If foodies have food porn, can tea geeks have tea porn?

I got a bunch of these display teas at Beijing's Maliandao, the street that has so many tea shops even the air outside smells like tea. These tiny bundles of flowers and green or black leaves are hand-packed and hand-sewn into various shapes. They unfurl into impressive little displays when steeped in hot water for about 3 minutes. It's like watching those little compact towels and sponges from theme park gift shops expand to "full size" when soaked, except less disappointing in the end.

(You can also find these online at sites like Adagio Teas or Silk Road Teas, but for heftier prices.)

The bloomed teas can be displayed in the center of a table and drunken at the same time. Tea shops will usually present these in big glass teapots, which I don't own. I did have fun watching these bloom in my mini glass tea set, beer mug, and other random see-through containers from my cabinet. Tonight also marks the first time I have ever sipped hot tea from a wine glass.

Since my trip to Hangzhou's Dragon Well tea fields, I have made use of the famous leaves less often than I should have. See, I went on a tea-buying binge after coming back to Beijing. In my cabinet right now there is an ample supply of not only Dragon Well (longjing), but also sheng and shou Pu'er, rose buds, chrysanthemum, barley, hibiscus, a fruit tea mix, and regular green and black tea. I'm sure some native Chinese would scoff at my puny tea collection (just like I would scoff at their wine collections of Great Wall and Dynasty bottles from Carrefour), but for me that is quite a lot of tea for the months ahead.

My right-brain demeanor also leaves me unfulfilled when I just drink the tea. (Purists, you may not want to read ahead.) I also must do something with it. Things like making rice pudding with rose tea and alcoholic granita with hibiscus. But before getting too experimental with my longjing, I thought I should whip up the classic Hangzhou shrimp dish that uses the tea.

I guess I could have also called this Hibiscus Mojito Granita, but that sounds a little hokey.

My experimentations with tea desserts continue. Since my Rose Tea Rice Pudding was a success, I moved on to hibiscus tea, another tisane I bought at Maliandau, Beijing's tea street.

Hibiscus tea is also known as roselle in Southeast Asia, red sorrel in the Caribbean, and karkady in the Middle East. Among other benefits, it contains vitamin C and is believed to lower blood pressure. All that is wonderful, but my main concern on yesterday's 30 degrees Celsius afternoon, was how to incorporate hibiscus into a frozen dessert.

I don't own an ice cream maker. Heck, I don't even know where to find one in Beijing. But to make a granita, all you need is a fork and the ability to mash a bunch of ice with it. Quite simple, quite fit for a Luddite foodie.

Originally this granita was going to include just hibiscus and a splash of lemon juice. Then I recalled seeing a recipe for Hibiscus Mojitos a few months ago. Well, why not add some mint and rum in here as well?

A few months ago I wrote about my obsession with rose tea, also called rosebud tea. Not to be confused with rose hip, or the those things your boyfriend is supposed to give you for Valentine's Day, rose tea uses the buds from a rose bush. 玫瑰茶 (meigui cha) is usually blended with black tea or other herbal teas, but I think it's great on its own.

Since I moved to Beijing, I would drink rose bud tea in cafés but never bought any to steep at home. Maybe it was a subconscious move to associate it with the pleasant dim cafés of Beijing's university district - the clatter of Mandarin-English exchanges, the walls of books and French New Wave posters - rather than my bleak florescent-lit apartment. Or maybe it was just pure laziness.

Earlier this week Jacob and I went to Maliandau, also known as Beijing's "Tea Street." This is where restaurants and shops come to source their tea wholesale, and where tea obsessives buy their leaves and gadgets in bulk. We went around and bought a bunch of gifts for his family and, of course, ourselves. I couldn't resist the rose tea, sitting in a big bin and whispering my name. Now that I have it at home, I can't stop thinking of desserts I can make with it.

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.

'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. 

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.

Chrysanthemum tea is one of those beverages that, to me, actually tastes like spring. Not the spring of torrential downpours or hay fever or, in Beijing, Mongolian sandstorms. But the first days of transition, when people on the street are actually smiling again, that ugly down jacket is shoved back into storage, and eating lunch outdoors seems like putting the ectasy back into your relationship with nature. So it seems fitting that on these first few days of tshirt-and-light-jacket weather, I've been sipping chrysanthemum tea nonstop.

Chrysanthemum tea (菊花茶 júhuāchá) is actually a tisane, or herbal tea. Instead of using tea leaves, herbal brews extract flavor from flowers, herbs, fruit, and grains. The little flowers that make up the loose "tea" range in color from white to pale yellow to bright yellow. You can steep it in a pot or a cup, but because blooming flowers floating in water is a bit more photogenic than tea leaves, restaurants sometimes present it in a big glass teapot. It is also served with a dish of bingtang, or rock sugar; just one or two cubes brings out the slight sweetness in this mellow tea.

Today, two days prior to our trip to Hong Kong, I noticed that I still had about half a pound of fresh ginger sitting on the kitchen counter. It was too good to toss, and too much to use in two nights of cooking. But what about mixing into a beverage?

Winter, after all, is also known as cold season. Temps have dipped even lower in the past few days, and I have been feeling a bit under the weather. Since ginger supposedly rids your body of heat and wards off colds, the Chinese make liberal use of ginger in soups this time of the year. Well, tonight I was in the mood for a sweet beverage instead of soup. So I got out my brand new blender to make a hot, frothy ginger milk tea.

With a little kick and a lot of warmth, the ginger tea is a strong candidate to join the ranks of hot chocolate and chamomile in the Comfort Drinks canon. Especially on a blistery -4 degrees C winter night.

Ginger Milk Tea
Adapted from Gourmet

Serves 4

3 1/2 cups (840 mL) hot water
4 tablespoons fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped
2 tablespoons loose black tea leaves
1/2 cup (120 mL) milk
1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar

Bring the water and ginger to a boil in a small pot. Once it is boiling, turn off the heat. Stir in tea and cover. Let stand 3 to 5 minutes.