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Tea and the Englishman equip't
Apr. 3rd, 2014 04:26 pmFour o'clock, Englishman abroad, kettle, tea, yadda yadda. My empire-building grandfather would thoroughly have approved. I'm just not sure he would have recognised my process. This particular Englishman measures his water, takes its temperature, weighs his tealeaves and times the infusion. All of it electronically. And only because he can. It amuses me, for this little time, to be precise.
I really really need a gaiwan now.
(Not now, but sometime you should ask me about tea ceremonies I have known, Japanese and Taiwanese. I will tell you - because I always do - that it seems to me that the Japanese ceremony is all about the ceremony, while the Taiwanese is all about the tea.)
In other news, I have a large sack of onions, a carton of much-reduced beef stock, and guests tomorrow. I am making French onion soup, for the first time in a very long time indeed. It was one of those things we did in the eighties, possibly to prove to each other that we could actually cook serious food. We knew it was serious food, because it came from Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which over here always seems to be "Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking", as though Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle had nothing to do with it; I have seen editions that don't even carry their names). Maybe our devotion was because you got to slosh cognac in at the end? We were very young. I am older now, though, and this is apparently still the recipe I follow.
*goes back to browning onions slowly, slowly*
[EtA: because one must do something else while browning onions slowly, slowly, I decided to sweep the living-room floor. If anyone out there has plans to enter a knit-your-own-Barry competition, I have your raw materials right here.]
I really really need a gaiwan now.
(Not now, but sometime you should ask me about tea ceremonies I have known, Japanese and Taiwanese. I will tell you - because I always do - that it seems to me that the Japanese ceremony is all about the ceremony, while the Taiwanese is all about the tea.)
In other news, I have a large sack of onions, a carton of much-reduced beef stock, and guests tomorrow. I am making French onion soup, for the first time in a very long time indeed. It was one of those things we did in the eighties, possibly to prove to each other that we could actually cook serious food. We knew it was serious food, because it came from Mastering the Art of French Cooking (which over here always seems to be "Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking", as though Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle had nothing to do with it; I have seen editions that don't even carry their names). Maybe our devotion was because you got to slosh cognac in at the end? We were very young. I am older now, though, and this is apparently still the recipe I follow.
*goes back to browning onions slowly, slowly*
[EtA: because one must do something else while browning onions slowly, slowly, I decided to sweep the living-room floor. If anyone out there has plans to enter a knit-your-own-Barry competition, I have your raw materials right here.]