Chocolate Tea - Cooking with Ceylon tea

Cooking with Ceylon tea...

a refreshing & innovative experience

 Tea is finally breaking out of its familiar role as an accompaniment to afternoon tea fare and emerging as a provocative ingredient and more and more chefs around the world are bringing tea into the kitchen to create recipes using tea for entrees, desserts, or as a base for sophisticated new drinks. This "old" beverage easily translates as a "new" ingredient that adds an indefinable something to a dish, and helps a recipe evolve into one that is beautifully compounded with flavour. Tea is an essential part of fine living and dining ... just as wines are selected to enhance certain foods, teas can also be selected and brewed to match sweet, savoury or spicy foods and the various hours and moods of the day. Like fine wine, the quality of tea depends on climatic conditions, regional characteristics, and the expertise of the plantation manager and the blender. But, also like good wine, there is only a limited quantity of premium tea available in the world. These recipes are refreshing, innovative, healthy, flavoured, interesting and easy for anyone to prepare. And, best of all, tea is the ideal condiment: no calories, no sodium, no sugar, no fat - just pure flavour.

Long regarded in the Orient as a health beverage, tea is now medically accepted as having natural properties (polyphenols which process antioxidants) beneficial to health. A cup of tea generally has only one-third the caffeine content of a typical cup of coffee. Ceylon tea is an incredible flavour enhancer; it can be just the right addition to so many... such as tea shortcakes and truffles to traditional dishes using fish, meat, or even tofu with tea to delight any palate. There is a colour photograph of each finished recipe, so you will see at the beginning what the dish will look like at the end... a real bonus when you are trying something new! Whether your experience with tea is simply drinking a cup every once in a while or frequently, with these easy-to-follow recipes and photographs to guide you, we invite you to experience the fascination and excitement of cooking with Ceylon tea.  You can have fun cooking and enjoy preparing these simple recipes as much as you and your guests or family will enjoy eating them.

 Ingredients

1 ltr milk

 (non-fat, low fat or full fat, as desired)

 1/2 cup sugar

 60 gms bitter sweet chocolate finely chopped

 2 tbsps Ceylon black tea leaves

 6 cardomom pods crushed slightly

 2 whole sticks cinnamon

 1 tsp vanilla

 Cinnamon sticks to garnish

 Method

Place all the ingredients in a pan except the garnish and simmer till the chocolate is dissolved. Cook over low heat for 5 minutes. Keep 10 minutes to infuse, cool and strain. Chill and freeze for 1 hour. Chill 4 tall glasses. Break up the frozen mixture and process in a blender until slushy. Pour into the chilled glasses and serve immediately garnished with whole cinnamon sticks.