Tea Shots with a Lytro

Ever since the Kamjove, I've been drinking more serious tea at work than at home. I can just rinse into a large mug and I can happily drink almost any tea I like at my very own desk. Why didn't I ever think of this before? Who knew an investment of $35 could change my work day around. I've been able to even host tea guests.

I've brewed Jakub's 2010 Yiwu Purple in the picture below.  Sadly, the allergy season has started early in the Bay Area this year and I can't taste much today at all. There are many enemies to tea enjoyment.

The above shot was taken with a Lytro. For those of you who don't remember the hype from last year, the Lytro is a revolutionary camera that let's you focus the end photo after you've snapped a picture since the Lytro captures the entire light field. I was hot to procure one of these gadgets except my husband firmly put his foot down. I was lucky that a coworker lent me his.  You extract your images all in post processing on your PC.  But sadly the Lytro application so taxed my poor laptop that I just took a screenshot and rebooted.  It's too late at night so I have to use a more powerful machine this weekend to play with macro tea shots.

You can see the long rectangular shaped Lytro above. I'm glad I saved my money.  

Ankimo Rabbit Hole

On a rare day, I'll eat something so good that if there's anything better, I don't want to know. Last week I was fortunate enough to bring down my gullet the nuttiest creamiest most delicate ankimo ever.  Ankimo is the liver of the monkfish- a critter unfortunate enough to be endowed with an unusually large and delicious tube of liver. Ankimo is oft said to be the fois gras of the sea and is equally fraught with moral dilemma.

From the lovely presentation above, you would never suspect anything to be amiss. Monkfish is caught predominantly by indiscriminate trawling which is a terribly destructive way to go about pleasing liver loving saps like me. There are many things in life that are so wrong yet so good.  The gustatory pleasure really overrides any sense of shame I should feel.  If you've made up your mind to do something against your principles, you might as well enjoy it and not feel guilt. You can see I was not raised Catholic.

This particularly stellar example of ankimo was served at Sushi Sho. The chef Aki-san, who my husband dubbed Sake-san since he kept slugging surprising amounts of sake between sashimi sets, worked skillfully in putting our dinner together.  You can see he did not skimp on the momiji oroshi - grated daikon with red chili pepper. "Momiji" is Japanese for maple or autumn foliage;  Japanese are fond of poetic references.

There is a cult of sushi eaters who swear by specific chefs who manage to procure the "freshest" fish possible and present it skillfully.  Much of the raw tuna and other sushi served at sushi restaurants has been super frozen and jetted around multiple times.  The process of super freezing to -60F allows the sushi to store perfectly for years. Our ideals of freshness and the realities of industry practice can easily be hidden away as few diners really know what belies a plate of nigri sushi.

I probably wouldn't be able to stomach sushi if I knew everything.  Not just the environmental exploitation- there's exploitation of poor island nations like Kiribati and Tuvalu who have sold off fishing rights for a pittance. I better stick to California Point Reyes oysters and Dungeness crabs until I research a bit more.

Boiling Water In a Stone Pot

My desire for a tetsubin came about when drinking tea with Ira- her's produced a noticeably sweet delicous rounded water.  Even though I've budgeted sufficiently for a tetsubin iron kettle, even picking a reasonable candidate out from the ether is sapping my brain strength.

I've been hit with a fit of spring cleaning lately and a solution for deferring a tetsubin purchase presented itself to me. I used to make rice in this Korean granite stone pot called a dolsot and the rice tastes extra nutty when cooked thus. And although this particular stone pot can boil only small amounts of water which has to be ladled, it was worth trying with tea tonight.

As it is Sunday night, I made mugwort tea for winding down.  The tea brews extra refreshing and smoother than usual-  the tea just glides across my tongue. When I taste just the water- I can taste a slight mineral profile. I hope I don't get kidney stones but probably I need the trace minerals.

A small part of me knows I'm not the kind of mindful person who can take care of a tetsubin. (Actually I already have a rusting one on top of the fireplace that I use as a steam maker.) You can definitely leave water in this stone pot overnight- one just has to be careful not to pour cold water in a hot pot. And if it does break, it's less than $30 to replace. 

Thyme Tisane

Last night at dinner, I was at a loss to order tea so I opted for a thyme tisane. You can see it's just a few sprigs of thyme in hot water and it tastes exactly as expected- herby. It could have done with a spoonful of linden or orange blossom honey.

Restaurant tea is bit of a gamble.  When you are a serious tea drinker, it always seems wrong to order tea at restaurants that don't specialize in tea. I really wish that similar to the standard practice of "corkage", restaurants would charge a "brewage" fee and  let patrons bring their own tea.

Reboiling Water with a Kamjove

This teapot arrived from birdpick.com on Monday and it only took one wash with detergent and two boils to produce perfectly acceptable water for delicate tea.  I brewed up a floral oolong from a Taiwanese neighbor and the result was as floral as ever.  Although this teapot is a bit chintzy and offends my sensibilities,  I'm utterly grateful not to have any off taste in the resulting water.  

I had vague notions that reboiling water makes for flatter tasting water and hence less tasty tea and so I purposely got the smallest 3 cup model.   The arguments against reboiling appear to hinge around decreased oxygenation levels.  I have not comprehensively and objectively confirmed this prejudice but a simple casual experiment with this Kamjove would indicate that reboiling does not appear to significantly impact my taste of a tea or the underlying water.
 
As a safety feature to prevent water from boiling when empty, the base has three little pins that push down when the teapot is sufficiently heavy to trigger a boil. But even when the teapot is half full, it's fits a bit wobbly and I have to manually hold it down to get it to boil. It's not my dream kettle but it will do. Also it is very quiet compared to the jet engines of the Hario Buono. I really wonder how long this contraption can last.  At $37, I guess even yearly replacement should not injure the wallet too much although I would much rather invest in a long lasting deluxe kettle.