Category: Tasting Labs

This week we had the opportunity to taste two types of green tea. Bellow are some notes from Tuesday’s tasting.

Type of Green Tea	Appearance	Flavor	Aroma
Genmai Cha:	Small dried leaves with hazel colored toasted rice. Light green yellowish and clear after being steeped	Dry summer grass, seaweedy	Grassy Toasty Starchy
Kabusecha:	Darker green leaves. Light green and translucent when steeped	Grassy and slightly chewy astringency	Light nutty grassy

 

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Bread has had an essential status in the homes I have grown up in. When I was younger the cupboard was always stocked with rye and pumpernickel break, my dad’s favorite, bologna and mayo on white bread were served regularly for lunch at daycare, cheesy bread sticks were practically a staple in high school, and when I studied abroad in Spain it was croissants and baguettes every morning, noon, and night! Today I am a little more wary of my consumption of bread, and yeasty foods in general.

Cream cheese, ice cream, a tall glass of milk! These were a few of my favorite things growing up. I think I may have been partially addicted, because I would eat cream cheese by the spoonful! Thinking of doing this now makes me feel sick. A couple years ago my stomach stopped making the acids necessary to digest dairy. This led me to experiment with dairy alternatives that never matched up to the creamy stuff. I eventually ended up seeing a naturopath who put me on a strict diet to heal my gut. This worked beautifully, and I have been able to reintroduce dairy into my diet without feeling urges to stuff my face with it. Having cured my gut and also my addiction, I can happily indulge without constantly craving dairy. I actually prefer coconut milk ice cream to the milky stuff anyways!

Type Of TeaPu-Erh Fully Oxidized	AppearanceDried or Steeped	Flavor Notes	Aroma
“Raw”	Deep green leaves, creating a golden yellow liquid when steaped	Barnyard, woody, weedy	fresh horse
“Cooked” Fermented	murky amber and hazel colored after being stepped	balenced flavors of sweet and earthy notes	barnyard, hay, savory

 

 

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This weeks tasting lab was centered around corn and the many ways in which it is ingested. We watched a clip from Michael Twitty’s Black Corn that illuminated corn’s role is the slave trade and it’s racialized placement in food systems. While listening to Michael Twitty deconstruct the role of slave food in southern cuisine, we sampled many food items made with corn. Cornbread, corn meal, tortilla chips, corn syrup, and, my personal favorite, whiskey.

 

 

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Type of Tea	Appereance, Dried or Steeped	Flavor Notes	Aroma, Dried or Steeped
Japanese Matcha	Dried:  bright green powderSteeped: Earthy moss green, cloudy	earthy, some bitterness, astringency with a slight bite, some spice	mossy, vegetal, earthy
Pu-Erh	Dried: Deep dark green Steeped: Great amber color	Wood shavings, very pleasant	woody and piney
Oolong	Dried: Earthy deep green Seeped: Murky yellow	somewhat vegetal, grassy, cucumber	Floral, mossy, similar to matcha but more muted

1.Do you think the hearth still has a central role? What will the hearth look like in 2020? Kitchen-talk?

As we modernize and seek out advancements in productivity and efficiency we become increasingly disconnected from the social aspect the hearth offered. I think of two different things when thinking of the “modern day hearth”. Nuber one being the television, being a central place of the home to gather and seek out stimulating content. The other being possibly more place specific to the pacific northwest, or even more specifically the homes of millennial students in the PNW, is the bong. Often being a place to gather around a flame and the ingestion of smoke which often provokes thoughtful connections through conversation, laughter, snacking and sometimes becoming a zombie and binge-watching an entire season of Grey’s Anatomy in a week.

 

2. Which spices did you blend? Why?

Cardamom, Cumin, Hungarian Paprika, Clove, Vanilla.

These spices work well together, creating a warming effect with a pleasant aroma.

 

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Golden Egg	Pink Egg	Marbled Egg	White egg	Salmon Roe
Appearance:Buttery yellow, ting of gray, bleak	Appearance:Festive, bright pink, cartoony	Appearance:Pretty gnarly	Appearance:Typical	Appearance:salmony pink, look like glass marbles
Taste:Not exceptionally flavorful	Taste:Pickled beets, colors and reminiscent of an Easter Egg, connotations liked to family, celebration, and Jesus	Taste: Savory and salty Sakuma Farms, praised for being local but carrying a “problematic history” of exploitation	Taste:Eggactly as eggspeceted exactly	Taste:Salty fishy gusher “Exotic” “Extravagant” “High class”

 

 

 

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