Smoke 'em if you got 'em
I always make quiche on Sunday morning and when I did this recipe-on-repeat I couldn’t help but pair a Lapsang Souchong from Dammann Frères.
Actually, it’s ages since I last drank this black tea! Flavours of smoked ham and smoked cheese, enriched with asparagus, will tantalise your taste buds and make a wonderful addition to any brunch/lunch/dinner table. Plus, this rich yet subtle tea for daytime seems to go hand in hand.
The Lapsang Souchong, better known in China as Zheng Shan Xiao Zhong, was the favourite tea of Winston Churchill who probably drank his smoky deliciousness because it could stand on its own beside the real smoke of his ever-present Cuban cigars. This tarry tea, whose leaves are carefully smoked over pine wood fires according to a traditional manner still in use today, has a very unique origin myth, too.
The legend tells that the smoking process was discovered by accident. An army camped in a tea factory that was full of drying leaves which had to be moved to accommodate the soldiers. When the soldiers left, the leaves needed to be dried quickly, so the workers lit open fires of pinewood to speed up the drying. The tea reached the market on time and a new flavour had been created.
The real story reveals something different. In the early 17th century, when the Chinese tea producers began to export their teas to Europe and America, their traditional green teas didn’t travel well and quickly lost quality during the long journeys across land and sea. So the producers developed a new manufacturing process - which surprisingly gave a lightly smoked, sappy, pine character – so that they would hold their quality for longer. Are you a Lapsang Souchong fan? What does it evoke when you drink it?
Text and pic by Alessandra Rovetta
