| Green tea especially clean tasting, grassy and refreshing served iced. Here the intoxicating perfume of a hauntingly sweet honeydew melon is perfectly layered with the crisp spring taste of green tea, either Chinese Dragonwell (Lung Ching), Japanese Sencha, or even a green Darjeeling tea from India. This frothy drink, the pale color of Chinese celadon porcelain, cools you even during the most sweltering hot spell. |
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| 3 tablespoons / 42 grams loosely packed green tea leaves of your choice |
| 2 ounces / 60 grams crystallized ginger, roughly chopped |
| 4 cups / 1 liter cubed ripe honeydew melon |
| 2 cups / 500 milliliters ice cubes made from distilled water |
| Superfine sugar to taste |
| Garnishes: Thinly sliced honeydew melon, crystallized ginger in long pieces and fresh ginger juice |
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| Preparation |
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| Chill 4 tall glasses. Brew the tea leaves in 1 quart / 1 liter of 185*F / 85*C water, allowing them to steep 4 minutes. Pour the tea through a fine meshed sieve, pressing hard on the leaves to extract all the liquid. Add the crystallized ginger to the brewed tea and let cool until it becomes infused with the ginger flavour, about 15 minutes, or longer if time allows. Chill in refrigerator until cold. Pass liquid through sieve to remove ginger pieces. (The ginger pieces can be saved to add to chicken salad or fruit compote, as desired. For a more spicy flavour, fresh ginger root can be substituted) |
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| Puree the melon and ice in the jar of an electric blender. Add tea ginger infusion and process just to blend. Pour into tall chilled glasses and sweeten to taste with superfine sugar. Add a dash of fresh ginger juice if available. Garnish with a thin slice of honeydew wrapped with a slice of crystallized ginger. Yields 4 12 ounce / 350 gram servings. |
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