No longer solely served in china settings accompanied by lacy napkins and scones, tea is now a trendy ingredient for cocktails. Swan's Cafe, located in the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, offers an untraditional take on tea with the "Keemun Cream," a vodka drink infused with Keemun tea and Baileys, as well as the "Apple Mar-tea-ni," a concoction of vodka, black tea and sour apple Schnapps.
Over on Boylston, Vox Populi serves a warmer version with "The Ma-Tea," a black tea blended with coconut milk and bourbon.
Koreana, a Korean restaurant in Cambridge, dishes out a specialty cocktail made with iced tea, Woo-long tea and Soju, Korean liquor.
If you don't feel like heading out for a tea cocktail, try making a version at home to add a little flair to your weekend social events.
The simplest versions include very few ingredients. Combine a gallon of tea (the sweeter the better) with a liter of tequila for some Texas T. It will have your friends screaming yee-haw in no time.
Not done celebrating St. Patrick's Day? Substitute an Irish coffee for Irish tea by mixing a cup of tea, whiskey, milk and sugar.
Another warming treat can be made with apple tea (Turkish versions work best, so browse the ethnic aisles at Shaw's) and Absolut Kurant vodka. With a little sugar mixed in, you're sure to get a spicy treat.
If you want to truly impress your friends, various tea cocktail recipes are published in cooking magazine such as Gourmet or online at epicurious.com.
Below is my list of favorites.
Fruit Juice and Vodka Punch (Bon Appetit)
3 cups pineapple juice
2 cups brewed or instant tea
2 cups apple juice
1 1/2 cups vodka
1 6-ounce can frozen lemonade con centrate, thawed
1 6-ounce can frozen orange juice concentrate, thawed
2 cups chilled ginger ale
Combine first six ingredients in large bowl. Stir until blended. Cover and refrigerate until well chilled, at least two hours. (Can be prepared one day ahead. Keep refrigerated.) Mix in ginger ale and serve in 12 cups.
The Rum Refresher (Gourmet)
1 jigger (1 1/2 ounces) dark rum
6 tablespoons fresh orange juice
6 tablespoons strong tea, chilled
Garnish: orange slice and mint sprig
In a highball glass half filled with ice, combine rum, orange juice and tea. Stir. Garnish with orange slice and mint for one serving.
Spiced Red Zinger Rum Punch (Gourmet)
2-inch piece fresh ginger
5 1/2 cups water
1/2 cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
4 whole cloves
10 Celestial Seasonings Red Zinger tea bags
3/4 cup amber rum, or to taste
1 navel orange, sliced
Peel ginger and cut crosswise into thin slices. In a medium saucepan, boil water, ginger, sugar, cinnamon stick and cloves, stirring until sugar is dissolved.
Add tea bags and remove pan from heat. Steep tea until cool.
Discard tea bags and cinnamon stick and transfer tea to a pitcher. Chill tea, covered, at least 12 hours and up to one day.
Remove ginger and cloves with a slotted spoon and discard. Stir in rum and orange slices. Serve punch over ice in six stemmed glasses.
Mar-tea-ni (Bon Appetit)
4 cups water
3 Red Zinger tea bags or other hibiscus-flavored tea
1/2 cup sugar
3 cups gin
2 1/2 teaspoons vermouth
12 ice cubes
12 mango slices
Bring four cups water to boil in large saucepan over high heat. Add tea bags and sugar. Remove pan from heat and let steep 20 minutes.
Discard tea bags. Cool tea mixture. Combine tea mixture, gin, and vermouth in large pitcher.
Cover pitcher with plastic wrap and place in freezer until mixture is cold, about 3 hours. Remove pitcher from freezer; add ice cubes.
Stir briskly to melt ice partially. Strain into twelve chilled Martini glasses. Garnish each glass with mango slice.
The Earl Grey MarTEAni (Businessweek online)
1/2 oz. Tanqueray Gin
4 tbsp. Earl Grey Tea
3/4 oz. freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 oz. simple syrup
1 egg white
1 lemon
1/2 cup sugar
Measure four tablespoons of loose Earl Grey tea into a one-liter bottle of Tanqueray gin. Replace cap, and shake well to agitate.
Allow tea to steep in gin for two hours. To catch loose tea leaves, pour gin infusion through a fine strainer into an empty bottle or bowl.
Take care not to press down on tea to extract excess gin, as this is likely to add unwanted bitterness to the gin.
Rinse out Tanqueray bottle to remove any leftover tea leaves. Pour infused gin back into bottle, cap, and keep chilled in refrigerator.
Measure all ingredients into a mixing glass Add ice and shake hard. Strain into a chilled martini glass that has been rimmed with lemon zest sugar and add lemon twist.
To prepare lemon zest sugar: Grate the fresh lemon peel, taking care to use only the yellow rind and avoid the bitter white pith. Mix with the sugar.
