Match of the week
Lemon and poppy seed cake with Tippy Yunan tea with ginger root
There’s an improbably good tea shop and café near where I live which is as good as any I’ve been to. I say improbable not because it’s in Bristol but because it’s in a far-from-smart shopping parade in one of the less cultish areas of the city. It also has a brilliantly clever name - ATTIC - which stands for All The Tea In China.
They have a great range of teas but also some great kit to serve them in. A glass infuser (see right and here on their website) which opens up once placed on top of a co-ordinated glass mug and lets the strained tea in.
They chalk the specials up on the blackboard - the one I tried was called Autumn Glow, a blend of Tippy Yunnan black tea and dried ginger root, a spicy, fragrant brew that went brilliantly well with a wedge of lemon and poppy seed cake I’d been unable to resist. Thank goodness we’re moving to the other side of town otherwise I'd be in there all the time though I suspect we’ll find reasons to get back over there. Like buying all our friends and relatives tea-infusers for Christmas.
They also offer a mail order service for those of you who live even further away and will apparently start supplying other tea shops and cafs shortly with a range of their teas called 'One leaf, many lives'. Look out for them.
Simnel cake and Orange Pekoe tea
Simnel cake, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is the traditional British Easter cake (although at one time it was baked to celebrate Mother’s Day).
It’s a fruit cake, sandwiched and covered with marzipan and decorated with little marzipan balls though these days you’ll often find them adorned with sugared easter eggs and yellow fluffy chicks as well. If you’re anywhere near a Betty’s Tea Room which has branches in York, Harrogate, Ilkley and Northallerton, if I remember right, that’s the sort of place to buy one though traditional bakers and large department stores like Fortnum & Mason in London will sell them too.
It’s the kind of cake with which you could perfectly well drink a glass of sweet sherry or Madeira but I’m going for a regular - or perhaps not-so-regular tea - Orange Pekoe. It’s not, as the name suggests, infused with orange, but describes a premium grade of tea which tends to have particularly large fragrant leaves. Of course, any good quality black tea such as a Ceylon tea would be enjoyable too.
Image © SibylleMohn - Fotolia.com
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