Posted in Reviews

Nina’s Paris Tea Store Sampling

Marie Antoinette

Marie-Antoinette

Description

A very delicate tea, flavored with apples & roses, with a touch of strongness with ceylon tea basis Apple aroma done with apples coming from King’s Kitchen Garden – Versailles.

Ingredients: Black Tea, Ceylon, Rose petals, Apples and Roses

Available through: Nina’s Paris Tea Store | Facebook

Tasting Notes

The dry leaf smells of apples, sweet plums, pear, and a hint or fruit orchard flowers.

I brewed this at 200 °F for 4 minutes. Once steeped, the tea tastes very strongly of fresh green apples, with a bit of pear and finishes with a floral bitterness.


This tea is the most popular from Nina’s Paris because of its unique story. The original Marie-Antoinette tea is made of apples and roses hand-picked from the Le Potager du Roi of Versailles (King’s Kitchen Garden).

Mon Secret

Description

Keemun tea with all the succulence of sunny fruits. You will be seduced by the naturally sweet flavours of melon, peach, and papaya.

Ingredients: Keemun Black Tea, Papaya pieces, melon, peach

Available through: Nina’s Paris Tea Store | Facebook

Tasting Notes

The brewed tea smells malty, sweet, delicate with a general “tropical” aroma. The taste itself is smooth and light with a hint of astringency.

Magicenne

Magicienne

Description

The magical combination of pineapple and coconut. This tea, with a hint of tartness, will pleasantly surprise you. An exotic blend that will satisfy all seeking enchantment.

Ingredients: Green Tea, pineapple, coconut, cream

Available through: Nina’s Paris Tea Store | Facebook

Tasting Notes

This tea smells tropical, light, and sweet. I brewed this to share with a friend and we really enjoyed it. The green tea was not too over-powered by the flavors, but it was subtle enough to be a good “intro tea” for people just starting with tea. It would do well with a little bit of sweetener or iced.
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Green Tea Sandwich Cookies with Honey Cream Cheese Filling ♣

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I like St. Patrick’s day because it gives me an excuse to make and eat green food. Other than that, I don’t really celebrate it — in fact I’ve never even seen a green beer! These cookies are naturally colored with some beautiful sencha green tea powder gifted to me by Sugimoto America. This sencha powder had a nice strong earthy taste that paired naturally with the honey cream cheese filling.

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The recipe for these cookies came from my co-worker who had brought them into the office but I never got to try them. I usually avoid making sandwich cookies since they’re twice the amount of work for one cookie, but these just might be worth it. Not as much work as linzer cookies, but a little more work than whoopie pies. I also got to try out my new rolling pin so that I could make sure the dough was uniform in thickness.

If you’re in the mood for a seasonal treat that isn’t tooth-achingly sweet, these are right up your alley. I’ve stuck a few in the freezer to give to my friend this weekend when we meet up for the NYC Coffee & Tea Festival; I’ll report back on how they fared.

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This recipe is very easy and has a limited number of ingredients. I added heaping tablespoons of green tea powder because I had only a little left in my container (total amount = 227 grams). The cookie is a little dense, but lighter than shortbread. When eaten fresh, the filling will ooze out a bit. I stuck them in the fridge overnight and the filling firmed up for easier chomping.

Sugimoto America: Gyokuro 玉露

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Description

Gyokuro is green tea that was cultivated in the shade and is considered one of the finest green teas in Japan. It has a unique sweetness since the shade allows the tea to retain a high Theanine content. Only the first flush tea leaves are used for Gyokuro.

Available through: Sugimoto America | Facebook

Tasting Notes

This is a very typical green tea. Smelling it is very buttery and then a hint of grassiness. The butteriness is missing almost completely from the tea when drinking and is instead replaced with a slight bitterness at the end.

The leaves are a very pretty blue-green color and are smaller than most other leaves, brewing up like spinach. The packaging suggested 140 degrees for steeping but I think this would have done better at either a lower temperature or lower steeping time since it did have a tad of bitterness.

Flavors: Butter, Grass, Spinach
Preparation: 2 minutes, 15 seconds @ 140 °F

About sa

Sugimoto America is a complete supplier of Japanese green tea and a subsidiary of Sugimoto Seicha, a Japanese green tea company founded in 1946. They have been awarded both the Green Tea Connoisseur Award as well as the prestigious Prime Minister Award for its superior quality of tea leaves.

Tea quality is determined by tea farmers. Our Tea Maestro has selected 11 artisan farmers in his local area of Shizuoka prefecture. He and his farmers work toward the same goal — to produce the highest quality green tea possible using the traditional Japanese steam processing method (Fukamushi), and without using large machines to harvest from their farms located on mountain slopes.

Product provided for review.  All notes & opinions are my own.

Roasted Merino Lamb Rack with Potatoes

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Lamb is one of my favorite foods to eat, but it’s intimidating for me to even think about cooking at home. I’ve heard people complain that it smells and heard horror stories of too rare or burnt messes.

That’s why I was glad to receive some lamb in the mail from Marx Foods to pair with a tried-and-true simple recipe from someone I know.  I went all in and tried the scariest seeming cut: frenched racks.

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This recipe, from one of my favorite chefs José Andrés, comes from his cookbook Made in Spain: Spanish Dishes for the American Kitchen which is paired with his PBS television show. It only has a handful of ingredients and is very straight forward so that the lamb itself can shine. Finishing with pyramid salt added a nice crunch, especially when paired with a smear of pesto.

The lamb itself was seared to a juicy, caramelized crunch and cooked to an internal temperature of 130°F. The meat, after resting a few minutes, was silky, moist, and lean. There was no off-putting smell prior, during, or after cooking — in fact, it tasted fresher than I ever knew meat could smell.

For those that haven’t tasted much lamb before, it tastes similar to beef, but lighter, cleaner, and less fatty, almost like venison. As the meat cools you can actually taste the flavor of the lamb more.

About  the  Lamb

Now, this lamb is not the same as average supermarket lamb. Alpine Origin Merino roams free on mountain pastures in New Zealand, grazing on grasses & alpine herbs. Because of this, the meat has a lighter, less gamy flavor and is more evenly marbled.


Product provided for review.  All notes & opinions are my own.

Thank you Marx Foods for the opportunity to taste this amazing lamb and to try my hand at making it myself! Stay tuned for a recipe involving Lamb Loin Fillets.

Simple Loose Leaf Tea: Insomniac’s Dream Herbal

Description

This dreamy tisane blends five calming herbs into one delicious tea. Catnip and Chamomile Flowers lure the drinker into a mellow, relaxed mood, while the bright flavors of Peppermint, Lemon Balm and Lemongrass dance around their palate, resulting in a tea that is at once effective and unforgettable. But drinker beware- you may hit the pillow before finishing your cup!

Ingredients: Catnip, Chamomile, Lemon Balm, Lemongrass, Peppermint

Available through: Simple Loose Leaf | Facebook

Tasting Notes

The scent of this tea is much stronger than the taste. Has aromas of grass, mint, hay, a hint of citrus and a heavy dose of honey from the chammomile.

The taste is smooth, light, and sweet with a hint of floral honey on the finish. I thought it would be a lot heavier tasting after smelling, but it wasn’t too rich.

Flavors: Grass, Hay, Honey, Mint

About logo

Simple Loose Leaf is not just another simple tea club that uses its members to get rid of spare inventory that is about to expire. We are a Subscription Box company dedicated to enriching people’s lives through the love of tea. Tea is the world’s most consumed drink, behind water, for a reason. The variety of tea and the beautiful nuances of tea rival the great wines of history, and we are just at the beginning of the tea revolution here in the United States.

Product provided for review.  All notes & opinions are my own.