Cooking with Tea Class

Join us for a fun evening on February 27th from 6:15 – 8:45 PM !

Let us show you how easy it is to incorporate tea as a primary ingredient in your cooking and we will also give you ideas for how to add tea to favorite family dishes.

We will prepare an enticing menu of our delicious, original recipes, and each dish will be accompanied by a cup of the tea used in the dish so that you can see the effect that the flavor of each tea has on the food.

This class is part of the cooking series offered by Lamson & Goodnow in their Northampton cooking school facility. We were asked to present a similar cooking class at the Williams Sonoma store in East Windsor CT last fall and it was a smash hit.

Give Lamson & Goodnow a call ( 413-587-0009 ) to sign up - we hope to see you there.

Our menu for the evening will be:

• Chinese Marbled Eggs
• Asian Shrimp Boil made with Genmaicha Tea
• Crunchy Sesame Seed Crusted Pork Tenderloins
• Oolong Rice with Squash and Chestnuts
• White Tea Snow Sorbet

Japanese Salt

In Japan, chefs and home-cooks alike insist on top quality ingredients grown without pesticides in pollution-free environments. To this end, the Japanese may be the most health-conscience nation in the world because of their unrelenting quest for pure, nutritious food.

The majority of food sold in Japan is farmed or grown in Japan or collected out of the waters of Japan. This attention to the source of food and how it was grown or produced guarantees that food sold in Japan will meet the high standards demanded by Japanese people. Much Japanese food is produced following traditional cultivating and harvesting practices - there is a tremendous amount of value and respect paid to farmers and their products. This attential to the details of food comes with a hefty price tag - Japanese food is very expensive to prepare at home and even more expensive when dining out in restaurants. Portions may be tiny, but the quality will always be high.

A Palate-Orienting Adjustment

One thing that I like about getting older (how often do you hear that being said) is that I find my taste in food changing in surprising ways. Not changing in major ways (and not diminishing either!) but adjusting in ways that finds me being attracted to tastes and flavors I would have once overlooked as being too timid or too bland. These days I find that I am looking less for the smack-you-over-the head-food-taste-experiences and more for tastes that are subtle and full, or simple yet complex. I like flavors that contain a little dose of ‘culture’ and ‘authenticity’ as well.

Clafoutis

No, this is not a new, hip term to use when someone in your vicinity sneezes, but the name of a wonderful, custardy French dessert that is as easy to make as it is delicious. Whip up one of these for your friends or family and watch how fast it disappears ( seconds are not mandatory but are usually demanded. )

Happy New Year 2008

It’s a perfect deep, dark winter night here in New England – clear, cold and soundly blanketed in a half foot of newly fallen snow. The ball has dropped in Times Square ( and risen up the pole here in Northampton ) marking the beginning of the first day in our new year. As the New Year’s Eve celebrations winds down, we want to take a moment to wish everyone a Happy New Year.