(no subject)

[pensnest]

I had a tea tasting party yesterday. Several of my post-opsoc friends get together every so often for knitting, natter and afternoon tea (or occasionally a craft fair or theatre trip), and at our last exchange had been mentioning flavoured teas, so...


Camomile Tea*
with cream cheese and baby spinach sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches
(meh—couldn't taste it at first, then when I could, I didn't like it much)

Green Tea*
with prawn toasts and mini spring rolls
(I always like green tea, and this was a good one—TeaPig?)

Very Very Berry (from Whittards)
with mini sausage rolls
(generally appreciated, especially with a smidgin of sugar, though I wasn't that keen and gave the bag to a more fervent supporter)

Lapsang Souchong
with smoked salmon sandwiches
(smoked over pine logs and smelled very much like Bonfire Night; opinion sharply divided on the taste!)

Earl Grey's Passion
with cheese and onion puffs
(innocuous, and didn't have that cologne taste Earl Grey usually has)

White Tea with Roses
with rose-flavoured biscuits
(very nice indeed, and generally a favourite, though it looks like pot pourri)

Black Tea with Apricot
with mini scones with apricot jam and clotted cream
(pleasant, and nicely apricot-scented)

Chai*
with spicy sultana biscuits
(chai is also always nice; this one was Twinings, though I have others which I prefer)

Black Tea with Almond
with miniature almond biscuits
(same source as the Tea with Apricot, and similarly pleasant)

Sweet Rhubarb Tea*
I had planned to offer cheese, but instead we paused with the eating at this point, being stuffed. Made wise by recent tasting and tea experiences I offered small portions only, but it mounts up!
(surprisingly good, and not teeth-dissolvingly rhubarb-like)

Lemon and Ginger Tea*
with Kent Surprise
(the tea was cold-remedy scented but pleasanter)

Chocolate Truffle Tea*
with chocolate truffles
(surprisingly successful, with a little milk added)

I made the sandwiches, rose biscuits, spice biscuits and scones; Beast made the Kent Surprise. I should perhaps add that not all the teas were from my own stock (though I had bought the smoked Lapsang Souchong and the White Tea for the occasion), the asterisked teas were brought along by agreement, and there were four guest teapots as well, which made life much easier! Perhaps restricting the list to nine or ten would have been prudent, but we had a jolly good and very British time of it.

Today, Beast and I have been drinking the Apricot and the Almond flavoured teas. I'm not sure that I care for bonfire tea, but the White Tea with Roses (from YumChaa) will definitely be consumed.

Comments

[dine]

this sounds like a fantastic way to spend an afternoon! what fun (and what delicious-sounding teas and treats).

[pensnest]

It was a lot of fun! Beast joined us, and listened happily to all the nattering, without really having the chance to get a word in.

[laughingrat]

I had a really smooth Lapsang once and liked it. I can see pairing it with something smoky for sure, BUT, something savory but not smoky can let the tea shine, too. I can see having smoked salmon with it making it all sort of too much. (Then again, I don't like smoked salmon, so that might be why I think that. ;)) Sounds like a fun tea-tasting though.

[pensnest]

It was quite hard to decide what to do with the food/tea combinations. Sometimes I made them match—eg rose tea + rose-flavoured biscuits—sometimes I was a bit random, sometimes I made them contrast. I don't think the smoked salmon went particularly well with the bonfire tea, but mostly because the smoked salmon (though very nice) wasn't quite robust enough in flavour, and the sausage rolls (which turned out to be quite distinctive and unusual) would have been better able to stand up to the tea.

Not that I'm going to try this again! But I recommend it is a fun way to be sociable.

[untonuggan]

/drool

[pensnest]

*grins*

[sperrywink]

Sounds like you had fun!

[pensnest]

A very agreeable afternoon, indeed.

[rikes]

Everything sounds absolutely delicious! But what exactly is a Kent Surprise? The internets weren't the most helpful on this.

[pensnest]

Aha! Kent Surprise is what you get when...

You get a packet of ginger biscuits, and a glass into which they will *just* fit. Then you add sherry (we use Harvey's Bristol Cream, which is sweet) slowly so that the biscuits soak it all up. And leave it. The biscuits turn to mush, and it's quite the challenge for people to identify the ingredients. Our guests figured alcohol but went all around the houses before we relented and told them it was sherry. Ginger is also identifiable, but the resultant extremely rich mush doesn't really look like anything. Like Death Cake, it must be consumed in very small quantities!

[rikes]

A ha! The combination of sugar and alcohol sounds both delicious and dangerous. :D

[ephemera]

That sounds like a fabulous afternoon ;) Do you by any chance remember where the sweet rhubarb tea came from, because that sounds most relevant to my interests.

[pensnest]

It was very civilised and wonderful. The sweet rhubarb tea is from Taylors of Harrogate, and ought to be available from www.taylorstea.co.uk.

[solariana.livejournal.com]

It sounds like a lovely and successful tea tasting!

[pensnest]

It was great fun. And I didn't need to bake a cake!

[starturtle0977.livejournal.com]

The almond tea sounds lovely! I'm never been a huge fan of rose tea but I do love green teas :) Happy to hear it was a success! I love trying different teas and especially turning them into iced teas when it gets warmer outside.