The No Tea Bag Zone or how to brew the Macdonald perfect cup of tea.
N.B. Look for the red star in this for a track of politically inspired music.
Yes, you can brew a great slow-but-fast cup of tea without resorting to a tea bag, which is full of tea dust anyway.
So what we want to do is to brew a great cuppa in the morning or any time we are moving fast.
Many years ago 1965/66 (a time of my mixed up youth) I was told this simple process by a British cook in the French Foreign Legion.
The need was for a good cup of refreshing tea while stuck in the sand dunes somewhere in North Africa. Especially on a bitterly cold desert night or equally revitalising in the heat of the day, with the added benefit of washing the gritty sand from the teeth while in hiding from the local resistance.
What you need
A good leaf tea. Yes, leaf tea is a quick as tea bags if you follow the method. Remember, this is a “no tea bag and slow food for fast people Zone”.
My favourite is Queen Mary tea.
This used to be widely available from Twining’s until they discontinued it in favour of cost reduction and increased profit and so ended 300 years of quality.
All is not lost, however, with help from the Canberra Tea Centre you can still get the blend. Just pop along there ask for Casey and she will be happy to help you.
Okay those from the other side of the universe in [Sydney], London, Rome , Paris or New York, here is the recipe for Queen Mary so you can blend your own. In equal amounts you need:
- Scottish Breakfast Tea
- Kandy from Sri Lanka
- Sungma a Darjeeling tea
You will need a good air tight storage tin to keep the tea dry. You can get something like this:
Or something like mine:
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Next you need sugar — but not just any old sugar. We must have French in keeping with the origins of this brew.
La Perruche sugar lumps You will find these quite irregular in shape and can be obtained from any good delicatessen Yes really this is the secret to making a slow infusion brew fast and it brings a smoothness to the tea notes. You can choose either white or brown lumps depending what you
find your taste to be. Since variety is the spice of life have a pack of either in your kitchen. But to be authentic it must be La Perruche.
Okay let’s brew.
A kettle with water. Not more water than you need — no need to waste. Who cares if it is absolutely fresh after all it would have been made from what was available from legionnaires canvass or later aluminum water bottles. Just so long it isn’t green.
A pot should be stoneware china or as our cook had, enamel. Ideally it has always been said you need to warm the pot to delay heat loss. I have never been convinced of this and as we are in a rush we wont bother. We don’t need to waste water either in the desert with Beau Geste or where water is a scarce commodity and we need to get moving.
We then need the tea.
3 teaspoons for the pot of usual size. You may ask why not one per person and one for the pot? The simple answer is no. You will now add the special ingredient sugar. This is the catalyst to brew quickly and efficiently Shock horror to all the purists I know but it saves on the amount of tea we use and saves time in the morning
Add 1 lump of the sugar to the post or if you have no lumps use half a teaspoon of raw sugar. Unlike the La Perruche, normal white sugar is simply not delicate enough for tea.
Now pour the water right to the top because you are bound to want more than one cup each.
The sugar now dilates the membranes of the tea leaves and speeds up the brew and extracts a superior flavour fast. However a good tea still needs (tea bags included) time to brew. This is usually between 4-6 mins. Here you can reduce the time to 3-4 mins Here is the time advantage over a tea bag where the process has to be repeated
In the morning this gives you time for to clean your teeth, wash under the armpits, feed the cats, check your email, iron a shirt and then time to pour.
Oh milk goes in first. If you do it last it will have a cloudy appearance and won’t be so smooth. You can use a tea strainer but you will not be able to read the leaves to check if you are going to have a good day or if you ought to postpone it due to lack of interest and have another cuppa. If you use tea bags you have to repeat the process which doubles up the time and reduces the quality. What quality?
About the milk. I recommend organic and it doesn’t have to be full cream. Having recently lived in Canberra I had a wholesale account at Capital Milk. You could perhaps via twitter organize some friends into a small Co Op buying group if you don’t need a large quantity yourself. I was buying for a family of 4 so the savings were substantial. The people at the back door of the dairy in Fyshwick were always very helpful. If you like full cream, though not organic Canberra Gold is amazing for an illicit swig while no-one is looking. A bad habit I have.
If you are a traditionalist about tea, not in a hurry and not cowering behind some sand dune hiding as an uninvited guest from some very annoyed Bedouin or Tuarege freedom fighter you could go here.
Had the French remained in North Africa we may not have music from the resistance like the band Tinariwen who played at the opening concert at 2010 World Cup. Many members of this band spent time as refugees in Libya
Biscuits
By mid morning you might want a biscuit or two for dunking. I don’t recommend biscuits at breakfast, but tea is great with a bowl of porridge. Actually I don’t recommend bickies at all if you are carrying too much pudding round the waist but what the heck let’s imagine we are in a perfect world
So what biscuit?
This pie chart may help you decide if you want to go with the minority or the majority your choice of biscuit
I recommend in the afternoon a good old Ginger Nut after a hard day’s work or a lift mid afternoon.
Mid morning try rich tea. Nice and light.
[Aren’t pie charts great? You can share all kinds of things with the world – I’ve even seen people post them too show how much time they spend skiving off work … true]
My X of over 5 years and while we were living together blogged (I wasn’t to know she had a blog) such a pie chart in June 2010 boasting of her weekly time spent flirting with the landscape gardener and with whom according to their twitter had commenced an affair in May duh
Now that’s pretty stupid…….
Okay Happy brewing and I confess I have never ever written a recipe or instructions so this is going to be an interesting journey over the hill for me. I have a great Bolognese recipe and a Maggie Beer inspired sweet to share sometime soon
Hope you enjoy or had a laugh or two
escalator over the hill 
My keenness to write what I had planned has been tempered by an accident I have been involved in. Which means I have done “spiffingly” well to have done any keystrokes over the past week. Though after reading it through I can see I have, and strictly against hospital orders. I think it is probably a bit self indulgent and not at all what I intend this blog to be; but what the heck. As I intend this blog to be informative I thought I would include a video you might find amusing so follw the link to the video of the office cat further down in the text. I have also included something about the type of injury I have
Excuse me as I brush off the rust from my shirt as I write this but I have been wandering around with a cracked arm for 2 weeks. There are fractures to Radius and Ulna . Fortunately the bones were not displaced so no surgery needed. Yes it is a bit sore . This has also required me to get some secretarial support (male) from the local Cat vet to load the printer for me
Here is the first cast that was applied to my arm yesterday (Monday) at the Royal North Shore Hospital. What a great bunch of nurses and doctors they were who attended to me .
This has also required me to get some secretarial support (male) from the local Cat vet to load the printer for me Follow this link for an example of just how helpful he has been.
How did all this happen?
Well we have to go back 2 weeks (3 Saturdays ago) when in Victoria street in “semi filthy” Darlinghurst, my old haunt, I decided to make a visit to the Infinity Bakery to indulge in some fresh croissants and some hot yummy sourdough bread.
I was just waiting between parked cars opposite the Tropicana cafe for a break in the traffic. I saw a 5 ton truck driving along as they do, when I suddenly realised when just a few metres awaythis bugger was veering towards me. Was this just some mindless prank to give me a fright?
Next thing I raised my arms to protect my noggin (head). I failed to avoid the truck’s mirror which collided with my arm. Oooch Ouch.
I was spun round into a parked car. Wow that hurt. Boy was I lucky. Those of you who know me will know in late December I had eye surgery so that must have caused me to raise my arm.
He didn’t immediately stop but continued driving. 5 minutes later someone who said he was a passenger came back and as I was sitting in the kerb asked me if I was okay. Then he said ( Error 1) something like “oh it’s just a graze you’re okay”
This lunatic did not make me at all a happy chappy at all. Then (Error 2) said he was in the passenger seat and saw everything and that I had stepped in front of the van. Oh was I super unhappy now. I am afraid I did resort to using a few expletives and it crossed my mind that I might resort to using some other uninjured part of myself to emphasise just how irritated I was with his lack of consideration. He had, I’m afraid started to be a smartie. Oh how I used to love crunching smarties — the sugar coated chocolate buttons of course. To get things on a proper understanding I decided to call up the local constabulary He ran back to wherever the van came back with his mate and we waited for the Bill. He then told them he was the driver but just didn’t have his licence with him this morning. It was a hire van by the way ! Oh here we go I thought . I stepped forward and the Police were none to pleased with my approach to negotiations.
This meant at the time I thought the boys in blue were being a bit unpleasant to me. I do mean boys (my son is a boy and he is almost 26). So after giving my statement I complained to the young Officer who interviewed me I thought he (Policeman) was being a tad fierce with me. He was taken aback a bit but t he handled my criticism in an exemplary way and explained why he may have appeared like that. “It is just the area Kings Cross and they do get a lot of situations that can blow up”. After all he didn’t know me from a bar of soap. I did feel rather remorseful after he explained why he and his colleagues can appear like that. We had a good chat about what he wants to do with his career. The AFP it seems.
Anyhow, he turned out to be a really nice chap as did his colleague today when I had to call and report my arm had actually been broken in 2 places.
Me being smart, I decided to avoid St Vincents being full of scrappers from robust night at Kings Cross and thought I would go to Royal North Shore Emergency. After over 4 hours they found nothing wrong save for a load of bruising and swelling. So off home I went my friend Pamela driving the little BM. As time has passed by the arm got progressively more dis-comfortable ( my new word). Dear Mother you left this earth far to soon as there are times I still need to call on you.
So today they changed the cast for this hi tech super version and I am feeling particularly proud of the fact that I am being nominated for the annual Clint Eastwood Award.
So all in all, well done cops, well done Royal North Shore Hospital, well done Nicola Roxon and Carmel Tebbutt.
In the Next Post or two i really hope to write something about the stupidity of property law involving rights of tenency and family law in defacto matter. Interesting stuff that will also go some way to counter a number of ‘curious’ falsehoods that have been published over recent months and what you can do about it.
There will be More on Eric Clapton and Crossroads 2007. The review on the Jonny Lang CDs, Afro Beat and something on Football . To bad Torres my favourite player has gone to my least favourite club.
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