The purchased sugar cake is cut into small pieces, regarding half a pound. Mom put regarding a liter of clean water, stir well to dissolve the sugar. Continuing, the mother decanted the sugar into a clean saucepan, leaving the grit and impurities, and then boiled it on a low fire. Cook while stirring with chopsticks or a stalk of sugarcane that has been shaved, until the honey water boils, add the water that is pounded from a few sticks of glutinous ginger, a type of cake that has been baked, into a saucepan of honey water.
When the water boils, mother quickly put both the rice and the roasted green beans into the pan. While adding the rice, mom stirred it with her hands in a clockwise direction. Mom always meticulously stirred gently to avoid spilling out of the pan and not to burn.
When I gathered with my mother in the simple kitchen, my mother told me that the most important step in cooking braised tea is this stage, because it requires meticulousness, attention, and ingenuity of the cook. Just being a little bit lazy will make the whole pot of tea broken. When the hand stirs heavier and heavier, the dough from thin to thick must wait for a while longer and then slowly dilute, that’s when the stew is complete.
Every time I look at my mother cooking tea in the sunlight in the early spring days, and when I see a pot of bright yellow braised tea with a faint aroma of beans, I can see the ingenuity and effort of the cook.
While my mother was cooking, I was tasked with scraping the cinnamon bark, roasting the anise, and then rubbing the grits and ash from the kitchen. I sat quietly in a corner of the house, gently peeled off some anise petals, added a cinnamon stick to the stone mortar that had been washed, dried, and pounded. Until the mixture is as smooth as when pinching two fingers, no longer feel ripples, just feel the sweet fragrance.
Just green beans, sugar, grapefruit flower essential oil through the skillful hands of the processor, there are delicious cups of tea.
About half an hour later, the pot of tea starts to boil, mom will remove some firewood, just leave a few small fires with rice husks sprinkled around the stove, regarding ten minutes, stir all over the bottom of the pan once to puree the rice and park. When the rice, beans, and honey have been mixed together and become thick, yellow-brown, the color of cockroach wings, to the point of lifting the chopsticks or raising the cane from the pan, it will become a long, thick brown thread. The aroma from rice, beans and molasses mixed with ginger juice is extremely attractive.
The tea made us children often look at the kitchen eagerly and salivate. My mother, with the box of white salt, put a small pinch in the saucepan, stirred it one last time, and took it out of the kitchen.
Mom carefully took the Chinese bowls, which were smaller than the bowls, gently scooped each tea ladle into the bowl until it was almost full, then arranged it on a tray. A pot of such tea is regarding ten bowls. Looking at the eye-catching, smoky bowls of cockroach-colored tea being scooped out in turn, my sister and I just wanted our mother to scoop it up quickly to the bottom to scrape off the thin burnt layer.
The top layer of the bowl of tea will be a thin layer of sesame seeds, which are also roasted until golden brown, and a layer of a mixture of cinnamon powder and anise, giving off a fragrant aroma. Meanwhile, my mother and I were allowed to enjoy the thin burnt layer on the bottom of the tea pot. The feeling of slowly sipping each piece of tea, quickly melting the tip of the tongue, sweet and cool in the throat of honey, hot, and ginger in cold weather is an unforgettable memory in my heart throughout my teenage life.
On the first day of the New Year, following the New Year’s meal at the beginning of Spring, my whole family gathered together to eat a piece of braised tea, sip lotus tea, and feel the sweet, fragrant followingtaste intertwined in the cool taste.
Life is busy, it is rare to have a day to slowly sit next to family, feel the quintessence of heaven and earth in harmony in the early spring. Just that much followingtaste is enough to make me anxious in the memories of so many children far from home. Rustic but unusually warm!