I could go on and on. We did.
The next time I went to Paris was to present the pairing we had settled on to some of David’s best customers. These were chefs who already loved and worked with his caviar but had never tried it with anything but champagne or vodka. In Russia caviar is traditionally served with chilled vodka, but it can blind the taste buds with its icy burn (more necessary in the days before refrigeration). Champagne is delicious, of course, but always acidic and always alcoholic and always bubbly. What if you wanted something silky, something smooth, something with endless flavour possibilities, and something without booze?
The chefs sat around a long table and looked at me mistrustfully. One man sat with his chair tipped back, his arms folded across his chest, and refused the first glass of tea that I had prepared as a palate cleanser to begin. He had come to a tea pairing and refused my tea. I started to speak in English, to explain the thinking behind what we were doing, and he shook his head.
‘Non.’
David had to translate, which rather curtailed my ebullience. I had little choice but to enjoy the caviar and let the tea talk for me. Kathi was with us, from our team in London, to expertly make the tea, leaving me little to do but smile and nod. David was my champion, singing the praises of the tea far more eloquently than I could have done, certainly in French, and it was more modest, of course, coming from him. They began to warm up when we served the pu’er. I heard a little gasp from the folded-arm chap when we served the cold extraction of White Silver Tip. There was definitely an ‘Oh là là!’ or two. By the end we got ‘Hyper cool.’
Well, ‘super cool’, for sure. Chefs are not known for their overblown praise. Scepticism gave way to pleasure. Pleasure is personal and they all enjoyed different pairings to lesser or greater degrees, but good is good, and we don’t have to argue or speak the same language, we just have to taste.
CHAPTER 21
SIKKIM, INDIA
Sometimes we get hung up on what we are used to. We hold onto familiar things. Sentimentality, perhaps, but also experience.
I know I like champagne with caviar. But that doesn’t mean that tea with caviar isn’t delicious. I know I love Darjeeling tea. But a general strike brought Darjeeling to a standstill in 2017. No tea was plucked. No tea was processed. No tea could move along the precipitous roads that twist through the Himalayas, around aching drops protected by pale, fluttering strings of prayer flags. The Gorkha people of the mountains wanted independence from the government of the Indian state of West Bengal. They still do. Poor wages, too few jobs and a longstanding lack of investment in basic infrastructure has seeded a desperate desire for change.
The first flush of the tea crop was marooned in the mountains, unable to leave. Then the second. Nothing moved.
I called Rajah. What should we do? Come to Sikkim, he said.
Rajah is the nickname of the most famous organic tea farmer in India: Swaraj Kumar Banerjee. His family started the first tea factory in Darjeeling, on their Makaibari Estate. Abandoning a law degree at Oxford, he decided to turn the estate organic in the 1980s. This was to be the first organic tea farm in India. He was considered insane. Many still think he is. But many others have followed where he has led, with his dauntless energy and élan. I don’t say that lightly. Rajah is in his seventies and he has the spirit of a teenager.
In the spring of 2018, on the day before my birthday, I got off the plane from London (via Dubai and Delhi) in Bagdogra, there to meet my friend, the maverick, superhuman Rajah. He drove me through the hot chaos of the Himalayan town and up, up into Sikkim, the remote state in north-east India that borders West Bengal, Tibet, Bhutan and Nepal.
A year earlier a fire had destroyed Rajah’s family home in Darjeeling, along with generations of memories. He had already sold a part of his Makaibari Estate to a big tea group, which he’d hoped would invest in the future. But he’d become increasingly disheartened by what he saw as their short-term attitude, seemingly far more concerned with turning a quick profit than with building a sustainable future for the land and community. After the fire, he had no more ties and so he left, giving his remaining shares to the community itself.
Rajah is a practising Hindu, but his real religion is organic farming. And he didn’t need to look too far for a new place of worship. The neighbouring state of Sikkim had, with his encouragement, declared itself 100 per cent organic. Who better to help them produce a tea so good it would rival that of its neighbours in West Bengal? Only eighty-six farms in the district of Darjeeling can call their tea by that name, just as only wine produced in Champagne can use that appellation. But at Temi Estate in Sikkim, I believe Rajah has gone even further and helped craft teas better than Darjeeling. This, I am certain, has something to do with the people. Not just Rajah, but the Lepcha people, the kindest, warmest, most welcoming tea community anywhere, as I was to discover the following night.
We arrived in darkness and were taken into the tea factory itself, up through the withering rooms. In deep troughs, on fine net beds, with hot air circulating gently beneath, the day’s harvest of green leaves lay – relaxing, becoming more pliable for rolling, and losing some of their water content. It smelt heavenly. If there is a heaven and it doesn’t smell like a tea-withering room, it would be a shame. On a floor above were some simple rooms and a kitchen where a man with a name like a rainbow cooked us a humble but delicious dinner. Rajah opened the bottle of whisky I had brought him and after a soothing dram, I soon collapsed into an unbroken sleep.
I woke to Rajah’s shouts urging me to come out onto the veranda. It was 5 a.m. I wrapped myself in a wool shawl and opened the door, my mind stumbling to remember where I was. And there in the morning light was Kanchendzonga, the third highest mountain in the world, revealed on the horizon. A rare occurrence, since she was far away, and only perfectly clear conditions allow her into view. Rajah likes a little esoteric mysticism and told me Kanchendzonga is the keeper of five hidden treasures that she will one day reveal to save humanity. She hovered above the horizon, all blinding white peaks and blue shadows in a cloudless sky. Rajah said it was a birthday present from the Himalayas themselves.
It was still early dawn and we had time to sit and drink tea and contemplate her. The tea had been picked the previous day and tasted as bright as the rhododendron flowers that flushed scarlet and pink. The tea fields stretched out beneath us, flowing down the mountainside in green terraces overhung with tall magnolia trees.
I spent the day walking through the tea, familiarising myself with the land, the tea, tasting new leaves, smelling the air, marvelling at the wildflowers. I wandered past the villages amongst the terraces, rich in colour. The houses were decorated by flowers in pots, orchids and azaleas against wooden walls painted blue and pink and yellow. Chickens and goats with newborn kids among their flocks peered at me as I passed. Meeting the pluckers bringing in the fresh new leaves, we smiled and bowed to each other with palms pressed together, fingers up at heart height, saying ‘Namaste’.
English speakers among them stopped to ask me questions about what I was doing and chat conversationally about the glorious springtime. When I mentioned it was my birthday, my two hands were clasped within theirs, and good wishes shared.
In the evening Rajah had organised a cake with ‘Henrietta’s Himalayan Heist’ iced on top. There was some fizzy wine shared among the core group of tea makers, and outside the rains came down hard. A look of sadness passed around the group. I asked what was wrong. They just shook their heads dolefully and quietly sipped the sweet wine. The mood was low, and I was feeling like a whisky and hoping Rajah would offer me a spot.
Suddenly a man called Moni burst in, saying it was alright, the rain had stopped, and we must come, the dancing girls were ready. Sure that this had to be some kind of joke, I followed them into a jeep and we drove into the blackness, deep into the tea, the headlights penetrating only a few feet into the thick, velvet darkness. A glimmer of light ahead revealed itself as a bonfire in a s
mall glade within the tea terraces. Around it four or five people were warming their hands.
We got out and huddled around the fire. The night was cool but not so cold that the fire didn’t warm us. What a time to be alive, around a fire in this new land of tea, with old and new friends. Our faces glowed red in the firelight. More faces appeared: a mother and her two young children hiding behind her skirts. A group of young girls. An old man. More and more, until the crowd was sixty strong. Faces I recognised from my day walking through the gardens. Nods of recognition and greeting.
The dancing girls were possibly twelve years old and wore traditional dress. Some of them were in white, dressed as boys with smudges of soot under their noses and on their chins. The others were in vibrant reds, with tinsel necklaces and their hair braided with ribbons. Mani had their music on the jeep tape recorder and they danced and laughed, and everyone clapped and joined in.
New groups of dancers appeared, all dressed in their best. The crowd clapped louder and watched them dance in the red light of the fire. Millet beer was passed around in a bamboo cup. It was made from millet fermented into a mash, which then had boiling water poured over it ready to be drunk through a metal straw. The cup was filled again and again as it was passed around, like a maté gourd in South America. The children were the least shy about talking to me and told me of their dreams. To be an astronaut, one little girl said, and I remembered the little girls I’d asked in Satemwa in Malawi who hadn’t known what an astronaut was.
As the fire burnt low there was a great chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’. Everyone, even the littlest children, came and took my hands in theirs and wished me happiness. I had never experienced such an outpouring of goodwill from strangers. When Rajah and I drove off, everyone waved and laughed and smiled. I can’t tell you how happy I was that night. Just remembering it as I write, I can feel the hot fire on my face and the warmth of the crowd in the cold, fragrant darkness.
CHAPTER 22
NORDSKOT, ARCTIC NORWAY
One wonderful madman leads me to another. I met the fisherman Roddy Sloan in Denmark at the international chefs’ symposium MAD (Danish for ‘food’). We were sitting in a giant red-and-white-striped circus tent as well-rehearsed, widely recognised speakers regaled us with lectures, and then this scruffy Scotsman took to the stage. He gave us all salty ice cubes and asked us to hold them to our lips for as long as we could. Then he told us about how he dives into the waters of the Arctic, in the middle of winter, to harvest shellfish. As our lips swelled and went numb, we listened to his softly spoken, often irreverent banter about his perilous work. It was impossible not to be grabbed by his story, like clams in his hands.
In the break I sought him out. He was smoking furiously and still shaking with nerves. He told me he’d grown up in the area of Scotland I know so well. We’d swum at the same beaches, walked in the same forests, made similar camps in the bracken. We found we both supplied a lot of the same restaurants; me from London, him from the very edge of the world.
‘Come and see,’ he said.
I wanted to learn how to pair shellfish with tea; it seemed like a good excuse.
‘If you want to do it properly, woman, do it fresh, straight from the boat.’
On a dark December morning I took a flight to Oslo, a second flight north to Bodø and then a lift from one of the passengers on the plane to the ferry port. A three-hour ride on a fast boat took me further north, into the Arctic Circle, to the tiny hamlet of Nordskot. Well, it should have been Nordskot. I got off the boat one stop too early. I stood, stamping on the frozen jetty, wondering, waiting, alone in the darkness, completely unaware I was in the wrong place. After some time an old man wandered down with his dog. He asked me what I was doing, and I told him I was waiting for Roddy.
‘Roddy? He lives in the next town. You’d better come with me.’
He took me up the silent road to his little wooden house and into his bright kitchen. He sat me down and fed me spiced cakes and aquavit while he called Roddy. As we covered the final stretch, driving down unlit roads surrounded by yawning open space under a sky that swirled with Northern Lights, Roddy swore at me and laughed.
We kicked the snow from our boots on the porch. Inside, a wood-burning stove belted out heat. Lindis, Roddy’s wife, an educator and academic, sat calmly knitting while their three boys jumped about the place like puppies. On my bed was a wrapped present: a winter reindeer skin, coarse and thick, to lay on the snow; an Arctic picnic rug. The last time I’d arrived at someone’s house to find a present on my bed was when I’d stayed at my grandmother’s house in Beeswing.
The next morning we got kitted out, loaded the boat with Roddy’s gear and waited on the swaying dock for a pale light to seep into the sky. In the winter the sun never rises over the horizon this far north, but for a few hours in the middle of the day it comes close enough to lift the heavy black into a opalescent twilight. Mountains massed around us.
The boat skimmed across the empty water to the dive spot. Once the engine stopped, there was a profound silence. Ice crusted the boat. I watched Roddy go down into the water in just a wetsuit and pondered his insanity. But I have tasted nothing like a sea urchin fresh from those clear, icy waters. Nothing. In the muted winter noon, the pain of removing the glove from my already frozen hand was bearable only for that sublime flavour. Imagine strolling along a beach when a huge wave knocks you down and rolls you under. Surfacing, gulping ozone and life and surprise, you’d get a sense. The briny, bright vibrancy of the orange roe within the spiky black shells was incomparable to any I had ever tasted.
Between dives, Roddy ate cheese sandwiches, smoked cigarettes and drank a strong breakfast blend I’d made for him, with sugar but no milk. Out on the water with him is the only time I really enjoy tea with sugar; it seemed as essential as gloves in the freezing clutch of the wind. His boat is an open skiff, with no cabin or cover. Under a life-preserving Arctic suit, I had on a full-length fur coat, a cashmere jumper, a merino jersey and a silk camisole next to my skin, and I was still frozen. And I hadn’t jumped into the water.
But it wasn’t Diver’s Tea that we paired with the urchins. Back at his house, I tried many infusions. It was only the most delicate white teas that had the grace. A Chinese White Peony was the best partner. Grassy, soft, sweet, succulent, with the most delicate notes of apricot, it was perfect beside the bright, blindingly clean, ozone umami of the Arctic urchin.
White Peony is picked just after the silver tips. It’s the first opened leaves and the bud of the next leaf set. They are not processed into a green tea but are just dried in the mountain air, like the silver tips. The young leaves have started to photosynthesise, converting spring sunlight into new sugars. The flavour is deeper than the bud, more robust, and hints at the perfumed flesh of a ripe apricot. That perfume is lost after that first flush of leaves and gone when processed into a green tea. But there is a soft trace in those tender first leaves, one you must search for in the aromas of the tea before it reaches your tongue, and again after you swallow, tantalisingly brief. Beautiful on its own, White Peony enhanced the sweet flavour of the urchin and balanced the umami. We let the infusion cool to about 60°C before it was served: warm but not hot.
Roddy, Lindis and their boys have since grown to be more like family than friends and I make the journey to visit them as often as I am able.
MAKING WHITE PEONY
Use 2 to 3g per 150ml cup of water heated to 75°C. Steep for ninety seconds to two minutes.
Cold extracted at 6g per litre of cold water, in the fridge overnight, White Peony makes an amazing pairing with summer oysters, when the roe sweetens the flesh. Better still, use a 2:1 blend of White Peony (4g) and White Silver Tip (2g). For the more briny winter oysters, I prefer a pure White Silver Tip cold extraction.
CHAPTER 23
HANGZHOU, ZHEJIANG PROVINCE, CHINA
Friendship and bonhomie isn’t always so easy. I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in not always wanting to go to the ba
ll, happy to stay behind and leave the prince to the ugly sisters, too tired, too stressed, or just intimidated. We all have our tricks to manoeuvre ourselves into a more powerful, or less weedy, state of mind. I have a certain tea and a certain dress.
At a restaurant industry do, with a lot of chefs massed together, it can be daunting. Women are few. Though some of the greatest chefs in the world are women, they are still rare in today’s restaurant industry and often marginalised. The room can be thick with bravado and dominance that I can’t always fake or feel. I’m not against slipping silently through crowds or watching from the edges. I was shy as a child and worked behind the scenes until I became the Tea Lady. But as I took on the task of making my business grow and championing the craft and value of my farmers’ teas, I had to come out from behind a computer screen. I still have moments of intense shyness, but it would be dangerous for my business and I would be a pretty hopeless spokeswoman if I didn’t step up and out.
At one of those events I’d forced myself to attend, I met a young designer, Brett Mettler, and we got into a conversation about my Tea Lady uniform. It’s usually just a dress, often red, that will pack down to almost nothing in a suitcase. What I wanted was something less flimsy, more substantial, to build my confidence. But what could a woman wear, in the context of a restaurant setting, to give her strength? Where a man might put on a well-tailored suit, the only woman with a powerful position is in chef’s whites.
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