Earl Grey
November 16, 2011 | 
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Turkish Stovetop Samovar
While you’re unlikely to have an elaborate charcoal powered samovar at home, you could easily have an inexpensive stovetop model, and even if this is out of reach you could build your own by finding a teapot that fits with some stability on top of a kettle. “To what purpose?” you may ask. Ah, so that you can brew tea the way they do in Turkey, among other places. The advantages of the samovar are flavor, you can serve a lot of tea at once fairly quickly, and the fact that you can serve tea either dark or light.
Here’s how you do it. Fill the kettle with water and bring to a boil, then place some tea into the teapot and fill with hot water from the kettle. Refill the kettle. Now take off the kettle’s lid and place the teapot on the kettle so that the teapot now acts like the lid. Place the kettle back on the stove. When ready to serve, fire up the stove to heat the water in the kettle. This will also heat the now concentrated tea in the teapot. To serve, separate the teapot and kettle, pour some tea into tea glasses, and top with hot water from the kettle. Adjusting the ratio of tea to water makes it darker or lighter to suit the preference of each individual being served. Offer sugar cubes so that everyone can sweeten their tea to taste.
While the samovar method works well with Turkish tea, Russian tea, and with Earl Grey (the Iranian preference, I believe), it may not do as well with strong black teas that tend toward bitterness and astringency; these are better served with milk or cream as in England (but never in Turkey).
Most of the light but tasty tea grown in Turkey is consumed in Turkey, but I do make it a point to always have some on hand at my tea store, as well as a stovetop samovar or two.
Roland at Tea & Treasure
Posted in Earl Grey, Tea Accessories, Turkish Tea, Uncategorized | 
Tags: Russian tea, samovar, Stovetop Samovar, tea in Turkey, Turkish tea | 
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When it comes to tea, there’s a grey area consisting of the earl, the lady, and the cream (which is actually vanilla).
I am referring to three teas, namely Earl Grey, Lady Grey, and Earl Grey Cream. All three are black tea flavored with bergamot; in addition, Lady Grey contains flavor from orange and lemon, and Earl Grey Cream contains vanilla.
I have heard that in Australia there is also a Girlie Grey (I’ll pass along the info on this as I get it).
The recipe for Earl Grey was invented by a British Prime Minister in the 1830′s, the 2nd Earl Grey, and passed on to tea purveyor Jacksons of Picadilly.
The bergamot flavor is extracted from the skin of the bergamot orange, a citrus fruit grown commercially in Italy. Bergamot bestows a heady floral fragrance and flavor to Earl Grey that I find to be intoxicating (especially when I spike the tea with whisky). Earl Grey is a wonderful tea to grind up and add to sweet baked goods. If you haven’t yet experienced tea’s Grey area, it’s a black and white situation: try it now!
Roland Petrov