Tea 107: Week Six Exams
Well, Cooking With Tea/Tea and Food Pairings is a wrap now! I have to say, so far this has definitely been my favourite one so far! I just feel like so much of what I learned is stuff I’m going to be applying practically on probably a daily basis. It was a really fun class.
Following the trend of past modules, this was a three part exam. Part one was an online test with 50 questions based on the course material. So far, that’s the only part of the final that I have the mark for (probably wont get the rest of my marks until after Christmas) but I absolutely nailed it and got a score of 48/50 which is the best I’ve done yet! From there I moved on to part two which was a blind cupping of six different teas.
For the cupping, I had to identify the tea and country of origin and then because this was the food pairing module I also had to list a food I’d pair the tea with. I think this probably would have been very straight forward except for one hiccup: one of the teas used in the cupping was definitely Lapsang Souchong and since all the teas for this cupping come in a sealed envelope for someone else to prepare for me that Lapsang had over a month to sit and get all of the other samples nice and smoky. So, every single cup had a smoke note to it that made the rest of the flavours hard to decipher.
Ultimately, I’m confidant I got all of the non black tea cups correct (three of the six) but when it comes to those other three I’m a lot less sure. One absolutely had a more potent smokey/ashy note which I said was the Lapsang. My options for the other two were either Darjeeling, Assam, or Keemun and neither cup tasted like ANY of those options because of the flavour contamination.
The final part of the exam was a presentation! We had to create our own afternoon tea menu for a fictional restaurant/tea house/hotel or what have you. The menu had to include dishes prepared with tea and dishes to be paired alongside tea. The avenue I went with, and had so much fun doing, was a creamery which I playfully named “Scoop of Cha”. I had things like an Apple Icecream with a Darjeeling, Pineapple Sorbet and Lapsang, Fresh Mint Icecream and Assam, and a Rougui with a “Poached Peach” frozen yogurt. It was an absolute BLAST creating the pairings and it really made me feel like that’s something that in the future I really want to be doing in some capacity or another, be that in making tea blends of my own, working in a tea house or restaurant doing the food pairings, or some other form which I maybe haven’t tapped yet.
Tldr; best module so far. Wish me luck on the tests I haven’t gotten marks back for yet.
Good luck!
Exciting, and best of luck!