July.1998 / Page6
EATING TEA: 　Because the Japanese have recognized the health benefits of green tea consumption, there are now a number of food products on the market which include tea in their list of ingredients. Buckwheat noodles flavored with green tea are commonly served in restaurants. Matcha - and Houjicha- flavored ice creams are on sale in most shopping areas and you do see people wandering along eating them as we would a normal ice cream. Wafer biscuits are available that contain a delicious tea- flavored sweet cream, and there are sweets, chewing gums, tea sweets, and jellies. 　Encouragement to the general public is spearheaded by the tea companies themselves and the research centers. Marukyu Koyamaen has made a video that shows how to successfully brew Matcha, and gives ideas for its use in recipes. For example, it recommends "spread(ing) Matcha mixed with butter and sugar on toast", "Prepare Matcha with hot water and pour Matcha over Azuki Beans", "prepare Matcha with hot water and pour over vanilla ice cream", "As seasoning for Tempura, mix salt and Matcha". 　One lady in particular is pushing the idea of eating and cooking with tea in a big way. She is Mutsuko Tokunaga, a radio cookery personality and cookery writer who has published three books about cooking with tea. Tokunaga has been working very closely with the Hoshino Culture Center to devise tea-based menus for the tea room. You can now try a menu of tea noodles with a kind of seaweed in a thin soup, and rice steamed with Houjicha and topped with various pickled sweet and sour vegetables. 　Her recipe books give instructions for using tea to marinade fish, make broth for boiling bacon or stewing beef, flavor rice, sprinkle on fish before grilling, powder into soups and vegetable stir fries, mix into salads, fry in batter as tempura, flavor canapes, shusi, and pates, mix into sauces for vegetables, pasta, and rice, include in sausages and meatballs, and stir into desserts such as sorbets, sponge cakes, pastries, rice flour sweetmeats, and bean curd cakes. 　Supermarkets now stock tea seasonings (dry leaves mixed with other herbs and spices) in jars, dry tea flakes for adding to food and 'powdery tea' for mixing into soft drinks and other recipes. 　Tokunaga has also devised a covered cup with the Hoshino Tea Culture Center which allows the brewing and tasting of a few drops of the finest Gyokura in the center's tea room. 　A tray is brought to your table bearing a covered cup that contains the tea, fresh hot water, a little tea sweetment, and a stick with which to eat it. In the bowl, a spoonful of leaves has already been moistened with tepid water and infused for a minute or two. To drink this, you balance the bowl carefully on the upturned fingers of the left hand, hold the bowl and lid with your right (placing the first finger on the top of the lid that is slightly tilted in order to hold back the leaves), and left the deliciously aromatic drops of liquor roll gently down the side of the bowl into your month. 　This concentration of all the Gyokura sweetness has an amazing flavor and a remarkable aftertaste. And, by adding more water to the same leaves, further infusions may be enjoyed, each one with less intensity but still with the distinctive sweetness of quality Gyokura. 　So as to get full benefit from the leaves, the culture center then recommends you add a few drops of soy sauce to the infused leaves and eat them. So we did! They really are delicious. You can almost feel them doing you good. I wonder how long it will be before the rest of the world discovers how versatile tea is and starts cooking with it and eating it as part of an everyday diet.
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