Tea time - cookbook review

Tea Time by Jackie Brooks

Tea Time by Jackie Brooks

Published Aug 23, 2013

Share

Tea Time

By Jackie Brooks

New Holland, London

 

It’s elegant, dainty and delicious. In fact, this petite hardback mirrors all you look for on a tea table, where beautiful china and snowy napery vie with tiny sandwiches, irresistible cupcakes, impeccable shortbread, perfect scones and tartlets baked to golden goodness.

Tea drinking, we are told, dates back to 350CE when a Chinese dictionary listed tea for the first time as “Erh Ya”. Today, Western culture tends to separate teas into two spheres – those from the tea plant and herbal infusions.

The former remains the source of the world’s most popular beverage, and the medicinal usage of Camellia sinensis in China dates back 5 000 years.

Today, Chinese leaves like Lapsang Souchong and Oolong are highly regarded and are drunk without milk or sugar. Popular Indian teas include Darjeeling, Assam and Nilgiri, while Ceylon tea, the most popular in this country, is regarded as a light tea with citrus undertones.

Blended black teas favoured by Western consumers include English Breakfast, Irish Breakfast and Earl Grey.

Meanwhile, herbal infusions, mostly caffeine-free and made from fresh or dried herbs, spices, roots, seeds or even flowers infused in hot water, have a faithful following in many Western countries.

There are six recipes for making tea, including one for rooibos, where our indigenous herb tea is lent added flavour with fresh ginger, cloves, lemon balm and fresh lemon.

The eats start with sandwiches, from seafood circles to pesto and cheese triangles. A variety of breads are used to enclose smoked fish combinations, classic egg and cress, chicken and walnut, but no meat. Cupcakes are up next, picturesque pastel-iced bites, each occupying a full-colour page.

Bakers can choose from vanilla rose petal, lemon poppy, pecan praline, malted milk and more. Among the big cakes that follow I was tempted by an easy cream-topped cherry almond, a flour-free chocolate fudge torte and a pear upsidedown cake.

Rich chocolate chip squares and lemon and blueberry shortcake star in a yummy selection, with scones and muffins that follow, providing relief from the preceding richness.

Variations on classic shortbread, including lavender and chocolate Viennese, offer simple bakes for beginners, while the cheesecakes will have devotees drooling. Tarts and tartlets make the finale, and a prettier collection of fruity and berry-topped treats would be hard to find. Not all are rich and most are easy; the apple jam tartlets and chocolate pear delights making seasonal bakes that could double as desserts.

From its rose-edged cover to its pastel, rose-strewn endpapers, this is a culinary collection that will fill some with nostalgia for the days when tea time was a gracious and leisurely afternoon break.

The new generation of cooks and food-lovers who embrace the renaissance of this afternoon ceremony will swoop on this compilation with sighs of pleasure. - Sunday Argus

Related Topics: