There was no other time I could get into the kitchen and work with the sommeliers to get the tea right. This was the allotted moment I had travelled all that way for. The team were working flat out, with an intensity I had never seen (nor have I since). The level of perfection they were striving for took pin-head focus. That little stitch of time at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon was my part of the gorgeous garment that was Noma Tokyo. The team had left their own restaurant in Copenhagen to explore the ingredients of Japan and showcase their art in that faraway city. It had taken over a year of experimentation and preparation. Adrenalin surged as I got out of the lift at 2.55. I was shaking and breathless from the run.
Once I was among the teapots, my pulse levelled. I got out my thermometer and we started testing and tasting methodically. It turned out we needed to increase the temperature of the water by 5°C. The special water they were using, usually reserved for sake, reacted differently than expected to the delicate leaves. They were serving a Jun Chiyabari hand-rolled Nepali black tea that needed a slightly higher temperature to bring out the chocolate top notes. We increased the steep by thirty seconds. I know it sounds pernickety, but it made a profound difference. (And there was a revolution at stake. There always is.) The hand-made teapots that had been specially commissioned were unglazed and porous inside. The bespoke herbal blend I had made contained some potent English peppermint that was permeating the pots. We had to divide the pots and reserve some for that blend alone, so as not to contaminate the Nepali tea.
As the last lunch guests left, I briefed the team about the tea, and while they prepared for dinner I made a pot for René Redzepi, Noma’s chef-owner, who hadn’t tried it yet. I was incredibly chuffed that he had trusted me to choose the tea: something magnificent that would be both thrillingly new yet deliciously comprehensible in Japan.
In return, he fed me, from the pass, the area where finished dishes are passed from the chefs to the waiters. Rather than being hidden in the kitchen, this pass was a counter leading from the kitchen into the dining room. I found myself standing in the dining room, during dinner service, being fed by the man himself, right at the mouth of the kitchen. Sublime dish after sublime dish, which would take another book to describe, on the cusp of two worlds – not just between Denmark and Japan but between the hot intensity of the kitchen and the cool grace of the dining room. René stood with me, on the restaurant side, calling off the dishes and overseeing the last minutiae of their presentation. Never before had I witnessed, so close, the conductor’s concentration, standing there inside the orchestra pit, among the players, picking up the very vibrations of their instruments.
CHAPTER 16
TARRYTOWN, NEW YORK STATE, USA
The first time the chef Dan Barber invited me to dinner at his restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, in upstate New York, he drove me around the farm on his tractor, showing me everything: the pigs, the geese, the cows and the sheep, the expansive vegetable and herb gardens. I was encouraged to taste and pick and snip and root out whatever I would like to eat that night.
Strange, because usually a chef wants to show you what he likes.
Back at the restaurant, in the middle of the farm, I spoke to the staff and told them the stories of their teas: where they grew, how they were made and about the farmers who crafted them. We talked about sustainable growing techniques and practices, the human and environmental impact and, of course, the flavours. All the kitchen staff, the front-of-house staff, the waiters, the sommeliers, the busboys, the kitchen porters, the reservation staff, everyone came to listen. I spent most of the day there, and by the time the restaurant opened for dinner I had met everyone involved in the creation of my meal, from earth to plate.
In the dining room I was shown to a table set for one. I was thrown; I was expecting to eat with Dan. He’d invited me for dinner and I hadn’t understood that it was to feed his Tea Lady, not eat with her. I felt really alone. The room was set for catching up with loved ones, warm with candlelight, abundant with flower arrangements that brought the gardens into the restaurant. The tables around me gradually filled with smiling family groups celebrating landmark birthdays or anniversaries, and intimate couples. Everyone looked glossy and radiant, happy and together.
Then the food started to arrive, and my new friends were all around me: the waiters and the busboys and the sommeliers were continuously attentive and at my table, keeping me company. And I had the delicious distraction of the food. Halfway through dinner a young chef came out of the kitchen into the dining room, took me by the hand, helped me up from the table, and led me out into the darkness. It was cold and there was a little rain in the air, that kind of horizontal spring rain that gets you in gusts, and I was wearing only a thin dress. I climbed onto the back of a tractor and we drove off at some speed, bumping over clods of earth, surrounded by green darkness and the smell of wet loam. We stopped at a vegetable bed, the lights of the tractor illuminating wet leaves. The chef pointed to a patch and urged me to pull. I shook the earth from the roots and we returned to the tractor. He drove me back to the restaurant, escorted me to my table and took my dripping vegetable into the kitchen.
Coming back into that warm glow of the restaurant, invigorated by the cold air and the unexpected adventure, the bonhomie of the room embraced me. A few minutes later the vegetable I had pulled up was served; I can’t even remember what it was, but I remember it was as delicious and exhilarating as the tractor drive.
Now that I was no longer afraid of eating alone, I was delighted to take up an invitation from Mugaritz, near San Sebastián in Spain. They wanted me to try their tasting menu and see what teas might fit as pairings for which dishes. I was happy to do so without the distraction of company.
I’m not a chef, I just eat to enjoy, not to analyse or understand – or at least I did until that day. As the plates arrived, I tried to hold every tea I had ever tasted alive in my imagination. There was so much to take in, I was lost to everything but flavour. The dining room disappeared, along with all the people around me, and I was alone with the dish in front of me, like an intense conversation. Twenty or more courses were served, each more extraordinary than the last. At one point I was presented with a box containing a delicate fork made of sugar, with which I was to eat a light eel mousse adorned with flowers. As I slipped the fork through my lips, a little of the sugar came off, sweetening the mouthful as it dissolved. When I finished the dish the tines had all but melted away. By the time I finished the dinner, four hours later, so had much of my mind.
The extremely talented chef Oswaldo Oliva, who was working there as the head of development at the time, told me that after my visit they served my suggested Jasmine Silver Tip paired with the eel dish for Ferran Adrià, former head chef at the legendary restaurant El Bulli, who declared it ‘divine’. Just saying.
It wasn’t until another night at Blue Hill that I got to pair a tasting menu with teas simultaneously. This time I had come to Tarrytown just for a meeting with Dan. The hour was late; he urged me to ‘stay, eat’. It was a busy Saturday evening. There was no space in the restaurant, but it was a warm, clear summer’s evening and they laid a table for me beneath the eaves of an old wooden barn in an empty courtyard planted with herbs. Swallows dipped through the scented garden. I was served not by the front-of-house staff, who were busy in the restaurant, but by the chefs.
I had my tasting kit, my little yellow suitcase, beside me. This was just before I was due to have some major surgery, and I wasn’t drinking alcohol. The chefs brought a constant supply of hot water and I made tea. I devised my own pairings as I ate. I tried many teas with each dish, until I hit upon the right one. Less complicated than imagining the teas in my head at Mugaritz, but every bit as taxing. The breadth of choice was baffling. There was a far greater array of flavours in my little case than any wine cellar could hold, however vast. From white teas through the multitudes of greens, oolongs, blacks, pu’ers, all the herbs and the infinite combinations. The experience was so
deeply fascinating and absorbing, I was truly grateful to be alone. But again, I wasn’t entirely alone. I got to share the tastes with each chef who came out with the next dish. I saved a morsel of the food and a sip of the tea I’d chosen and let them taste what I’d discovered.
Imagine you’re a chef in a high-pressure kitchen on a Saturday night. You’re in a hot, bright, noisy, incredibly intense environment. For a brief minute you’re sent out into the cool darkness, to a table lit by a single lantern. And for a few moments you get to taste something extraordinary, before running back into the kitchen to get on with the frenzy of service. I made real friends that night.
About halfway through, the rain started to fall, soft but insistent, and I moved my table further under the eaves with the swallows. The overhang of the roof was just wide enough to shelter it. I watched the gravel turn from dry white to slick black just beyond my chair. The smells were amplified, and the chefs got a little extra cool-down as they brought me my food.
I’d been sending a few glasses of tea inside to Dan throughout the meal, whenever I hit upon something so good I had to share it with him. He came to ask me about one of the teas and was a little horrified that I was sitting in the rain. He invited me into the kitchen.
Tucked away from the melee but close enough to see, I stood in the bright heat, watching the chefs work. They continued to send me dish after dish. The last, cooked for me in a moment of inspiration by Dan, was a lone mushroom. I had told them I was too full for dessert. By the end of a long tasting menu, the sweet things are always a bit of a challenge; they can tip me over into too much. Dan took a marinated shiitake mushroom, fried it and handed it to me on a white plate.
It was incredible just as it was, but it was even more sublime with a pu’er from Alex in Malawi.
CHAPTER 17
SAN FRANCISCO AND SONOMA COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, USA
The best pu’er I’ve ever drunk was not in Yunnan in south-west China with billionaire collectors, though that was certainly the most expensive, but with some children smeared with snot and strawberry juice, sitting in the dirt of a redwood forest.
It wasn’t exactly what I was planning when I travelled to California to visit some extremely glamorous restaurants. Richard Hart picked me up from San Francisco airport. He’d brought a thermos of Speedy Breakfast tea. ‘You’re like a dried-out old teabag – get it down you, love.’
I drank all the tea in the flask and then bit straight into the loaf of bread as we sped across the bridge. Richard is possibly the best baker in the world and his bread is so good that once you have it in your hands it’s impossible to keep it from your mouth. He’s got his own Hart Bakery now, in Copenhagen, but back then he was in California at a place called Tartine.
Richard says I’m too posh to be his friend. He comes from a rougher part of London and thinks that because we have different accents we should be different sorts of people. He lets me get away with my poshness though, because he loves tea and because my swearing is even worse than his. When I called him a ‘fucking fucker’ he almost cried with laughter. I said it with affection. It’s not the words that matter so much as how you say them. I’d rather be called a ‘fucker’ in a kind voice than have someone spit the word ‘idiot’ at me.
He told me not to eat all the bread because we were going to see our friend Gabriela at her restaurant. I forgot about being tired. Not many people in the world can make me happier than Gabriela or Richard. Spending time with either of them is like going on holiday. They look for, and bring out, the best in people. Not in a naive way, but with an abundance of good humour and love. Neither ever needed a Zen Buddhist monk to tell them to enjoy their lives.
Gabriela Cámara’s restaurant in San Francisco is called Cala. It’s a beautiful place, with huge potted trees set amongst the tables. You might call it fancy, except that rather than being stuffy and pretentious it has the easy charm of its owner, and the food is as lovely as she is. Many of the front-of-house and kitchen staff are ex-prisoners. She welcomes them into her restaurant family, giving them the camaraderie, respect, purpose and jobs that they need. It doesn’t always work out perfectly, but the successes, she says, make it well worth her effort. She serves my tea, not because a Mexican restaurant really needs tea, but because she loves me.
When we arrived, Gabriela was in the kitchen. She told us to wait a minute and she would join us. A tall, gracious man of great beauty and gentleness, previously of San Quentin State Prison, showed us to a table and food started to appear. Hours passed, as they always do with Gabriela. She never did sit down but kept dipping by our table like a hummingbird, bringing cups of tea for me to approve the infusions, and tequila, and mescal.
San Francisco, for all its problems, is as full of good people as it is of good food. Two of the best restaurants in the city are State Bird and The Progress. They stand side by side and are run by husband-and-wife team Stuart Brioza and Nicole Krasinski, both of them chefs. The first time I visited them to enthuse their teams about tea, I was staying in a bed and breakfast up the road. I told them the breakfast was pretty terrible and they invited me to their home the next morning. I had only just met them. They would both be cooking all night but still had the kindness to make me breakfast.
After our visit to Cala, Richard and I drove to the farm in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, where he lived. As I got out of the car his eldest son, Bodhi, brought me a jam jar of wild flowers.
His four young boys wanted to see inside my little yellow case. All they knew about me was that I was the Tea Lady. They wanted to see my tea, and they wanted to drink it too. I took them seriously and got out my gaiwan tea set, as though they were chefs I was trying to impress. We stood around the island counter in their kitchen, exactly as I would do down the road the next day at the Michelin three-star restaurant Meadowood. They huddled around my pots, standing on tiptoes, craning close to see what was inside. I made them soft green teas and silky black brews, and they sipped quietly, watching me with serious faces and round eyes. I had to step up my game. I made them a very rare pu’er from Malawi and told them it tasted like forests. They were thoughtful.
‘How do you know?’
‘I don’t really know – it’s what it makes me think of.’
‘But thinking’s not a taste.’
At Meadowood the next day, I tried the same thing. The chefs smiled broadly and agreed with my description. But Richard’s boys were unconvinced. They were a tough crowd. They wanted proof.
What makes pu’er so special is that it’s fermented. It’s not a wet ferment, as with the production of beer or wine, but a slow, dry fermentation. In China pu’er most famously comes from Yunnan province and is called ‘black tea’. (What we think of as ‘black tea’ they call ‘red tea’.) The tea is shaped into flat discs or cakes, which get stamped with the maker’s mark and then wrapped in paper to be racked in shady, ambient storage to mature.
It tastes extraordinary. Imagine you are walking through a forest in the rain. You can smell wet grass and soft earth under your feet. You come to a clearing. There is a little wooden house with a wood-shingled roof. The rain is running off the roof into a wooden barrel. You go to the barrel and, sweeping away the few fallen leaves from the surface, you cup your hands and drink. Pu’er can taste like that sweet silky rainwater, with the scent of wet turf and damp leaves.
Not all pu’ers are as subtle. Some are as deeply earthy as a mouthful of peat. Their value increases with age, and with the years comes profundity. The very old pu’ers that date back to before Chairman Mao’s revolution can be traded for eye-watering sums due to their rarity and the historical provenance they’re associated with, like vintage champagnes. An old bottle of champagne may be worth a king’s ransom and then disappoint as soon as it is opened. It may be corked or spoilt. Its value is not determined by the quality of the liquid inside but by the age of the bottle. The same is sometimes true of pu’er. An old, intact cake in its original wrapping is more often traded or treasure
d than drunk. Once broken, it loses its value and when infused may not make the most delicious tea, despite its price.
If you are new to this tea, I would start with what’s known as a ‘ripe’ pu’er. This means it has first been ‘wet-piled’, having undergone an initial wet fermentation for forty-five days to begin the process before the dry-aging starts. This allows the tea to attain the smoothness and delicacy of a much older, 100 per cent dry-aged ‘raw’ pu’er. It is also vastly more affordable and often rather looked down upon by purists.
The afternoon after our kitchen tasting, the whole family set out for a redwood forest. We had with us a basket of very ripe, very sweet Californian strawberries. We wandered under the enormous ancient redwood trees. They clustered massively in circles, like old friends. I know this sounds sappy, but they had a benign presence. I have a feeling that trees in general are highly sensitive and intelligent, just in a different way that we can’t quite fathom. These kind old fellows softened the sunshine filtering through their canopy, dropping warm, scented air. In a clearing I got out my gaiwan and my tiny, thimble-like cups. Richard had carried, along with the baby, a large thermos of hot water. I made us all tea.
So, there we were, with Alexander’s pu’er from the Shire Highlands of Malawi, and the tea did as I’d described. The pu’er tasted like a forest. If not exactly of that forest, of the feeling of the forest. Feeling isn’t a taste either, I know, but try it. Even the six-month-old baby had a sip. It was one of the very best tea-drinking moments of my life.
MAKING PU’ER TEA
I like pu’er at a high leaf-to-water ratio – 3 to 4g per 150ml. Use water heated to 90 or 95°C and infuse for sixty to ninety seconds.
Keep infusing the leaves until the dark-chocolate notes appear: the zenith before they give up, exhausted.
Infused Page 13