Pu-egg? What foods go with tea?

Tea egg seemed easy enough to make.

Eggs, soy sauce, cinnamon, black pepper, star anise, salt & sugar, and pu-erh. The orange peel was late for the group photo.



Tried one after one hour and the flavor was rather subtle, just a dark hint of spicy soy. That is until I got to the yoke. After two hours it was all Mmm...

Pu-egg


What food do you like with your tea?

"Matching" tea and food seems to be a largely Western invention. I don't think food and tea match at all, despite all of the "tea and food matching" events that you see at your local tea merchants.

The Western trend with tea/food "pairing" is just trying to ape "food and wine matching", which is similarly fallacious. Just my opinion.


Best wishes,

Hobbes

It's almost as overblown as wine/food pairings.

Hobbesoxon said:

"Matching" tea and food seems to be a largely Western invention. I don't think food and tea match at all, despite all of the "tea and food matching" events that you see at your local tea merchants.

The Western trend with tea/food "pairing" is just trying to ape "food and wine matching", which is similarly fallacious. Just my opinion.


Best wishes,

Hobbes

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Ah, but there is a "tradition" of snacking whilst drinking tea, such as various seeds and little crackers/treats

Hobbes, I seem to recall you saying that food and tea never are supposed to go with each other. I have been in many settings other than tea conventions where food or snacks are introduced during a tea session. Maybe this is just a host being nice, but more times than not I see food introduced or at least breaks occurring specifically to snack. But to your point about vendors it is funny you mention it- I was in NY the other day and decided to stop by the Fang Tea exhibition in the Radisson building on Roosevelt street. It was such a humongous rip-off. The sign implied $25 dollar per person for 2 teas (choices included puerh and wuyi) and a snack, but after trying two teas they told us it was $25 a tea per person, and we had a group of 6. Plus the "teamasters" gong-fu was pretty terrible, overbrewed and used too much leaf, and reboiled the water about 6 times instead of having it replaced btw steepings.

Anyway, I think I'm telling this bc they also tried to charge $200 for the table for the boiled puerh egg, but we passed. Si, your eggs looks delicious. So afterwards I went home and made some puerh eggs, also I substituted the black pepper with cloves, and used some 12 g's shu. That was yesterday. Weird timing

I once went to a tea garden where they served rice crackers with tea and it was pretty good. I think coffee is usually better with food though.

kimble22 said:

Hobbes, I seem to recall you saying that food and tea never are supposed to go with each other. I have been in many settings other than tea conventions where food or snacks are introduced during a tea session. Maybe this is just a host being nice, but more times than not I see food introduced or at least breaks occurring specifically to snack.

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Far be it for me to say what should be eaten when

Most sprawling tea-districts I've visited keep food separate, but you see someone nibbling once in a while. The teahouses I've been to around both northern and southern China tend to keep the two separate, although they recognise that most tourists want to eat something with their beverage. Gongfucha sessions sometimes have a tiny bowl of one or two morsels per person, typically small sweets that don't interfere with the flavour.

The concept of taking tea alongside a proper meal is abhorrent to most Chinese folk that I know. "Food and tea" pairing is therefore largely alien to Chinese culinary culture.


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

Ah! I forgot to mention the most well-known meal to have tea and food "pairings": dim sum! Though it's not that the tea (usually shu) goes well with the food though, it's that the tea helps with digesting the greasy meal.

Maitre_Tea said:

Ah! I forgot to mention the most well-known meal to have tea and food "pairings": dim sum! Though it's not that the tea (usually shu) goes well with the food though, it's that the tea helps with digesting the greasy meal.

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Serving shupu after a meal is quite common for that reason - drinking it with the meal, much less so. That's why 56% baijiu [buy-jeeoh] was invented! It goes with everything.


Toodlepip,

Hobbes

I'm gonna put milk & sugar in my assam and have a scone.