis, and saffron lassis are more popular in certain regions of India. If anyone can confirm, or know of a recipe, please share!)

As for the coconut lime lassi, I made the mistake at first of putting in 1 part coconut milk to 1 part yogurt. It tasted just like thick coconut cream with a hint of sourness, a little too heavy. I adjusted the portions, reblended, and it turned out great.

I have been bombarded with writing deadlines recently and thus have been neglecting my poor blog. And something else has suffered. The amount of work, the dry Beijing air, and wind from sandstorms have given me a bit of a sore throat. (Okay, that and some recreational drinking and recreational spicy food intake over the weekend.) To help sooth my throat I decided to make some nice hot barley tea.

Barley tea, is a popular drink in Japan (where it is called mugicha) and Korea (boricha), and somewhat less popular in China (dàmàichá). In the West the most common non-English name is mugicha. Drinking barley tea supposedly cleanses your system and helps with congestion and bronchitis, along with some other claims, but I think most people drink it because it's refreshing and keeps you hydrated.

Barley tea is made by simply simmering roasted barley. Hot barley tea tastes a bit like toasted cereal, with less bitterness than tea from leaves, so it can be a good morning beverage, or night beverage since it contains no caffeine. You can add honey or sugar, though many purists insist on drinking it unsweetened. In addition to dark brown loose barley, some companies make bags of lighter barley meant for steeping at room temp for a cold drink. In Japan it is as popular as lemonade is in the US as a summer beverage.