GRANDMA TEA

CHRONICLE: NEW YORK CITY, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND, WESTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 1969-2023

Greetings and welcome to another Lonely Kitchen Chronicles. I’m thrilled you’re here! Today’s chronicle is a bit low key. In all honesty… I’m a little burned out after Thanksgiving. Also, a gentle reminder that my abilities as a photographer are not nearly as strong as my skills in the kitchen. With all that said, enjoy reading. Your support and readership means everything!

I had three grandmothers. Two of them, my biological grandmothers, called me bubbeleh.

“Come here bubbeleh. It’s been too long since I’ve seen you. Let me give you another hug,” Fannie, my New York City grandmother would say when we visited from Baltimore.

My younger brother, Mike, and I slept in the dining room, the table pushed aside to make room for our fold-up cots. Floor to ceiling built in bookcases lined one wall. A mostly unused samovar sat on one of those shelves, a complicated, foreign looking thing with a spigot. I think it was made of brass, a Russian relic, hinting of the life my grandmother’s parents left behind.

In her upper east side apartment, Grandma Fannie brewed her tea, some kind of black variety, by the cup. She steeped the tea for so long I thought she’d forgotten about it. Adding milk was out of the question. She preferred it dark with just a sliver of lemon and one sugar cube plucked from the sugar bowl with a small pair of silver tongs.

I wanted to be a tea drinker too.

We drank our tea in the foyer seated at the small round breakfast table. A New York apartment with a foyer sounds fancy, and I suppose it was. The building had a doorman and an elevator operator. But the apartment wasn’t grand. It didn’t have parquet floors or wood paneling or chandeliers. It was just the place my grandparents lived.

The tea was so hot, I had to blow on it to cool it down. I blew so hard that ripples creased the surface of the tea. I stirred in one lump of sugar, just like grandma, took a sip, and pretended I hadn’t burned the tip of my tongue.

My Baltimore Grandma, Celia, lived about thirty minutes away from us. “Bubbeleh, look at you! Soon you’ll be taller than me.” She said this every time I saw her until one day it was true.

Grandma Celia, also a tea drinker, used Lipton tea bags she kept in the copper canister that sat on the red Formica counter marked TEA. Like my New York grandmother, she didn’t use milk in her tea. Instead of sugar cubes we spooned our sugar from a ceramic sugar bowl, sipped it dark and hot as I tried yet again to not burn my tongue.

Often, my mother and I met Grandma in downtown Baltimore at the Tea Room inside Hutzler’s Department Store on Howard Street. Grandma ordered each of us a slice of Hutzler’s famous cheese bread. She ate her bread and sipped her tea, never taking off her white gloves. In summer she wore the lacy perforated pair. In winter she changed out of her cranberry-colored calfskin gloves into the thin white leather pair she reserved for our Hutzler’s get togethers. She was on a first name basis with all the saleswomen at the glove counter.

Hutzler’s was a long way from the Polish shtetl her parents grew up in.

Both of my grandmothers wore their dark, wavy hair short. Stockinged feet found their way into sensible shoes which matched their bags. They wore tailored, wool pencil skirts in somber grays or tweeds, never pants or trousers, maybe a vestige from their days as schoolteachers. Their clothes matched the way they drank their tea, dark and dignified, with a hint of sweetness,

Shortly after graduating college, in the early 80’s, I met my future husband’s grandmother, Harriet. Pink was Harriet’s favorite color. She wore it every day, in every shade from ballet pink to deep raspberry, the same colors as the peonies she raised. Harriet’s hair, once blonde, was silvery-white, and long. She twisted it into a swirl at the back of her head, held it in place with silver toned hairpins so they weren’t visible.

Harriet called everyone–including me–dearie. “Dearie, that is such a cunning sweater you’re wearing.” “Dearie, can you see the clock? I’m beginning to feel a bit peckish.” Her opinions were often expressed as questions. “So do you really think the republicans will win this year?” meant republicans don’t stand a chance here in Massachusetts. The only gloves I ever saw her wear were gardening gloves. Even they were pink.

By the time I met Harriet, both Grandma Fannie and Grandma Celia had died.

Harriet’s house in Weston, Massachusetts was built in 1793. She served tea on the screened-in side porch most warm weather days. The table we sat at was made from a barn door after the neighboring dairy was demolished to make way for a 6-bedroom single family home, with white siding and black asphalt roof shingles. It looked completely out of place amidst the central hall colonials with their sleeping porches, root cellars and grit stacked stone fences announcing: THIS IS NEW ENGLAND.

Lapsang Souchong brewed in the teapot my mother gave to me after returning from Deruta, Italy.

Harriet brewed smokey loose leafed Lapsang Souchong in her blue and white striped Cornish ware teapot. The tea itself resembled pine needles and I was about to discover that in it had a slightly piney, stringent taste. Knowing that tea would be served at about five most afternoons, neighbors and friends casually dropped by some bearing freshly baked cookies or quick bread.

There was always a pitcher of cream on the table. I never used it.

I’d sipped many cups of tea with my New York and Baltimore grandmothers, but neither had brewed it by the pot using dark stalks of exotic loose tea. The instant I tasted the Lapsang Souchong, I knew. I’d made it. That was the moment I became a tea drinker too.

I wished Grandma Fannie and Grandma Celia could have been there with me. They would have loved Harriet and her tea ritual. But maybe, just maybe they were hovering, like the steam rising from my cup, because I thought I heard them, their love whispered in every sip.

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Below is a step-by-step guide to brewing a pot of tea. Actually, it’s more of an invitation than a recipe to be followed to a T. Sorry, I just couldn’t help myself. A pot of tea is meant to be shared, beckons friends to gather, to talk, to spend time sipping together, a chance to just hang out. So, call (or text) your friends, warm your tea pot and savor those sips.

You’ll also find a recipe for Lapsang Souchong Spice Rub. It’s great on red meat, chicken or salmon. It would also be delicious dusted onto slabs of cauliflower “steaks”or large portobello mushrooms before grilling.

Here’s a link to the New Mexico Tea Company, located here in Albuquerque where I live, as a source for Lapsang Souchong. Don’t worry…they ship! Plus they have an amazing selection of tea along with an expert staff of tea wizards.

nmtea.com

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GRANDMA HARRIET’S

LAPSANG SOUCHONG TEA

Ceramic Tea Pot

Loose Leaf Lapsang Souchong Tea

Boiling Water

Tea Cozy, if you have one

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Bring the water to a boil. Pour about a cup of boiled water into the tea pot for it to warm. After about 5 minutes discard the water. Add approximately 1 teaspoon tea leaves per person to pot. Pour boiling water over tea leaves. Cover the teapot with a cozy. The longer it steeps the stronger it will be. Serve in ceramic or China teacups.

If you must, add milk. Otherwise, drink it strong and dark, with or without sugar.

Try not to burn your tongue.

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LAPSANG SOUCHONG SPICE RUB

YOU’LL NEED A SPICE GRINDER

2 Tablespoons Lapsang Souchong tea

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

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Place all ingredients into a spice grinder. Process for about 30 seconds, until the tea leaves are very fine. Use on red meat, poultry, salmon, cauliflower “steaks” or thick sliced large Portobello mushrooms. Store any leftover rub in an airtight container.

Spice rub ingredients before blending in grinder.

Left to right: loose Lapsang Souchong, finished spice rub, brand new stash of tea.