Tea for Christmas

YOU can have anything you want on Christmas Day, so why not tea?

Dilhan Fernando, Dilmah Tea CEO, made a case for serving tea-based food and drink for the holidays. On a demonstration streamed through YouTube and Facebook, Mr. Fernando said, “Let us celebrate, but we’ve also got to wash it down with something good, that tastes good, brings out the taste in our food, but also helps us to wash down all the bad stuff — the fat and the sweets and so on.”

He is of course, talking about the family crop, tea, grown in the company’s plantations in Sri Lanka. “Tea goes magically with some of the ingredients of Christmas. Try cardamom, cinnamon — beautiful spices, all made here in Sri Lanka.”

For this demonstration, titled A Tea-Inspired Christmas, Mr. Fernando got on board chef and restaurateur Peter Kuruvita, World Champion Flair Bartender Tomek Malek, and mixologists Robert Schinkel and Albert Pizzaro, who appeared on the stream via Zoom.

Mr. Kuruvita brought out a familiar surprise called A Pink Christmas, a riff on Filipino halo-halo. “The pride of the people in their food is amazing,” he said, recalling a trip to the Philippines. He describes the dessert as having fruit, shaved ice, “crispy crunchy bits,” and milk. For his version, he makes it with strawberries, mango, and jackfruit, shaved ice, and ice cream and jelly infused with Dilmah’s Elderflower and Apple Infusion. He instructs that in case one can’t make ice cream from scratch, one may mix in the chilled tea or infused sugar syrup into commercial vanilla ice cream.

Next came Mr. Schinkel’s Frosty White Chocolate Chai. It was made with Dilmah’s Breakfast Tea, milk, white chocolate, vanilla, cardamom, cinnamon, and lemon zest. “It’s a very easy drink — but looks fancy,” he said. The tea is brewed for five minutes, infused with cardamom, whisked with white chocolate and milk infused with the cinnamon, and poured into a glass decorated with sugar (hence the “frost”).

Mr. Malek served something a little harder to put together: a cocktail called Santa’s Delivery, made with gin infused with Dilmah Mandarin Marzipan Pekoe. “Our house was always full of the beautiful mandarin smell,” said Mr. Malek, reminiscing about Christmas. The tea infusion is made by immersing a teabag in 200 ml of gin at room temperature for 30 minutes. He warns that the tea shouldn’t be left in too long or at temperatures that are too hot, otherwise, the gin would get too much of an astringent flavor.

Finally, Mr. Pizzaro demonstrated how to make the Love the Giver cocktail, made of rum and Dilmah’s Moroccan Mint green tea. During the demonstration, he placed several ice cubes both in the glass and into the shaker. “This cocktail needs to be very, very cold to be enjoyed.” The cocktail was also made of triple sec, tamarind puree, and apple juice; then garnished with a candy cane.

Here are two of the recipes from Dilmah’s tea webinar, but you can find more at Dilmah’s website for recipes, teainspired.com/dilmah-recipes. One can find resources on the website for tea pairings, or even savory dishes with some elements made out of tea. — JLG

Ingredients

1 cup assorted summer berries

1 cup of apple cubes cut into 2.5 cm cubes and cooked with three Dilmah Elderflower & Apple Infusion tea bags

2 ripe mangoes (peeled and cut into 1 cm pieces)

1 cup jack fruit strips

1 large ripe banana, sliced

1 cup chopped elderflower and apple jelly*

2 cups shaved ice

250 ml (1 cup) evaporated milk

4 scoops of Elderflower and hot apple ice cream

Crunchy nut cornflakes or peanut brittle, and assorted edible flowers to serve

*For the jelly:

500 ml coconut water

80 g sugar

5 g vegan jelly powder

6 g agar-agar

8 Dilmah Elderflower and Apple Infusion tea bags

Directions

Bring coconut water to boil with sugar and tea bags.

Turn off and allow the tea to brew.

Remove the tea bags and return the liquid to the boil.

Add the jelly and agar-agar and bring to the boil, simmer for 3 minutes and then pour out onto a 20 x 20 cm tray and allow to set, cut into cubes.

Divide the fruit and jelly among 4 tall glasses. Top each glass with 1/2 cup shaved ice, 60 ml ( 1/4 cup) evaporated milk and a scoop of ice cream.

Sprinkle nuts or Rice Krispies on top and serve immediately.

Frosty White Chocolate Chai

Ingredients

300 ml Dilmah Breakfast Tea (5 min. brew)

100 ml Full cream milk

40 g white chocolate

Spice combination: Pinch of vanilla (or a few drops of vanilla extract), pinch of dried ground cardamom and cinnamon

Lemon zest

Directions

Add the cardamom to the tea in the teapot.

Brew the tea for at least 5 minutes at 95?C.

Warm up the milk in a pan or microwave.

Chop up the white chocolate and dissolve it in the hot milk, add the vanilla.

Add the milk to the tea and air the mixture in chai mugs or whisk it in a saucepan.

Pour into the glass.

Garnish with a zest of lemon and a pinch of cinnamon.

Cover the bottom of the outside of the glass with food glue/honey/syrup to make it sticky.

Sprinkle sugar over the glass to give it a frosty look.