About Cooking

Tea is hot, that's for sure. With a total sales increase of 5.1 billion dollars between 1990 and 2007, there's no denying that tea is as hot as ever.

But drinking the popular beverage in its usual hot form isn't necessarily the coolest way to go.  Below are two of my all-time favorite, oh-so delish tea-themed drinks that will take you from day to night with ease. .

SPICED CHAI MARTINIS

Cooking with tea is as old as the history of tea itself. The ancient Chinese used dried pungent oolong leaves to stuff fish before steaming it; they added tea leaves to the fire source for smoking duck; infused boiling water with tea leaves to give eggs a distinctly marbled appearance on the whites when hard boiled. Prior to the final minutes of cooking, the eggshells are slightly cracked, thus allowing the teas to seep through and create this magical "marbled" effect; either green or black teas are great for this.