Cottage cheese and tomato tapenade baguette and Nepal Shangri La Second Flush

More tea and more chocolates

Turkish pide and @turkiyenincayi strong black tea. The tea can handle the fats in the pide and acidity in the salad beautifully.

Sel roti and Chiya. Perfect Nepalli combination!

Breakfast. Plain and simple. Great Iranian tea doesn’t need much to pair with.

Couldn’t resist picking up some beautiful chocolates at my local Simon Lèvelt store. The shop owner suggested their Yunnan Gold to drink with these beauties. She was right! Brewed it real strong in order to taste both tea and chocolates. 9 grams of tea on 500 ml of 90 degrees Celsius water and a steeping time of 3 minutes. Normally I would use 80 degrees Celsius water and a 1-2 minute steep but the tea really needs more extraction in order not to taste like hot water. The slight astringency balances the sweetness of the chocolates and brings out the chocolaty flavour much more.

Kroket sandwich (Ragout Sandwich) and a huge glass of Sri Lanka Uva black tea. Perfect combination for a day at the beach

Dumplings, an unidentifiable great and very spicy soup. Chya of a complex tea does the job. Milk in a great tea? When it comes to pairing it with a spice dish: absolutely! Milk balances the spicy notes of the dish, the complex character of the tea becomes more dominant. A real surprise to me.

Vondel speculaas (spiced biscuit) I picked up at Simon Lèvelt and their Assam Goudblad zomerpluk (very tippy Assam second flush) is one of the first tea and food pairings I discovered. The spices and sweetness of the biscuit are balanced so beautiful by the Assam tea. It’s almost as if it becomes a masala chai! 7 grams of tea on 500 ml 95 degrees Celsius water and a infusion time of three minutes. It really needs hot water and a relatively long steep in order to do it’s job 😁.

Spicy paneer and a Golden Nepal black tea to reduce the spicy mouthfeel. Such a wonderful combination. 8 grams of tea, 500 ml, 80 degrees water. Steeping time of 1-1.5-2.0-2.0 minutes.