Ya-Ya’s Tea-Board

I prepared this dish for a friend’s house warming recently and since they turned out very yummy, I thought they would make a perfect addition to our Cooking with Tea series. It is a very flavourful twist on the old time party favourite, deviled eggs.

Visually, these marbled tea eggs are stunning with brown veins running all over the egg white. A filling of egg yolk and oolong-flavoured mayonnaise adds a nice balancing touch to the slight smokiness of the eggs.

Uncategorized - Recipes | 1 Comment »

Today has been a very exciting day. Our shipment of organic Arya Ruby (in a wooden tea chest!) was waiting at the airport to be picked up.
Big deal, I bet you receive new tea shipments quite often, I hear some people mutter. While this is true, we don’t receive teas like the Ruby everyday; but I think I have to explain that a little bit more.

It is no secret that I have a longstanding love for Darjeeling teas, especially the lighter First Flush teas from the first harvest of the year after winter. These light, floral infusions never cease to enchant me. When we first secured some of the Arya Ruby a few years back, it was a huge success with our customers. Due to the small production of this tea, it is not easy to get your hands on an order and I didn’t manage for the last couple of years. But you can imagine how excited I was when I managed to secure some for Ya-Ya this year. Our customers seem to be as excited as me, since half of our order pre-sold in the first 6 hours after I informed some of the usual suspects of the planned order (I think it may have helped that the tea is much cheaper this time than in 2008). You guys rock!

Update 1 July: Less than 24 hours after my post, there are only about 1.5kg of the Arya Ruby left. If you want to secure some of this tea, I suggest you might want to get in touch soon.

Tasting Notes | 3 Comments »

Having now been through 3 big earthquakes, people in Christchurch know the problems they are facing and quickly slipped back into the routine: assessing damage and breakage, liquefaction cleanup and driving at 20 km/h through broken streets. This time around, the adaption to the circumstances happened really fast. It is amazing, how adaptable people are.

Thoughts | No Comments »

As you might have already heard, Christchurch was rattled again by two large earthquakes this afternoon (the first one at magnitude 5.5, the second one at 6.0).

Lost a few (fortunately almost empty) tea containers again, but apart from that (and a small amount of liquefaction), we’re alright. I actually wanted to write about more exciting new arrivals tonight, but the circumstances (cleaning up the house, etc.) forced me to postpone that. Stay tune for more tea-related news soon.
After the initial cleanup, we actually sat down to settle a little by drinking some of the freshly arrived organic matcha. Its bright colour and fresh taste instantly brought some much needed peace and tranquility.

Jo (a little shaken and more than a little sick of these bl**dy earthquakes)

Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

As announced last month, we had a shipment of new Darjeeling 1^st flush teas coming. The first two have finally arrived and I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce them alongside a new addition to our offerings of high quality Assam black teas.

I expect the new stock of the outstanding Arya Ruby First Flush 2011 to arrive within the next couple of weeks, but I’ll keep you up-to-date on that one as soon as it has arrived.

Tasting Notes | 2 Comments »