Passport & Plate - Milk Tea Panna Cotta
Hong Kong | Friday, March 14, 2014 | 2 photos
Ingredients
4 bags (or 5 teaspoons) black tea, such as English Breakfast or Darjeeling
1 ½ cups (12 ounces) water
¼ cup (1.8 ounces) sugar
½ cup (4 ounces) milk (lowfat or whole, not skim)
½ cup (4 ounces) cream
1 ½ teaspoon powdered gelatin
How to prepare this recipeHeat water to boil, add tea bags (or loose tea), and boil for 6 minutes. This will oversteep the tea, making it strong enough to stand up to the milk and cream. Add sugar at the end, and stir until sugar is dissolved.
While tea is boiling, pour the milk into a glass pitcher that holds at least 2 cups (500 ml)—a quart (or liter) is preferable. Sprinkle the gelatin onto the cold milk and let it “bloom”, without stirring, while the tea is boiling.
Once the sugar has dissolved, pour the hot tea into the pitcher with milk and gelatin. The tea should have evaporated down to 8 ounces (1 cup) of liquid, bringing the total in the pitcher up to 12 ounces (1 ½ cups). Stir this until the gelatin is completely dissolved, then add the cream. After stirring well, pour into 4 4-ounce custard cups, or 6-7 small Chinese tea cups. If you would like to unmold the panna cotta after it chills, and serve on a plate instead of in the cup, lightly oil the cups with a neutral tasting oil. Refrigerate 2-4 hours, until panna cotta is set. Then enjoy!
The story behind this recipe Our first month in Hong Kong, I walked off an enormous, industrial-sized lift in an old factory, sure I had the wrong place. But there, next to a noisy printing press, I found an improbable oasis, a teahouse.
I drank tea with the owner that afternoon and we talked. This was an entirely new way to drink tea—and yet it was also the first time I felt like Hong Kong could be home. It was the attention to details that was soothing--the precise temperature of water, cup, and tea, the rinsing of the tea leaves, the abundant pouring of water. And then the tiny cups, so that all that work was magnified instead of lost. The whole process focused and magnified our attention as well, so that it was impossible to continue the conversation.
Fast forward a few years, to our final spring in Hong Kong—months in which the dread of leaving mingled with the excitement of going. After many cups of tea brewed slowly and thoughtfully, I found myself more often visiting Hong Kong's dai pai dongs and indulging in such iconic treats as milk tea. Served in cafes all over the city, black tea and evaporated milk are poured back and forth, aerated and filtered into a creamy, strong drink. It's not a beverage we craved while living in Hong Kong, much preferring the traditional small cup of tea. Yet we knew we would end up wanting it more when we were a million miles away than when it fueled every morning.
And now--a million miles away from either that Chinese teahouse or a dai pai dong—both a proper pot of puer or of milk tea are equally impossible. So I create my own version, a milk tea panna cotta: solidifying the uniquely astringent and creamy taste into a gently wobbly, slightly sweet custard. It is rich but not too much so, especially when served from Chinese tea cups. The transient lifestyle we have chosen gives us the curse and blessing of leaving little pieces of our hearts all over the world. This dessert gathers those pieces back up again, if only for a few bites.
