I knew it would eventually come to this. I'm out of fruit flavoured teas and I'm still two days away from being able to replenish my supplies at a discount. However I still have some pu'er tea left so I can mix it with something fruity, problem being — the most "fruity"-flavoured thing I have is lemongrass. So be it, behold the most cursed tea mix ever created!
I'm not wondering is it any good, I'm wondering how good it is!
Still have to wait for it to brew…
Probably pretty good to be honest.
@amerika
Well, I don't think it's going to be everyone's favourite at a party, but it's interesting. Here that part of flavour that sets Pu'er apart from just strong black tea amplifies the flavour in lemongrass that is hardly distinguishable when it's lemongrass alone.
It's not bad either, but people usually go for something traditionally fruity with Pu'er — I often use tangerine or orange peel myself. I've definitely drank weirder combinations, like tea with spices!
Oftentimes it's not a question of weird but whether ingredients work together. With that kind of harmony, even the weird can work, although obviously not all combinations!
Tea at your house must be fun.
@amerika It is! I do like messing with herbs and spices, I think everyone who enjoys cooking does.
You're right, working together is the key, to be honest, I was tempted adding basil to the yesterday's mix, I do enjoy adding it to tea as of recent, it's an essential cooking ingredient for things like tomato and cheese salad and even strawberry lemonade, but adding it to tea is new to me. In the end I decided against it — once you add too many ingredients it's easy to mess up.
I used to accidentally make Oregano tea on a regular basis when I confused the Oregano container with the Mint one. It was not as bad as one might have thought.
@amerika Ha-ha-ha-ha! I think I should try oregano tea, in food I can barely smell it (probably something individual like some people can smell asparagus, some can't), but with tea it might be different.
I have a fun story like that too — a friend of mine gave me a can of thyme to put into tea, it's called «чай с чабрецом» — pretty popular in Russia, but I don't like tea with that, it's pretty strong, kills all other flavours. So this can was sitting in the kitchen drawer for a year or so.
@amerika Then I grew a habit of using thymus for cooking meat, soups and other stuff, problem is, in Russian when thyme is used in different contexts, even for cooking, it's called differently — «тимьян». But eventually my suspicions started growing and I decided to check out that can and was like: "Damn, but it's the same herb, who the f decided to use two very different names?!" 🤣
@m0xee
Thyme... another powerful spice. In powdered form, it goes really well in spicy food, like that great Jamaican jerk chicken that was trendy in the late 1990s.
My guess is that the difference in names refers to powdered versus whole ("sifted"), but that is an artifact of how things are sold here.
We used to have a great Russian teahouse -- now replaced by Vietnamese and Mexicans -- that had all sorts of far-out concoctions for teas.