Chef Mark Purdy of Alizé at the Top of the Palms Casino Resort (56 stories above the Las Vegas strip) has prepared a seven course tasting menu paired with teas from Seven Cups Fine Teas to be presented on June 16th. Barbara Fairchild formerly of Bon Appétit magazine will be the emcee. All in all a grand affair!
The full menu is available on the World Tea News website (see link below). Have been contemplating the pairings, and imagining how they would work...
An example: for the Amuse Bouche the tea choice is Jin Guan Yin Anxi Wulong Tea, which, according to the Seven Cups Fine Teas website, is “uncommonly intense. Even the aromatic richness of its dry leaf stands out among other Tie Guan Yin. When brewed it yields buttery and fruity aromatics and a bright yellow-green infusion…Its flavor is full bodied with both sweet and sour notes.”
Tie Guan Yin’s in general are moderately oxidized, and I would expect this tea to be so as well. With moderate oxidation, the “green” cool aspects of the tea have mostly disappeared and the warm aspects come to the fore—the description “buttery and fruity” corresponds to activation of the warm receptors. The tea becomes sweeter, which also corresponds to the activation of warmer receptors. “Sour” speaks to activation of the sour receptor and also to the hot receptor. In other words, this tea likely activates the warm (and possibly the hot) receptors, so you would expect a pairing with a warm-receptor activating dish, so you don’t lose one or the other element of the pairing.
Yet here are the pairing choices:
- Chilled cucumber soup with cucumber terrine, carrots, pecans and dill
- Calvisius Caviar with toasted brioche panna cotta and dill.
The cucumber soup is destined to activate the cool/cold receptors, and I am willing to bet that the tea will taste like so much hot water with it, no matter the intensity of the tea, because activation of the cool/cold receptors turns off the warm and hot receptors.
The caviar dish has a better chance of working with the tea, not so much due to the caviar itself, though its saltiness will bring out any residual “green” in the tea, but because the toasted brioche will hit the warm and hot receptors, while the panna cotta will turn off the latter, leaving the warm receptors active to respond to the tea.
To see more of the proposed pairings, go to:
…and please let me know what you think!
And of course, if you go to the event, let me know how my predictions turn out!
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