Advertisement

Cooking with Tea

Photo by: John Paul Urizar

By Christine Dominguez

For tea lovers around the world, drinking this warming beverage is a daily ritual. But celebrity chef Peter Kuruvita’s experimentation with tea has led him on a culinary discovery of some very interesting pairings.

Like finding the perfect shoes to match a dress, there is an art to pairing the right type of tea with your dish. “Tea is very much like wine,” says Kuruvita. “The elevation of where the tea is grown and the soil type changes its flavour.” When making tea-infused seafood dishes, Kuruvita suggests using a light, high-grown tea instead of robust, fuller flavoured low-grown teas, which are better suited to meat dishes.

If you have a sweet tooth, infusing treats such as chocolate truffles with tea is as easy as brewing some earl grey tea with the cream, says Kuruvita. Infusing macarons with tea also works really well. “You can infuse a bit of brewed rose and French-flavoured tea into macarons by folding the tea in with the egg whites. It adds a beautiful flavour to the macaron.”

Kuruvita also recommends using tea leaves as a tenderiser. He suggests brewing lemon and lime tea or lemon and orange tea (either of which work really well with duck breast), draining the liquid, and using the reserved tea leaves with other marinade ingredients.

And if you’re feeling creative, give a tea-infused cocktail a whirl. “Instead of brewing the tea, put the tea bags in a cold liquid, such as soda water or tonic water, to extract the flavour from the tea. Doing this takes quadruple the time as brewing tea, but you get a slow, cold infusion that will give you a cleaner, fresher flavour.”

Using tea in cooking is only limited by your imagination, he says. “I brewed a beautiful cup of strong black tea, and then made some popcorn and added butter, salt and milk. I boiled and strained it so I had a popcorn-flavoured tea. I then got an Italian almond tea and made foam and put it on top, so it looked like a cappuccino. I had someone close their eyes and taste the liquid popcorn tea. It’s all about taking someone on a journey.”

Peter Kuruvita is the ambassador for Dilmah’s Real High Tea Challenge 2012. Click here for more details.

RELATED:

-Green Tea Blueberry and Banana Smoothie
-What's Your Cup of Tea
-Lemon Myrtle Cake