Tea, it’s what’s for dinner…sort of…sometimes. The most common way to consume tea these days, as we’re surely all aware, is to drink it. Which is just the same as it always has been and probably always will be. But, as we’ve noted in these pages in the past, tea can also be used as an ingredient in a wide variety of dishes.

The ways in which tea can be used in cuisine are probably limited only by the imagination. It can be used in desert, as in this recipe for a rice pudding, which makes uses of the flavorful chai tea as an ingredient. Or you can use it in a variety of other ways, as noted here at Salada Tea’s recipe page, which includes video instructions on how to use tea in vegetable soup and smoothies and martinis.

http://www.timeslive.co.za/lifestyle/food/article787858.ece/Chai-tea-rice-pudding

http://www.greentea.com/recipes.aspx

If livening up a martini sounds like a peculiar use for tea, then you may not be aware of all of the many varieties of tea that are flavored with spirits and vice versa. For another variation on the tea martini theme, check out this recipe for Audrey’s Earl Grey MarTEAni, which makes use of Earl Grey tea and which was recently featured in New York Magazine.

http://nymag.com/nightlife/articles/04/cocktails/galleries/audrey/

If Chinese oolong tea and vodka are more to your liking, you’ll want to take a taste of Absolut’s new Wild Tea. As the luxury goods web site Luxist recently pointed out, the vodka maker has added to their immense range of flavored vodkas with one that mixes spirits with the aforementioned tea, elderflower, red apples and citrus.

http://www.luxist.com/2011/01/26/absolut-launches-new-wild-tea-vodka/

If you like a little less of the hard stuff and a little more tea, you could go with tea that’s flavored with the essence of spirits. Take whiskey, for example, which has found its way into a pair of flavored teas recently, including one by Steven Smith, formerly of Tazo Tea. Of you could go with a similar product from Edinburgh Tea & Coffee Company.

http://pdx.eater.com/archives/2010/12/14/twelve-days-of-eater-whiskey-tea-by-steven-smith-teamaker.php

http://www.edinburghteacoffee.co.uk/index.php/shop/tea-shop/125g-caddie-loose-leaf-tea.html

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