Cooking with tea – Life Chef class

Hey there! If you follow me on twitter, then you know that on Saturday I went to an amazing cooking class at Sevananda Natural Foods Co-Op taught by Life Chef (Asata) called cooking with herbs and tea.

Asata (pronounced As-ah-tah) created some amazingly healthy dishes that promoted the flavors of tea in different forms.  She gave us a hand out chock full of facts about tea and how to brew it. Amazingly, your utensils AND ingredients can vary the tastes of tea.  The purity of water is important as well as the temperature in which you brew the tea.

She gave us a copy of the latest tasteforlife magazine that is put out by Sevananda Natural Foods Co-Op. In it detailed a recipe for a soup in which green tea was used.  Asata’s blog is full of healthy and yummy recipes. This summer, I tried several of her salads.   Here is  a list of the recipes that she cooked for us that can be found in detail here:

• Cucumber-Mint Tea Spread
• Chai Tea Infused Mushrooms
• Oolong Tea Seared Tofu Steaks
• Green Tea Noodles

All of these recipes were yummy but yet not too spicy. All of the benefits of tea without even having to drink it! We could have our tea and eat it too! In fact, we did! Asata also brewed some tea for us to drink with our yummy lunch.  The atmosphere of the class was very laid back.   Some shared their challenges with eating healthy due to many allergies while others of us just asked any question that came to mind. (I MIGHT have asked more than my share of questions! Those that know me can roll eyes here.) Some of the things that I asked her about were garlic salt seasoning on steak and her thoughts on recipes for my new juicer. She said emphatically to throw the garlic salt away!  Seems you can’t control the amount of sodium that way AND you don’t get the health benefits of the garlic, just flavor…(further blog posts coming!)

I’d never tried Tofu in a steak form before. It was very good!  The Cucumber dip even more yummy than a Tzatziki type dip due to the extra depth of flavor and the non-dairy Tofutti cream cheese. The mushrooms were unbelievably good with a spicy yet clean taste. It has never occurred to me to steam veggies on a bed of napa cabbage! (see pics)  The Green tea noodles were wonderful as the noodles themselves were of the soba variety;  less on the carb count, higher on the whole grain count! As she fixed this one, we talked about sweet peppers having a LOT of Vitamin C. It was then that she informed the class that the hot peppers have even MORE Vitamin C.  She also mentioned that Vitamin C in regard to the production of collagen needs a carrier and that rose hips could be that carrier. I hope that she will expound on that soon on her blog because those facts are intriguing! Rose Hips have a lot of Vitamin C on their own…so now I’m really curious! Could it be she’s talking about bioflavonoids?  They occur with Vitamin C naturally and are considered to be the activators of Vitamin C.  Isn’t it fun to learn new things only to find you have even more questions?

Tomorrow I’ll tell you about my shopping experience at Sevananda Natural Foods Co-Op after the class…

Happy Washing!

~Regina