Dinner and Music - How the tea dinner came about.
Meeting Philip Gelb
Phil Gelb is a Vegan Chef, a Musician and a Teacher. We first met Phil about 4 years ago at a fund raising event at the Osmosis Day Spa and Sanctuaryto benefit the Occidental Area Health Center. Phil was the featured musician playing his Shakuhachi (Japanese flute). After the performance our dear friend Michael Stusser (founder of Osmosis Day Spa and Sanctuary),introduces us to Phil and we talked about doing something with our teas.
Setting the date
For the next few years, we were off traveling and many other things among which, my father nearly dying in China, Donna and getting married and our oldest daughter announcing her engagement, prohibited us from setting a date for the event but early in 2008, we were able to agree on a date. June 14th. It was finally going to happen.
Here are some of the email that went on in the days preceeding the event
On Jun 2, 2008, at 6:17 PM, donna wrote:
Hi Philip,
Just wanted to give you a fast hello and tell you to please not worry. We are home, had a great time and are running around like crazy people, BUT we brought back some teas specifically for your dinner, have a few ideas of how to make it nice and a few suggestions on teas to cook with/serve. TOMORROW for sure we will get a list off to you to look over and then on the Saturday the 7th we can swing by and bring you teas to work with. OR we could mail them to you sooner, what do you think?
Out the door right now sorry to be so difficult.
On Jun 2, 2008, at 7:00 PM, phil wrote:
Hi Donna, Nez
Wonderful! I am around on the 7th and will be home all day preparing for a private underground restaurant, that evening. I have some time in early afternoon to meet with you.
Did you see the proposed menu i sent?
Do you have electric water heaters and tea pots to serve with? I have some very nice cups we can use.
very much looking forward to this!!
On Jun 4, 2008, at 1:40 PM, donna wrote:
Hi Phil,
I am going to just put our thoughts/notes right in your email
Here is the menu that i am playing with. What do you think? What teas do you currently have that you would like to highlight? I am very much looking forward to this!
We are thinking it would be nice to greet your guests with a cold infused Karigane. Not a hot brewed and iced but a cold infused. We will serve this to them as they arrive in our tempered stem glass which they will take with them to the dinner table.
soup
ochazuke (genmaicha)
(brown rice, umeboshi plum, kaiware (daikon sprouts), wakame (seaweed), toasted sesame seeds with a stock made from kombu, shitake and genmaicha
Sounds GOOD, we will bring you Powdered Genmaicha and a Genmaicha Midori for you to experiment with.
We would like to serve a Cold infused Kyoto Bancha (it is a very large leaf Bancha not twiggy) as a compliment to your soup We would serve this in teacups.
salad
cucumber wrapped in daikon slices with fried oolong tea leaves and apricot sauce
We are thinking maybe a jasmine tea would be better. We have a very nice one with no artificial flavoring that is VERY AROMATIC and would be a nice compliment to the apricot sauce. If you like this option instead then we would serve the same tea hot with the salad.
Between the salad and entrée we have a Sakura/Aojiso/Gold Leaf tea that is lovely and really sets the tone for a meal.
entree
green tea noodles (matcha)
seitan with spiced plum sauce
daikon pickled with Shincha
gyokuro tea leaves with shoyu
We will bring a powered sencha you can dust with as well as some Shincha.
We will bring Gyokuro and also some Aojiso dressing which you can try as another option to the shoyu.
We also have 60 grams of salted sakura blossoms we will bring for you. We enjoyed these on daikon sliced into very thin rounds. DELICIOUS but you could use them any way you like.
Sounds GOOD we are thinking we will serve an Oolong from Taiwan called Oriental Beauty, Characteristics: Fragrance likened to honey with crystal clear deep amber to orange colored liquor, warm toasty aftertaste.
I think it will stand up and compliment your plum sauce.
dessert
matcha 3 ways
matcha cake w/ maple matcha ice cream and matcha covered raspberries
Sounds good. I think you will need to sweeten the matcha on the raspberries.
We would like to end with a Blooming tea served in the stem glass. We would get them started just before you start to serve and that way they will be just right with the cool desert and we can re-infuse the same blossom two or three more times if people want to sip throughout the music.
On Jun 4, 2008, at 3:14 PM, phil wrote:
WOW!
What a list of teas!!! This is going to be an amazing event :)
i never had a cold infused karigane and am very curious! As i think i told you, karigane is one of my very favorite teas. Curious how you will do the infusion.
On Jun 4, 2008, at 3:47 PM, phil wrote:
definitely want to experiment through the week using your specific teas! I have been messing around with these dishes but as you know, one tea to the next can be quite different.
Everyone is going to be so lit from all the tea by the end of the night
i made a sauce last week with raspberries, matcha and some agave to sweeten it a bit. yummmmmm
On Jun 8, 2008, at 11:10 PM, phil wrote:
I made some gyokuro this morning. This is amazing tea! Then made the tea leaf salad by adding shoyu. These leafs are incredibly sweet and no mirin is needed nor rice vinegar.
Also made the daikon pickle today with the powdered tea. Having lots of fun. :)
On Jun 9, 2008, at 1:37 PM, phil wrote:
so i just did my first cold infusion, using the jasmine tea you left and then iced it. What a delightfully refreshing drink!!! Especially on a 90 degree day like this
As you said, zero tannins with this method. For some reason i never came across brewing tea this way before.
Does cold infusing bring out the caffeine less or more than heat infusions?
On Jun 9, 2008, at 8:52 PM, donna wrote:
FIRST component to release at any temp and so to enjoy caffeine free all one needs to do is a quick, 10-15 second rinse, dump all of the liquor and then infuse and you have virtually a caffeine free cup of tea.
On Jun 10, 2008, at 9:57 PM, phil wrote:
I do not think the seitan and spiced plum sauce will work with the teas. It is too strong, powerful and tart. So i think i will do a fried tofu balls that have lotus root, yamaimo, carrot, and ginger in them with some kind of tea sauce. Or a tofu dengaku where the miso sauce has tea in it...
try some things tomorrow.
I am totally enamored by this iced version of the cold infused jasmine. After 7 infusions, i now have the leaves in the dehydrator. Will get some oolong leaves going tomorrow and then try them out on friday to decide which one to go with for the salad.
On Jun 11, 2008, at 9:32 AM, phil wrote:
you left a small package, unlabeled. Feels like some kind of powdered tea inside. What is this one? i should have written it down :)
On Jun 11, 2008, at 9:36 AM, nez wrote:
Is it the powered Sakura and Shiso with gold? I think that must be what it is, is it in washi paper? go ahead and open it, I am pretty sure that is it and I THOUGHT we opened it and tasted it with you, but I am getting OLD so who knows
On Jun 11, 2008, at 9:40 AM, phil wrote:
ah, yes, that is the one!
On Jun 13, 2008, at 9:18 AM, phil wrote:
hi Donna, Nez
One of tomorrow's guests just sent an email asking if you will have teas for sale, tomorrow. I assume you will but before i respond, i just want to make sure.
On Jun 13, 2008, at 9:32 AM, phil wrote:
just opened the gold flaked tea. What is in this???? salty, sweet. I did not brew any but just tasted some of it. Was not expecting these flavors haha quite interesting!
The genmai midori is exceptional but i will use the ground up genmaicha for the soup. There is already matcha i 2 other courses (noodles and in the 3 parts of the dessert), so i thought it better not to use the heavily matcha genmai. The midori is an amazing drink!!
On Jun 13, 2008, at 10:06 AM, donna wrote:
Hi Phil,
What we planned to do was give the small double lined glass teacup they will use and a small gift package that has four Japanese tea samples and two different tea bit samples. Then we were going to give them a 10% coupon to use online. Are thought was to not distract from the experience by selling or making people feel like they should buy.
I hope that is ok with you,
On Jun 13, 2008, at 10:32 AM, donna wrote:
you are so FUN………………………..that is the sakura, shisho and gold tea. We plan to serve it between the salad and entrée as a “get ready to enjoy some serious food” drink. A very small amount in the glass teacup. But maybe not, you tell us. You just use 195 water with only about ½ teaspoon in 8 oz. It might be fun to use to “pickle” something with too.
On Jun 13, 2008, at 11:12 AM, phil wrote:
Ok, this will work out rather well!
Most of generous of you!
On Jun 13, 2008, at 11:14 AM, phil wrote:
my immediate thoughts when i tried it was just that, a pickling medium! Let me try an experiment and see if it works out.
Serving this salty tea before the entree is a great idea!
On Jun 14, 2008, at 10:08 AM, phil wrote:
roasted beets pickled with the gold flaked tea. adding this to the entree...
