Tea flowers

Leo's brother was in Hong Kong and Taiwan a few weeks ago and came home with gifts for the family. Amongst the gifts were some little tiny, solid, tea leaf balls about 3/4" in diameter. He gave Leo two of them, and tonight we fixed one.

Now, these are very special tea balls. FIrst of all, they are very expensive—about $30 a piece, and that's in U.S. dollars. Second, they are practically magical: when immersed in hot water, these little balls begin to open up into beautiful tea "flowers." Each of them are hand-made, and the process is very labor intensive. They can only be obtained from Taiwan.

Since we wanted to watch the tea balls develop, we ended up using my French press coffee pot to steep the tea. We filled the pot with boiling water, then dropped the ball into the water, where it began to float on the water. Then, slowly, the ball began to sink; after a little while longer, we started to see little leaves begin to "open" up. As the whole ball began to open, suddenly a white shoot came from the middle and began to open into airy flowers. Once the whole thing was open, the base was like a green chrysanthemum with a shoot holding the whiteish, delicate flowers. Once it was fully steeped, we drank it, and it had a fine, jasmine aroma and taste.

Along with the tea, Leo fixed something called wagashi. This Japanese confection is a translucent jelly or "Jell-O" type item made from arrowroot molded in a bamboo shape. It comes with a plunger used to force the jelly out one end through a mesh that cuts the jelly into a series of long, worm-like threads. He separated the threads, then poured chilled plum wine over them to serve.

We have one of each still in the cupboards. Now we just need another occasion to prepare them.