Tea Time Tips from Laura Childs
Tea Time Tips From
Laura Childs
Shanghai Tea
All the grand hotels in Shanghai serve marvelous afternoon teas—and you can, too. Decorate your tea table in red and black and score a few Chinese fans from your local party store. Begin with a tall glass of iced black tea, spiced and mixed with sweetened condensed milk. Crab salad and cucumber slices make wonderful tea sandwiches, and everyone loves shrimp rolls or warm Chinese pork buns. If you want a hot tea, your guests will love oolong or even chrysanthemum tea. For dessert visit your local Chinese bakery for egg custard buns and mochi balls with sesame filling. Or you can offer dainty servings of petits fours and French macarons. After all, Shanghai is an international city!
Bront? Sisters Tea
Capture the moodiness and slightly Gothic aura of an English manor home with a purple tablecloth, stoneware, dark red flowers, and half-melted candles. Pile stacks of Emily and Charlotte Bront?’s books on your table. Serve raisin scones with clotted cream for your first course, then tea sandwiches of cucumber and dill for your second course. Your main course could be a ploughman’s platter—a delightful array of dark bread, ham, Scotch eggs, potato salad, and dollops of hearty mustard. The perfect tea for your luncheon would be Simpson & Vail’s Bront? Sisters Black Blend. For dessert serve a decadent brownie-rosemary cake.
Spring Fever Tea
Spring is in the air with bountiful bouquets of flowers and floral china on your tea table. Give each guest a packet of flower seeds as a favor. Kick your celebration off with white chocolate chip scones and Devonshire cream, then serve egg salad and watercress tea sandwiches. For an entrée consider shrimp salad in lettuce cups. Enhance your food with an Assam tea, and for dessert serve balsamic strawberries with Brie cheese.
Tropical Tiki Tea
Create your own little tea time tiki hut by arranging your tea table with tropical fruits, ferns, fresh pineapples, and sunglasses from the party store. If you’re holding your tropical tea outdoors, add tiki torches or colored lights. For your first course, serve coconut scones with honey butter. Tea sandwiches can be chicken salad with chopped pineapple, or you can opt for chicken shish kebabs with chicken, pineapple, onion, and red pepper. Serve a banana compote for dessert and delight your guests with ginger- or orange-flavored black tea.
Long Live the King Tea
Rule Britannia is the watchword here. Start with a creamy damask tablecloth, then add your finest plates, teacups and saucers, glassware, and silverware. Then it’s time to get creative by decorating your table with flowers, British flags from the party store, tins of English biscuits, or boxes of shortbread. Got a ceramic bulldog? Add him to the mix. Now go British with your menu. Start with cream scones served with Devonshire cream and lemon curd. Cream cheese and cucumber tea sandwiches are always delightful as a second course, and your third course could be Scotch eggs or Coronation Chicken (this is basically chicken salad served in a buttered, toasted brioche bun). For your tea consider Earl Grey, always a British favorite, and serve a Victoria sponge cake for dessert.