![]() ![]() “Hong Kong’s premium stock is amazingly delicious. These Japanese beef croquettes are so popular there's a 30-year waitlist “Sazenka’s food is based on Sichuan cuisine with a Japanese spirit and a Chinese sensibility.” “There is a Japanese phase called Wakon-Kansai (Japanese spirit and Chinese talent),” Kawada says, when asked to define his cuisine. In 2017, he began to develop his own version of Chinese cuisine and Sazenka was born. He worked there for a decade before switching to Japanese cuisine and training under chef Seiji Yamamoto of RyuGin for five years.īut over the years, he visited China often to see the landscapes and deepen his understanding of the cuisine. “I was so impressed by it that I decided I would become a Chinese chef in the future.”Īt 18 years old, he got a job inside the kitchen of Azabu Choko, a now-closed Sichuanese restaurant in Tokyo. I could see the magnificent Chinese landscape in the food. “There were dishes named bang bang chicken, mapo tofu or yun bai rou (cloudy pork slices). “I vividly remember that moment, when I was attracted by the beauty and the deliciousness of Chinese food,” he says. His love for Chinese food took seed when he was just five years old, after his parents took him to a Chinese restaurant in Japan’s Tochigi prefecture. The menu’s regional Chinese dishes, from Cantonese char siu (honey-glazed roast pork) to Sichuan pepper pigeon, are infused with a uniquely Japanese touch.įor Kawada, the menu he’s created for Sazenka is a childhood dream come true. It begins with a bowl of somen noodles served in a mix of clear broth and tea oil in a blue-and-white porcelain stem cup, and ends with a sweet rice ball floating in a mild tea soup. The restaurant’s 11-course feast, excluding small bites, pairing teas and desserts, feels more like a mindful kaiseki experience than a traditional Chinese banquet. The restaurant’s poetic name, Sazenka, is made up three words that mean tea, zen and Chinese. But when we look back, I still think it was fun when we were climbing.” It’s like climbing a mountain – we reach one summit and something else begins. “Unfortunately, I’ll probably not feel satisfied with the results until I die,” says Kawada. Store the tea-infused syrup in the refrigerator and use in place of a regular simple syrup in your cocktail recipe.Īs we said, you can use this simple method with any tea and any spirit of your choosing to add some tea-zazz to your cocktails! Here are just a couple of recipes to get you started.Sazenka is located inside a former diplomat's house in an upscale residential district.Stir an equal amount of sugar into the hot tea and stir until fully saturated.Steep your tea of choice according to the brewing instructions on the package.This gives you the option of adding a tea infusion into different kinds of cocktails made with a variety of spirits, rather than having an entire bottle of infused vodka or gin, for example. Refrigerate until you’re ready to start mixin’!Īnother method you can use for more generic use is to steep tea in syrup. When you’re ready, strain the tea from the alcohol.Also, the higher the alcohol content, the less time it needs to steep. The longer it steeps, the stronger the tea flavor. Let the tea steep in the alcohol for a minimum of two hours and up to 24.Once you have your chosen ingredients, just add 3-4 tablespoons of loose tea to 750mL of spirits and shake or stir to combine.Also, if you’re creating your cocktail as you unwind in the evening, consider using a decaf tea if caffeine at night is a concern. Think how beautiful a drink would be with the purple hues of Indigo Punch or vibrant red of Strawberry Kiwi Fruit. Herbals, flavored black teas and flavored green teas are wonderful choices if you are looking to give your spirit a definitive flavor and/or vibrant color. Any tea will work, but those with more flavor will have more impact than say a very light, delicate tea. As with any cocktail, the better the quality of alcohol, the better the beverage. With the variety of tea flavors and blends available now, the art of infusing for cocktails has become incredibly popular, as the possibilities and options for creaTEAvity are endless.Ĭreating a unique tea-infused spirit is about as simple as simple gets: Back as far as colonial times, tea was used as an ingredient in alcoholic punches. But what if we twisted this notion around a bit - rather than just adding tea as an ingredient, instead we infused the alcohol with the tea? It’s incredibly easy and can change the way you look at your favorite cocktail recipes.Ĭombining tea and liquor is not a new notion. Fans of tea cocktails have long known that adding tea as an ingredient in cocktails (and mocktails) makes a great drink even better. ![]()
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