Hi everyone, welcome to potluck food talks. Today we're going to talk about drinks. Can
we talk about no drinks?
What kind of drinks do you want to talk about? I mean, we just spent 20 minutes talking about
coffee. I mean, what is there? Milk?
No, man. Milk is for psychopaths. Haven't you noticed that all psychopaths in movies
drink milk? Like, you know, Hans Lander, Alex in a Kroghborg Orange, Leon the professional.
Leon is a psychopath. He's a nice guy.
Well, he's just a professional hitman. We can agree on that. He's not a psychopath.
So does that make every baby a psychopath?
No, no, no, just milk lovers. You know, people that are, you know, like grown up people that
have like a glass of milk, that's just psychos.
Okay. So, so, so what's, what's coffee for then?
For the holics or tormented souls like the Oracle in the matrix drinks coffee or Harrison
Ford in Blade Runner also coffee drinker.
Debatable. Debatable. Okay. What about, what about beer?
Beer is for Hooligans, Game of Thrones characters, Homer Simpson, no Glamour there. Sorry, beer
nerds.
No Glamour there. This is ridiculous, Eric. What happened to you? I knew you when you
were a craft beer aficionado. We spent many, many hours in craft beer bars. Yeah. Also
beer is like a food, you know, it's like it's supposed to stay in Germany for hundreds of
years, you know, it used to be a base food to kind of like on the same lines as bread
and potatoes and stuff, you know.
Well, and there is a beer nazism for sure. You know, like Germans invented this purity
law for beer.
For beer. I thought you meant in general. Yeah. Well, they did that later. Like a few
centuries later. Yeah. But any beer that didn't compliment, you know, like the hops and different
standard ingredients formula was banned and burned and destroyed.
Yeah. Rightfully so. Rightfully so. Because it's like, yeah, of course, because it's like,
look at the States, you know, where you look at your ingredients and it's like a million
different things in them. Like bread should be the same. There should be a purity law
for bread. No fucking emulsifiers and preservatives and keep your ascorbic acid out of the fucking
sourdough, you know, it should be flour, salt, water, you know, that's basically it. And
then add it as like, you know, seeds and stuff like that. It's okay. But base bread should
just be that.
I don't feel like talking beer right now. Any other suggestion?
Okay. We could talk about wine. I don't know much of a wine elf, you know.
I mean, you know, wine, I think about like, I don't know, like a lusty poet drinking
its own blood, you know, Hannibal Lecter, interview with the vampire, Cersei from Game
of Thrones, you know, like.
I don't know if I would call Hannibal Lecter a lusty poet.
No.
But.
Sort of.
I mean.
No. Well, interview with the vampire, I think for sure. No, like vampires drink blood.
Interview with the vampire. Yeah. But what about what about the like soccer game Chardonnay
Wine Moms? I mean, I guess they're lusty, but no, it's not poetic.
No, pick a different one.
Okay. Well, what about tea? I know you like tea.
Tea is a good one. You know, like, I mean, if there is a character drinking tea in a
movie, you know, it's always the wisest character. Like, Miyagi would drink tea. Gandalf, Professor
X, Yoda.
Does Gandalf drink tea? I know he smokes a lot of pot in the movies, but.
Yeah, yeah. I know. You know, wizards, they do these kind of things.
Tea is good.
Yeah, we can talk about tea. Tea is like an amazing topic. Yeah.
Tea is an amazing topic. Yeah.
Do you have any favorite tea or way of drinking tea?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I have a very, very, I love tea in general. I love all sorts of
tea and I drink a lot of tea, like a lot. But I have a very definite favorite tea, which
is because of how I grew up. My grandparents, they spend a lot of time in Japan. And so
when I was growing up in my in my households, every afternoon they would drink Japanese
green tea, especially like Sencha.
Ah, man, it's my favorite. I finally agree on something.
Yeah.
That's my fucking favorite tea for sure.
It's so, so good. And like even when I just smell it, I just feel so filled with calm
and like positive emotions, you know, and I especially like the like the ones that taste
really grassy or almost like seaweed or spinach, you know.
Yeah, for me, it's like roasted spinach and umami. So it's kind of like a dashi. Probably
the dashi comes from tea culture. I could bet on that for sure.
Yeah, it's delicious. I mean, like it's so good. And I mean, it's by far one of the best
things that you could drink.
And it's one of those things that if you do it right, it's amazing. If you screw it up,
it's whatever, you know, like the right timing, right temperature, like everything has to
be properly executed to have like a nice cup of nice tea of Sencha specifically.
That's true. It can go wrong really easily and you can misbrew it really easily.
It happens to me all the time. I became like a tea hipster a few weeks ago. I'm drinking
lots of tea every day and different kinds of tea. And it happens to me all the time.
You know, I forget and I over infuse it and then it's crap.
And it's shit.
You know, it's better.
It's almost undrinkable.
Exactly. And I feel like a fucking retard, you know, for forgetting my tea or not putting
it in the timer.
Have you tried cold infusing Sencha?
Yeah, man. Yeah. Some of them I think is the best way to drink it. I had like a...
It's so good.
A present from a Japanese friend. He gave me two bags, one of Sencha traditional. The
other one is like Sencha Earl Grey mixture. I think it's Sencha aromatized with Earl
Grey and that one cold brewed. Man, I think it's my favorite tea in the world. It's incredible.
Because Earl Grey is another one that I really like.
Yeah, Earl Grey is nice. And not everybody's a fan of the bergamot, but yeah, super, super
nice.
I really caught on to like cold brewed tea when I was working in Japan. So when I moved
to Japan, like I said, I grew up with this like tea culture and I was really excited
because I was like, oh, I'm going to drink a lot of tea. And then I actually realized
that in Japan, it's not that much of a big thing. Like you get a cup of like basic tea
in a lot of restaurants, but it's not like a special tea. You don't really have tea houses
like I was imagining it in my racial profiling Western mind, you know. But yeah, in the restaurant
that I was working in, they were serving tea, but they didn't want to serve hot tea because
they didn't want the temperature to affect the dishes. So they made several different
kinds of cold infused tea, but they would add different things to the teas also. So
for example, they had a green tea cold infusion where they would take chervil and like crush
the stems of the chervil and put them into the cold infusion. And they would make this
like super subtle complex infusions where when you would drink it cold, it was like,
I can still sort of like feel the taste like in my memory because it was just so fine and
like well crafted.
I know there are like bottles of tea in Japan sold by the thousands of euros, which is,
you know, like we in the West, we can expect that from wine, but from tea, something like
we don't really get like how is that possible?
Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, our cultural appreciation isn't there. I mean, like here in Germany,
for example, you know, the teas that people drink, it's like black tea, completely overbrewed.
There's no appreciation for the quality of the tea itself. Horrible teas and aromatized
teas, you know, like Roy Bush and that sort of stuff. Like that's really sort of like
a tea culture here. But I mean, it's not something that we have local. It's all imported and
never caught on like coffee did, you know. So and then really, you know, with Japan and
also China and probably also India, the best teas, they stay in the country, you know.
For sure, for sure. Yeah. You know, I recently had my first trip to Asia and I was in Singapore
and I went to this traditional tea house, Chinese tea house. Yeah. And this was for
real like a life changing experience. Yeah. So first of all, the place, it looked like
out of a Miyazaki fairy tale, you know, it was like, what is this? You know, like with
individual rooms where you could walk into each room for your individual table and you
know, and have your tea time. Yeah. And there was even a picture of Queen Elizabeth having
tea there, like in the 80s, surrounded by Chinese tea experts. So they had this tea
menu. They would also do like dumplings, but sweet dumplings, you know, like balls filled
with marmalade and this kind of, but also salty, you know. Jumcha is like a tea food
category I would say, or like a way of drinking and eating. So then this guy comes with this
Kung Fu looking costume outfit, which is not... Sorry, sorry. What's that? That's the most
racist thing you've ever said. The tea master came with the Kung Fu outfit. That's not,
that's not. And I'll tell you why. No, I'll tell you why it's not racist or a prejudice.
Because then I found out that the way of drinking tea he was teaching to us, it's called Gong
Fu tea or Kung Fu tea, because Kung Fu means skill. So this is like a way of drinking that
implies like a high level of skill in the drink. So they would show us like just a very
little jar, a metal jar, where you would do the infusions with a timer and you had like
two mini cups, one more like in a tube shape and the other one like a micro bowl. But I'm
telling that this is like two tablespoons big each one, something like that. And so
you would pour the tea in the first one. And this was just to smell the tube shaped one.
So you would just smell and pour it into the other bowl. And then you would smell again
in the empty glass and the smell would change. And of course, this is like wine tasting,
you know, as you go on and on and on, the aromas change because you also change and
you know, all the variables change. And this was all different types of Oolong tea, which
is not specifically my favorite, but it was, you know, it's nice to have like, like an
experience like this with Chinese tea, which are the, you know, the masters in command
of tea. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I thought, you know, like Japan was the place, but China
is the tea culture. China is and China and you have to add Taiwan also is nuts. Absolutely
nuts. Yeah. And I mean like the two most common words for a tea, which are tea and cha both
come from China from, from different regions and they got a acceptance in different regions
as well. Like for instance, in all of Europe you say tea, but in Russia and other Eastern
Europe countries you say cha, which is also interesting. Yeah. Super interesting. Or Mongolia
or these places. Yeah. This way of that you described of drinking tea, where you have
a brewing vessel with the teapot, a smelling glass and then a drinking glass. I think that's
like one of the most beautiful and the most pure ways of drinking tea. And like, you know,
the cool thing about Oolong is that, you know, with like Sencha, you know, it's like a very
like not fermented or, you know, like very lightly roasted tea. Like it's, it's green.
With Oolong, you have a huge spectrum of teas that are almost green and teas that are really,
really darkly fermented. And you have a spectrum of aromas that is insane. I had a similar
experience in what you described when I was in Japan and because I was looking actively
for tea places and my roommate at the time was a very quiet Japanese guy. I was sometimes
brewing tea at home because I'm also a tea nerd. And he, at some point he came to me
and he was like, do you like tea? And I was like, yeah, I like tea. And he was like, no,
yeah. So we're drinking tea together and like a secret society. And he was like, next time
you have a day off, I would like to take you to see a friend of mine. And I was like, okay,
sure. And we went into like a tea house, like a private tea house where you were in Ginza,
like in the middle of the city and you would go up the stairs into a small apartment. And
it was like a tea room with the little, the table where you pour the water into, you know,
the like wooden carved table. And he did a tea tasting for us. And that was the first
time I really tried Oolong. And it was crazy because we did exactly the same method that
you were saying. We would take one tea, brew it several times, see how the tea develops
after you brew it first time, only like 10 seconds, dump, smell, drink, then again, infuse
it five seconds, dump it, smell it. And the tea would change the more you brew it. And
there was some like mind blowing things. Like they had one tea and he was sort of like,
okay, smell and like, tell me what you smell. And I smelled it. And it was like pure peach
flavor. But like the sort of peach smell that you have when you have like almost like a
peach iced tea, you know, like this like fake peach smell. And I was like, smells like peaches.
And he was like, yeah. And I was like, is it peach flavored? And he's like, no, it's
just tea, like nothing else, just tea. And there was another one where it was called
Oriental Beauty, which had this really intense smell of like dates and orange and like insane,
really, really heavily fermented, almost like a black tea, but so like light and flavorsome.
Like it's nuts.
Did they teach you somehow how to hold the cup? Because in the tea house where I was,
for me it was, they would tell you, yeah, you have to grab the cup like this. And if
you're a lady, you can leave your pinky finger exposed. If not, you have to hide it like
for gentlemen. And this position of drinking it, you're going to make fun of me again.
But this reminds me of the Drunken Master with Jackie Chan, where he's drinking and
holding cups like in the same position, you know, like, and it's probably the Chinese
way of holding tea cups.
Is it like an etiquette thing?
Probably, you know, like part of the ritual, like I don't know exactly where. And also
all the Chinese stores that I visited, they would give you tea just at the entrance for
free because it's something, you know, like typical from there.
The other character that I found really intriguing and interesting is this guy called Kazuko
Okakura. This guy, like in the mid of the 19th century, he's Japanese, obviously. He
traveled to Europe where he studied fine arts and then to the United States and he returned
to Japan. We're talking about end of the 19th century, 1890, something like that. And he
wrote the book of tea to show us Western barbarians, the delicacy and the true art form of tea.
So it was from an art study perspective, how tea is an art form, drinking tea, how teaism
is a religion and all the grounds and ideas around that. Also, you know, I think like
tea meditation and poetry really go together and that there is a lot of angles to go into
that.
Yes.
So the interesting thing about this book is that Heidegger read that book and it was one
of his first introductions into Eastern philosophy, Asian thoughts. And so at the same time, Heidegger
is one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. So it's crazy like how
tea had an influence on Western philosophy. Well, Heidegger, you know, like he had like
this little controversy that he was a Nazi and that didn't help him so much.
Yeah, but you know, nobody's perfect, you know, whole body's nerf-ricked.
You had this story with poets and tea, right? You told me once.
Yeah. So I mean, like what you just mentioned, it's a whole world to dive into this, not
just the act of drinking tea and the health benefits and that, but also the philosophy
behind it and the like tea culture, which is, which sounds kind of funny if you, if
you don't, if you've never been in contact with that, but which is very, very deep and
very profound and very, you know, reaching over many different countries and continents.
And if you've kind of delved into that a little bit, you kind of know what it is that you're
talking about with when you say that sort of like get teaism, that it's like a religion,
I can immediately sort of understand what you mean, you know, as somebody who is completely
new to this might not, but it's a very beautiful community of tea drinkers. And when you were
saying that drinking tea was like very affiliated with poets and artists and stuff, you know,
there used to be a practice or maybe there still is of poets and artists and like painters
and stuff to sit somewhere and indulge in drinking tea. What I mentioned earlier, I
was sort of like brewing small quantities and drinking and sipping and looking out and
just kind of delving in your thought and keep brewing and keep drinking, keep brewing and
keep drinking. And this continuous practice of like drinking tea, because tea has a different
effect on you depending on how long it's brewed, whether it's calming or it's like gets you
up and going, similar sort of to caffeine. But if you drink tea in this sort of way,
you get into almost an elevated state of ecstasy of like, a really elevated state, you know,
of dopamine and you know, just like happiness feelings and stuff. And artists would do this
deliberately to get themselves like a little bit high on tea, to then sit there and look
out into the countryside and draw and paint or to philosophize and write down poems. And
yeah, that that was like an actual practice that we do in combination with drinking tea.
And I think that's super, super nice. And it's like it works. I've tried it before,
you know, when I would be sitting at home and I had like, you know, I would do this
sort of little thing, brew, drink, brew, drink, brew, drink, and you get almost like ecstatic,
you know?
I mean, like I started meditating a few weeks ago, like I'm doing it every day and I incorporate
the like I have this small Chinese jar and I incorporate it into my practice. And it's
really, you know, like part of my personal ritual, having a super nice scene. And actually,
I think it's the best way to enjoy it because you're absolutely concentrated and then you
have a sip and it's like, oh man, this is so nice. Yeah, totally. And meditation is
about focusing on something. And if you're focusing on taste, you know, what, what better
way to do that?
Absolutely. And like making tea is a kind of meditation in itself, I think, you know,
I listened to a podcast from Andrew Huberman the other day where he was talking about diverging
our paths of focus, of sort of like that it's very unhealthy, actually, like for example,
in the morning, we're like making a cup of coffee and we're listening to something. And
at the same time, we're like writing an email and that's actually not very healthy. It's
much healthier to do one thing. If you make a cup of coffee, make a cup of coffee. And
this is what I think is really cool about tea also is the, because it amplifies your
enjoyment that much more also it's that you're taking everything in. You're looking at the
tea because tea is very beautiful also, you know, you're brewing it, you see the leaves
unfold, you smell it, you look at the color, then you drink it and you're in that moment.
Right. And it's a, it's a, the ritual is the part of the meditation is part of the enjoyment
of consuming it. And so it's like, it's like a bigger rounder picture, you know,
there's also a myth. I, in the last episode, I talked about the myth of the origin of coffee.
Well, when I started digging into tea, like I went to my friend Furkan and I told him,
hey Furkan, you know, you're, you're Indian, what do you have to tell me about tea? So
he said, well, first of all, like we Indians, we don't export tea because our demand is
higher or consumption is higher than our production. So we import tea. He told me like Indians
are not so like in general terms, of course, not so fine in terms of tea drinking. So it's
like boiling and adding sugar, you know, like the typical thing. Well, if you ever try to
replicate the flavor of this instant teas or the teas that you buy in, that's actually
over infusing tea, which is super bitter and then balancing it with lemon and sugar, then
you got this nasty flavor, you know? And he was the first person who told me like, you
know, like Chinese are much more refined than Japanese when it comes to tea, which makes
sense. You know, like, like tea was introduced to Japan from China. So, and he told me, do
you know about the myth of the origin of tea? So there was this like the equivalent to Hippocrates
in the West, and his name is Shen Don. It's like the oldest medic you will find in Asia,
right? Like this ancient medic. So, and he would like, these things are interesting,
like, you know, this alchemist stories, for instance, Ban-Marie, you know, having something
in a water bath has nothing to do with Christianity, which is what most people would think, you
know, Mary, the Virgin Mary, and so on. This was actually an alchemist who was the first
one to coined that way of keeping things warm. And so her name was Mary. In the case of tea,
this guy Shen Don, he was the one that introduced boiling water into hygienic practices. So
he would like make his servants boil any water that he would drink, you know, we're talking
about thousands of years ago. And the story goes that he was near a forest and a few dry
leaves that were flying with the wind fell into his water. And the servant said, Oh,
we're going to throw it away. And he said, No, let's drink it. And he discovered tea.
Isn't it a nice story?
Yeah, drinking drinking drinking random water. If he's so if he's so clean, so clean about
his water, and that's a random shit place. He's like, this was like a magical forest
with perfect fermented sensual leaves flying in the wind. Don't you get it? I want to go
there, man. I want to go there. What about cooking with tea? Have you had good experiences
cooking with tea? I mean, first thing that comes to mind is matcha. Me too. I'm not a
huge fan. Not a huge fan. Matcha. Oh, man, matcha is so underrated. Honestly. Have you
ever had like real matcha? Like frothed up just simple matcha? You would love it, man.
I have like, after this experience in China, I was like, Oh, I have so many tea at home
that I've gotten from you know, every time I have a business meeting with a Japanese
they they give you like a present and most of the time is tea. So I had like 20 tea bags,
really good teas at home. And I have a few matcha bags that I haven't tried yet. But
I have it just on my to do list. Maybe I could do it today. I mean, the only place I have
had matcha like and it was like really good was well in Japan, obviously, in the restaurant
where I was working because everybody would get a bowl of matcha after the meal. But also
going to other kaiseki places like really traditional high class Japanese restaurants.
And man matcha if you like sencha if you like this like grassy flavor matcha so insanely
delicious because it's that it has this like beautiful creamy foamy texture. But there's
no like no dairy or anything. It's like super light obviously. But it also it has this nuttiness.
And it's it's insane. But unfortunately, most of the matcha that you like get is really bad
quality. Like when you buy matcha, you need to buy something that's called ceremonial grade
matcha. Yeah, I have a few good ones because they're like in super little envelopes that look like
drugs, you know, like and he gave me like five of those the guy that gave me the present. And he
was like, this one is a very high quality one. So I have one of those that is supposed to be super
good. Yeah, yeah, I definitely want to start actually like I want to buy a little little
matcha whisk. Yeah, and start drinking matcha because it's also it's also one of the super
healthy for you. Super, super healthy. I remember that there was a quote from I don't remember who
like maybe Alan Sanderans, one of the novel cuisine chefs in France. And he was like, you know,
this feeling of complaining of like, what have we done with our cuisine? You know, like at the very
peak moment of the French cuisine? What have we done like this crazy combinations this and that
ice tea sorbet for Christ's sake? What have we done? I've had like very good ice tea sorbets. I
remember a recipe from this dessert book that he has sweet seduction. It's an amazing dessert,
man. It's a super nice tea sorbet. I don't actually know which one you mean, I have to look it up.
But this is like those kind of things like, you know, over infusing, balancing it with sugar and
lemon. And then you have this icy flavor, which is what it is, you know? Yeah, yeah, for sure.
I mean, I've done that with it is a really nice Japanese tea called hojicha, which is like roasted
stems of tea, kind of like very smoky. Yeah, kukicha, right? Like the stems of the green tea.
Okay, that's a different one. There's hojicha. You should try it. It's like, it's kind of really
roasty and smoky. It's really, really delicious. And that infused in milk and an ice cream made
out of that. Absolutely delicious. Also, another Japanese green tea that I really like is like a
working class tea is genmaicha. I don't know if you know it with the roasted rice. Yeah, man,
I love that. I love that. First time I had it was in Kokolo Ramen in Berlin. Oh, yeah. And I was
what is this? Because it's like green tea, but it has also the rice grains are roasted, right? So
they have this popcorn aroma. Exactly. Super, super nice. And I have at one point I put that
into beurre blanc. Ah, nice. To like infuse. Nice. Yeah, yeah. Now you get this like tea
and like also like roasted rice flavor. That was very delicious. But yeah. That's it for this
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