Blog – Page 84 – Discovering Tea

Chowrasta, the heart of Darjeeling

8 October 2010

Darjeeling’s main square, its centre, its heart, is called Chowrasta. You have to come here on Sundays to realize how popular it is. People come from all the surrounding mountains around, they travel for several hours to spend part of their afternoon there, sitting on one of the numerous benches, sipping the famous spicy chai tea. It’s easy for an experienced eye to distinguish by their costume Sikkimese from Nepalese women, Tibetans from Bhutanese and Indian tourists, often from Kolkata, who are cold here and put a scarf around their head, with a knot on top of it, just like an Easter egg. As for the kids, people hoist them on one of the numerous horses for a nice ride on the Mall.

It wasn’t very warm this morning on Chowrasta, at a time when shops start opening, the time of the first onlookers, hands in their pockets. At a time when you have the whole space to play when you have such a nice yellow ball like this!

In Darjeeling, momos are one of my favourite recipes

5 October 2010

When I’m in Darjeeling, momos are one of my favourite recipes. For those who aren’t familiar with Himalayan typical food, it’s a steamed pastry filled with vegetables (“veg momos”) or minced chicken (“chicken momos”). As you can see, momos actually look quite similar to the Chinese Dim Sum.

Even before arriving in Darjeeling, when I’m on my way, I stop at the Tourist Lodge in Kurseong to eat a full plate of them. In Darjeeling, two famous Tibetan restaurants you could mistakenly take for greasy spoons, the Dekeva’s and the Kunga, have it as their specialty. A delight. Here are two recipes if you are interested, proportions change of course whether you serve them as an entry or as a main dish:
– Vegetarian momos (recettespourtous.com)
– Meat momos (Elle à table)

It goes without saying that you’re free adapting these recipes according to your tastes, replacing one meat by another, choosing different vegetables, overdo it with ginger. And adding chili to the tomato sauce to rouse the momo and make you, just by itself, imagine you here in Darjeeling!

Which tea to drink with it, you’ll ask me. I suggest a salted butter tea, ideally yacht butter, that you’ll have previously let go rancid just like Tibetans do.

The Kanchenjunga overhangs Darjeeling

1 October 2010

You have to admit that Darjeeling’s urbanization was very quick and not very well under control. As a result, noise, traffic jams, a lack of water and a waste management not very much enviable. But a few meters further, nature takes up and you come across breathtaking landscapes. Here I’m looking towards the West at these mountain folds forming what we call the Himalayan foothills. They’re not considered to be high mountains yet, but if you look well between the clouds, if you’re observant, you might notice this magnificent peak: let me introduce you, Ladies and Gentlemen, the third highest peak in the world, the Kanchenjunga!

Darjeeling or “the stormy country”

28 September 2010

“Darjeeling” both refers to the tea plantations stretching out on thousands of hectares and the city you can see on this picture and where from I’m writing to you today. It’s a large town of hundreds of thousands people, or, in other words, a village on an Indian scale. It’s located at an altitude of 2100 meters and here you can see it under a rather mild sky if you consider that in Tibetan “Darje Ling” means “the stormy country”. The city is on a slope and when you walk around it, you actually spend more time climbing the narrow stairs snaking in and out the houses than crossing leaning streets. Tea is all there is, to such an extent that people don’t know where to build houses anymore, yet necessary to provide accommodation for an increasing population.

In Tumsong Tea Estate : a wonderful bungalow

24 September 2010

I’m leaving for Darjeeling in a few days. A long trip, hours of plane and four wheel drive. But I go through these hours smoothly as I’m so happy to see these mountains again. Once a year I take with me several people working for Le Palais des Thés. This year Fabienne, in charge of Le Palais des Thés in Lille, Stéphanie from Grenoble, Maud from Paris’ rue-Vieille-du-Temple are coming with me among others. I’ll soon introduce them to you.

We are first staying at Tumsong Tea Estate, an organically certified tea plantation of Darjeeling which has such a British cottage (photo) ! It’s a real pleasure to live in such a great house, nestled in the mountains as it is and exquisitely comfortable. All the more so as Rajiv Gupta, the plantation’s manager, keeps an eye on everything and is very concerned of your well-being. We visit his property together, from the factory to the nursery, without forgetting the river’s edge where it’s nice having a picnic.

These very British cottages are very common in Darjeeling: in each plantation the manager has a similar building, only the size and the style sometimes differ. You can easily stay there in Tumsong if you wish to as contrarily to most plantations, here tourists interested in tea are welcome for one or several nights (www.chiabari.com).

We are also thinking of organizing classes included in Tea School program. Anyone interested?

Deforestation: in Yunnan the danger is understood

21 September 2010

Tea growing has massively increased in Yunnan over the past 40 years. At the time, it was decided to step up production and increase the cultivation areas. And things moved very quickly, like often in China. In a very short time, all the trees were chopped down and not a single one was left. And if the mountains were left in place it’s only because they were not causing any trouble. As you can imagine, the landscape underwent a major transformation: as far as the eye could see, there wasn’t a single copse, not a single tree top, not a single cluster of trees. Just tea plants, wherever you looked.

The result was not only staggering to the eye, but it also had an effect on the soil. Rain became scarce and erosion increased. The result of this large-scale deforestation and years of drought was that yields tumbled.

But the Chinese know how to adapt quickly when needed. So as soon as they realized the gravity of their action, they began replanting trees. It now gives us this lovely landscape, somewhere between Jinghong and Menghai. Note the young trees here and there, bringing shade and humidity to the tea plants and pleasing the eye.

On a tea plantation, trees need to be pruned too

17 September 2010

On a tea plantation, tea plants are not the only ones that need care and attention: the trees do too. If you want their leaves to give a little shade to the camelias, the trees have to be prevented from growing too tall. So from time to time, they have to be pruned severley, like here near Ivy Hills (Sri Lanka), to be kept low and start up again with renewed vigor.

In Barnsbeg like elsewhere, I take the time for tea

14 September 2010

Once the tea is infused you have a wait a little bit of time before enjoying it. I grab this opportunity to smell the wet tea leaves and look around the tasting room flooded with northern light. While in the teacup the temperature goes from the infusion temperature (around 85 – 90 degrees for a black tea) to the tasting temperature (around 50 degrees), I take out my camera and turn around the teacups searching for the best possible angle. There’s no hurry here in Barnsbeg (India), life goes on slowly. I take a picture of the tasting set just for the pleasure of capturing a shimmer or a colour, a shadow or a line on the teacup’s surface. And my thoughts go on drifting, just like a travelling wave.

This is call taking time. The time for tea, simply.

In Taiwan, people take great care of semi-fermented teas

10 September 2010

In Taiwan, people take great care of semi-fermented teas (wu longs) left to wither outside. The grower first buy an electrical system of open-weave canvases that are moved across to shade the leaves when the sunlight gets too intense. Tea is then aired: it is raked very carefully, for hours, to prevent the leaves from starting to ferment.

Tea plantations form small villages

7 September 2010

Some tea plantations run by the British are so vast that several thousand people can live there, scattered across several hundred hectares. In southern India, like here in Thiashola, groups of buildings are home to one, two or three families. These houses form small villages where social life plays an important role. Although the buildings belong to the plantation, they are made available to the families as long as they work on the land. So this means that most houses are handed down from generation to generation.