Thank you to Nina’s for this lovely sample tea!
Many of the friends that I had to leave behind in California when I moved to Colorado are from the Middle East and North Africa. They taught me to make (and love) gunpowder green tea with fresh mint and LOTS of sugar! (I am not exaggerating at all about the sugar!)
One of my favorite memories was sitting with my friend Randa in an Arabic Tea House in San Francisco, sipping mint tea and eating pastries. We talked for hours as our tall teapot of mint leaves was filled and refilled many times with boiling water. The tea tray had a large bowl of sugar on it to suppliment the sweetened tea in the pot.
It was wonderful!
I always grow mint just so that I can recreate that tea experience when the mood is right and the day is hot enough. (The tea is best on a hot day!)
Prepackaged mint tea’s are usually not strong enough. Mint has a way of losing it’s punch when dry.
I decided to brew the tea in my Verdant glass beaker steeper, which holds 7oz water because the leaves are rolled and I wanted to watch the tea expand.
1TB dry tea soon filled the beaker with green leaves and golden tea, which when drained was half filled with expanded leaves.
The golden liquor tasted stronger than I had expected, with mint and slight smokiness from the gunpowder tea.
Right away, I heavily sweetened the tea as my friends do.
Although I much prefer the fresh leaves (and who wouldn’t), this is pretty good. I’ve only had one other mint tea of this kind that had enough body to drink in the traditional manner.
(Now my mind is beginning to wonder about culinary applications…)
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Bonnie, when one day you’ll come over Paris to see your nephew, ask him to take you to the tea room of la grande Mosquée de Paris, near le Jardin des Plantes : you’ll get the most wonderful oriental pastries and the mint tea is done of course with fresh mint leaves and sugaaaaaaaar no no not sugar but really sugaaaaaaaar ! fantastic pastries…http://img.over-blog.com/375×500/3/17/91/61/nice/avril10/mosquee.JPG
This makes me excited to try my sample tonight!
Yes Ysaurella! You will have to join us because my Nephew David is very Parisian and very handsome! He’s 35, single and has lived in Paris over 10 years.
Nice photo of the pastries! We have a Turkish Bakery here in Old Town that looks like that with honey cakes, sesame cookies, baklava and so on. YUM!
ok Bonnie now you need to come over Paris to share gazelle ankles and tea with me :) – the mosquee is very near the faculty where I studied so many memories !
This makes me smile!
Bonnie, when one day you’ll come over Paris to see your nephew, ask him to take you to the tea room of la grande Mosquée de Paris, near le Jardin des Plantes : you’ll get the most wonderful oriental pastries and the mint tea is done of course with fresh mint leaves and sugaaaaaaaar no no not sugar but really sugaaaaaaaar ! fantastic pastries…http://img.over-blog.com/375×500/3/17/91/61/nice/avril10/mosquee.JPG
This makes me excited to try my sample tonight!
Yes Ysaurella! You will have to join us because my Nephew David is very Parisian and very handsome! He’s 35, single and has lived in Paris over 10 years.
Nice photo of the pastries! We have a Turkish Bakery here in Old Town that looks like that with honey cakes, sesame cookies, baklava and so on. YUM!
ok Bonnie now you need to come over Paris to share gazelle ankles and tea with me :) – the mosquee is very near the faculty where I studied so many memories !
This makes me smile!