Pairing Tea with Food

Part 1) Introduction:
If a person has only experienced unsalted bread for their whole life and was then exposed to bread with an appropriate amount of salt, I believe their life would drastically change. The drastic leap of discovering salt in bread would be just as comparable to their discovery of proper drink pairings with food. They might be able to go back to unsalted bread, after all, they are used to it; but do they want to? To eat unsalted bread is akin to eating unpaired food, to accept unsalted bread as your sustenance for life is to live a sad, prison-like existence.

A friend of mine (John Bickel) asked me if tea pairing is intuitive and if people would instinctively ‘get it’. To keep this analogy going, there are many spices that aren’t salt, and no matter how much of those spices are used, the bread will still fall flat, or just be bizarre. There are also infinite combinations and measurements of salt and spice that can produce failures. I guess my point is: As long as you know you’re using salt and are careful with how much, yes, it’s as intuitive as can be.

Gastronomy is a funny thing — on one hand, it seems so privileged, but on the other hand, it’s such a basic thing — we need to eat, we need to drink. Gastronomy is inherently about being mindful, to pay attention and improve on a human fundamental and mandatory process [eating and drinking]. What causes this apathy? Is it that when faced with infinite possibilities, it’s our human nature to do nothing?

If I have the opportunity to eat my favorite foods, I will make sure the experience counts as much as I can permit it to. After experiencing the combination of Lapsang Souchong paired with Cinnamon buns (with the cream cheese frosting and everything). I am at the point in life which I would go far out of my way to satisfying this pairing frenzied inner beast. Look, I get it — sometimes you just can’t get a lapsang souchong, so when that happens, grab a black tea and a cigar. Can’t do that either? Grab an Islay whiskey. It helps to be flexible about what the pairing is, but anyway we’re here talking about tea.

Dragonfruit with Lao Cong Phoenix Oolongs, Blackberries with Matcha, Strawberries or Tomatoes with Hon Yama Sencha, Asahina Gyokuro with Scallops, Dark Chocolate and Caramel with Jin Jun Mei, Red Dates with Da Hong Pao, Cinnamon Buns with Lapsang Souchong. These are all exemplary marriages of food and tea, and that’s just to name a few!

Part 2) Tea Pairing Fundamentals:
Tea generally works differently in a pairing than wine, if for no other reason than sheer amount of ‘sensations’ wine can be bountiful in, be that acidity, tannin, and alcohol or the flavor sensations of sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, umami, and spicy (although spicy not so much).

When pairing with wine, if you choose a wine with a ‘flavor level’ of 10/10 like a German TBA or a Hungarian Tokaji Azsu, and drink it with food that has an equal ‘flavor level’ like Roquefort cheese, crazy things start to happen. The intense sweetness mingles with the intense creaminess and saltiness of the cheese. The pungency of the cheese dances in the acidity and complexity of the wine, it’s a match made in heaven. This pairing works because you’ve chosen a wine that can match the intensity of the food. If you chose another wine, let’s say something much lighter and less sweet… a simple Kabinett style Riesling. It won’t be bad — it’ll be as refreshing as it always was (the acidity doesn’t magically disappear), but you surely won’t be able to taste much of it while the pairing is active because the cheese will dominate the palate.

With pairing tea, you are often forced to take the ‘losers road’ because it can’t go head to head with a lot of foods and expect to come out on top or even equal. It plays the gentler, more passive role in the marriage. The losers role is less rewarding, it makes the tea take the supporting role

I said earlier that a blue cheese like Roquefort and an intensely sweet wine like a TBA are a match made in heaven. That doesn’t mean that tea can’t be a pairing for Roquefort — but with the exception of gyokuro I don’t think tea can hit Roquefort head on and live to tell the tale. When pairing into extremely powerful foods you need to take another approach — you either use the tea to cleanse the tongue afterward and highlight nuances in the food that you’ve observed and hope that the pairing might bring in focus, or you use the tea as a set-up to put the food in a better light.

These methods can be employed easily, start by asking yourself 2 questions: What tastes good with Roquefort? and What tea tastes like that?

According to our head chef at Q (Paul Stoffel), when I asked him “What do you think the best flavors with blue cheese are?” he fired off the following list:
red meat,
dried figs,
dried dates,
cured meats like pancetta,
apples,
pears,
thyme,
rosemary,
waffles,
hot chicken sandwiches,
nuts,
potatoes,
honey,
*I’ll add port wine, and botrytis affected dessert wines here from my opinion~

Take a look at that list and ask yourself: Is there any tea I know which tastes like any of those? From the tea list I’m working with at the restaurant right now I’d say I have 10 options at first glance:

Junshan Yin Zhen tastes like honey,
Wild tree Pu’Erh – tamarind
T-18 shou mei – pears, honey
Crystal Rose Kagoshima post-fermented tea – potato
Milky oolong – pears
Red water oolong – peanuts
Mi xiang oolong – pecans
1966 Beipu oolong – port
Quietly herbal blend – waffle, oregano, tarragon
Hibiscus – box of raisins

Those are all nuances within their overall flavor, some stand out more than others. If I would say any of those flavors are significant enough to be rallied behind it would be the tamarind notes in the wild tree pu’erh, the pecan notes of the mi xiang oolong, the port notes in the 1966 beipu, or the dried herbal notes in the Quietly blend. Although any of the above teas would work, I think those 4 teas would perform the best.

Regardless of what you pick, if you drink the tea before eating the cheese, the Roquefort will smash the flavors of the tea into the ground; your tea will die a martyr. If the tea was used as an opener and got the crowd (taste buds) excited for the headlining cheese, then perhaps it did its job? If it made you appreciate the cheese more, I’d say it’s a semi-successful pairing, wouldn’t you?

I try not to shoot for semi-success, I think a much more reliable avenue to go down is sipping the tea after eating the cheese. It will wash away the intensity of the cheese, and the complimentary notes in the tea I’ve chosen will present themselves as the cheese’s power fades. If I know the flavor of a dish will be too strong for tea to compete, I will try to allow the tea to play its role during the finish, making sure to let the customer know my intentions. Of course, if it does both the set-up and the ending credits, I’ve picked a winner.

One thing that tea can do that wine in general does not, is offer a contrast between hot and cold. This dynamic is very special and it shouldn’t be dismissed. I had no other place to write this.

Part 3) An Exercise in Pairing:
Let’s do an exercise together. I have a tea called ‘T-18 Shou Mei’, a white tea from Taiwan made from the more mature leaves of a very fragrant cultivar called T-18. It’s one of my favorite white teas and you can get a really great version from taiwanteacrafts.com most of the time. If I break down how I would describe this tea I would say its biggest attributes are similar to:

Cloudberry Jam,
Manzanilla Olives (Brined, Jarred),
Green Beans (Haricot Vert),
Goji Berries (Rehydrated),
Floral/Medicinal Tasting Honey (eg: Clover, Manuka),
Pears (Raw),

Looking at the T-18 flavor associations list above I would confidently say that putting all of those ingredients on a plate has the potential to be a great dish (to me). Why do I think so? Because I think the tea is great, and (to me) the tea smells like all of those things combined. It might take a bit to hammer out the proportions, textures, temperatures, visuals, etc. But if I did — that dish is not only something that I’ve imagined into existence, but I would have a solid foundation and reasoning of ‘why’ it exists. From my observations so far in life, ‘why’ is the most important question to have the answer to.

This tea could be used for a number of pairings surely, although for the pairing to be perfect I think you would need to custom build a dish for it. Looking at the short list above I would expand on my thoughts like this:

Cloudberry Jam: medicinal, green tea + apricot + raspberry, good on toast, good by itself, good with Japanese green tea
Manzanilla Olives: pungent, pickled, salty/briny, good with cured meats, cheese, bread/toasts, oily fried/baked foods
Green Beans: fresh, green, mild, side flavor, good with onion and garlic, great with butter
Goji Berries: Red, unique, kind of raisiny in texture, flavor-wise like a combination of apple, pear, and raspberry. Good with milky oolong, osmanthus oolong, at its most memorable in the Chinese osmanthus jelly dessert
Floral Honey: Sweet, tastes like honey, floral scent, good with bread, strawberries, Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, nuts, pork, salt, works well with mustard
Pears: Sweet, fresh, best raw, if cooked it should be poached in aromatic liquid, good with honey, saffron, has a great neutral sweetness

Looking at the information above, 2 easy and practical paths I spotted to build a dish were 1) to do something like a charcuterie plate and focus on obscuring the olive, bean, and honey notes from the tea by using those ingredients on the plate; leaving behind cloudberry, goji berry, and pear as the flavors which get to exist solely in the tea and thus stand in the spotlight.

or

2) Focus on enhancing the cloudberry/raspberry notes by making a dessert where these flavors are subconsciously desired.

If your tea has a similar flavor to the food, it will often get lost as something you taste directly and will instead resonate with the ingredient when taken together. Adding olives to a dish paired with a tea that tastes ‘slightly like olives’ will prevent you from tasting the olive aspect of the tea, but as you eat your mind will instead focus on the olives which you ate and subconsciously conclude ‘this olive had a lot of flavor’

Light matcha pancakes with a goji berry and floral honey syrup, served with fresh pears. In this example, the olive, green bean, raspberry, and apricot notes have been left undisturbed. Although there are 4 flavors in the pool, your mind will seek out and choose the most appropriate things to taste. Your brain will coax out the apricot and raspberry notes over the olive ones because it seems like they belong due to the sweetness not usually attached to olives or beans.

Either way, you’re highlighting certain facets of a tea by choosing complementary flavors or hiding unwanted ones. You can shift a person’s perspective to make them see what you see. It’s very cool.

If I was planning a whole tea paired menu, I would choose the pairing for this tea based on either how much I like it it, or more often, to make up for lack of flexibility in other teas. As I wrote above, this tea could be used as a pairing for either a charcuterie board or a dessert. Some teas don’t offer such diversity — some teas say very specifically “I am something to drink with dessert, I can perform no other roles”

For the sake of this article, let’s go with the charcuterie pairing because as a non chef, this little DIY recipe would be easy for any of us to pull off. This is the fun part.

Order a bag of T18 Shou Mei, go buy some manzanilla olives, green beans, and a fancy floral honey. Buy some cured pork (I like jamon from Spain personally but if you’re more of a fan of the Italian prosciutto go for it). It would be nice to have a cheese or two, I mentioned above that Parmigiano Reggiano is good with honey, I’d probably pick up a bit of that, and since I’d be going with the jamon, I would keep with the theme and get Manchego cheese too — it’s a lot less intense than Parm. Amazon sells Cloudberry Jam by a company called Felix in Sweden, and lastly, all you’d need is a couple of pears and goji berries.

Sitting there with the raw ingredients, brew up a pot of the tea and do some tasting. With each ingredient, you’ll witness it interact with the flavors of the tea in different ways. With the meat, olives, and cheese it should seem refreshingly savory, the meats won’t seem as salty and the cheeses won’t seem as rich.

With the cloudberry jam, pears, or goji berries the tea would seem like an extension of the food’s flavor, perhaps slightly more vegetal in tune with the olives and beans. With the honey, the tea would seem refreshing and fruity, able to cut and drag the sweetness out for a longer finish.

By scientifically snacking this you’d get to know how much of each ingredient the tea could take before breaking — maybe a dice-sized cube of Parm cheese would be too much, but a piece half that size would be amazing. Maybe it would be better with honey, or jam, or olives alongside it. If you run into a flavor that just doesn’t work — abandon it. Not all of the ideas that you start with will work out, in this regard practice goes a long way.

If you think that the raw ingredient is ‘too much’ but still feel it belongs, try doing something with it. Make cheese crisps, make fondue, shred it and use it as a light garnish, etc. Change the ingredient to make it suit your needs.

As I said above: when you are pairing, sometimes flavors are subdued and other times they are highlighted. When this happens you’ll notice the other flavors shift around and change perspective. Being able to bring the many facets of a teas flavor into view is the ultimate accomplishment (to me). All of the dishes that we create to pair — be that with wine, beer, tea, whiskey, cocktails, etc. have that goal in mind.

The plates I had the opportunity to ‘dream to life’ are pretty special because ultimately I didn’t have to make any of them. I was able to leave that to the professionals. While considering new ideas, those of us who do not cook are not bound by practicality or effort. I found you can be pretty creative without boundaries.

I realize not everyone would take their food or pairings this far out of the mainstream. As quirky and fun as this is, there’s a great deal of thought and hassle that goes along with it but pairings don’t have to be ‘perfect’ for them to work well.

Part 4) Conclusion:
Pairing is not something you can do at the highest level if you have limited options. Even my list of 35 teas at Q Haute felt insufficient at times. Pairing at its pinnacle requires a deep knowledge of complementary flavors, the ability to gauge intensities of flavors, a plan for how those flavors will interact with each other, and finally the shelf space to keep all your ammunition.

Pairing is not often practiced at the pinnacle, but instead combines the practicality of ‘do the best with what you have’ and ‘do the best with what your budget allows for’. One of the reasons why I fell in love with tea is that ‘the best’ never seems out of reach. Sure, 100g of some gangster tea might cost a couple hundred dollars, but it’s only a couple hundred dollars, and that’s for 20+ sessions. Unlike wine where a couple hundred dollars can last you only part of one night. I digress, in both cases ‘the best’ is almost a guarantee of an unforgettable sensory experience. This is made even better when used as a pairing that works out. Pairing tea and food is wonderful and I hope this post might inspire more people to give it a shot.

Believe in yourself, believe in your ability to do this. It isn’t difficult once you have even a very basic grasp on the idea.

Thanks for reading!