other people's brains

I'm still waiting for my brain to wake up (though I think I have found the culprit--allergies! My eyes are itchy and my brain is slooooow) so in the mean time, I'll direct you to some people whose brains are not in drug-induced stasis. These are some places I've been visiting lately:

• La Tartine Gourmand: Exquisitely beautiful food photos and each interesting entry is written in English and French, so you can practice your French literacy of cooking verbs like " Saupoudrez," " Ajoutez," and " Délayez".
• Mo Willems Doodles: See new sketches and doodles by the illustrator of all things pigeonic.
• Bent Objects: Check out the witty bended wire sculptures of this artist.
• Stay up to date on the many crises when it comes to public education in our state at Michigan Parents for Schools.
• See what you could be eating if you lived in NYC by reading The Girl Who Ate Everything and see what another New Yorker is cooking up with the fine ingredients she buys at Tiny Banquet Committee.
• Envy and admire two people who split their time between the South of France and NY and eat at fantastic restaurants whose menus they describe and critique in detail at Country Epicure.
  

nyeeeh...

The last few weeks on the 4 obsessions front have been kind of nyeeeh-ish. Nothing spectacularly wonderful, nothing so disgusting it must be shared in order to be tolerated. Even my kids' behavior has been in the middle zone rather than rocking their usual extremes of jocularity and barbarism.

I've read a few decent books (The Piano Tuner and The Thin Place). Both have their merits (though I'm not sure if one of them is necessarily universally perceived by other readers--The Piano Tuner is set in Burma and it made me crave a fermented tea leaf salad like crazy!) but neither made me rush out and recommend them to other folks.

I've started, and abandoned, a few writing ideas, both fiction and non-fiction. But I haven't managed to get that writing-rush that makes the words pour out (not enough caffeine? too much sunshine? lack of life-drama?).

I've almost finished knitting the branching out scarf, but now that my vegetable garden is active, my hands are more occupied with dirty, edible things.

I've made some decent, but not necessarily memorable, food. Here's an example: for Mother's Day I made a very nice picnic (Mother's Day around here is always a little complicated since Brian's and my mom are both in the vicinity and I must find a way to both adore and be adored. So we took the mom's canoing and I made a picnic for afterwards.) There was Gruyere and herb quiche, fresh corn salad and Greek cucumber salad,
followed by vanilla-bean Greek-yogurt panna cotta with honey-wine apricots on top.
Very pretty, quite tasty, but not really ragingly good. I'm sure I'll make another quiche like this one sometime, but is the epitome of all quich-i-ness that requires I share the recipe? Not really.

So for now I guess I'll just putter along, hoping that a little drama, hopefully of the positive variety comes my way. Suggestions welcome.

Prune fest--the salad course

I've made this salad a few times in the last week and it is quickly becoming a favorite lunch. The base is simple--just some good greens (the lettuces, spinach and arugula in my garden are almost ready for thinning and they'd be great here) and some toasted chopped walnuts. What makes the salad special, and meal-worthy, are the little pink flavor bombs pictured below:
They are prunes, stuffed with goat cheese, wrapped in prosciutto and baked until the goat cheese is gooey and the ham is a little crisp at the edges. They are the perfect salty, sweet, tangy mouthful that need the greens to keep them from being overwhelming. I made an orange-muscat-walnut oil vinaigrette that also proved to be a good counterbalance to the richness of the prunes. While stuffing prunes sounds fiddly, it really wasn't bad:
It definitely helps to start with pitted prunes which just require a slit with a knife and a little stuffing of cheese. Roll them up in a little prosciutto and they are tidy little bundles ready for baking.


Prune-Chevre-Prosciutto Salad
adapted from an old Sunset magazine

About 5-6 prunes per person
a small log of fresh goat cheese
about 4 oz prosciutto
a nice load of mixed greens--spinach, arugula, baby lettuces
about 1/3 C toasted chopped walnuts

1/4 C fresh orange juice
a little orange zest
1/4 muscat vinegar (Morgan and York sells a nice one, or substitute another favorite vinegar)
1 small shallot, chopped fine
1/2 C walnut oil
1 t Dijon mustard
salt and pepper

Pre-heat oven to 400.

Cut a slit in each prune, shove a lump of goat cheese inside and then wrap the prune in a slice of prosciutto. If the prosciutto is long or wide, cut into appropriate sized strips (see photo above for estimated size). Put the wrapped prunes on a silpat or parchment line baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes then remove them from the oven.

In a jar, mix together dressing ingredients. Make sure you have enough salt in the dressing.

Mound salad greens on plates, sprinkle with walnuts. Arrange prunes on the salad and drizzle with the dressing. Serve with a knife and fork (each prune takes at least two bites to eat and cutting them with a knife protects you from the dreaded ooze of hot cheese that could squirt out and burn your lip if you just bit into the prunes).

The perfect PMS dinner

Sometimes you just have to serve melted cheese for dinner. This is an especially fine idea when you are PMSing your brains out and can't stop the salt monster. So tonight I put guilt aside and made some fantastic cheesy goo for dinner:

Food to make a PMSing woman happy--salt, fat and alcohol.

Since it is Tres de Mayo and Brian is going out of town on the Cinco, I decided that this (and my insane PMS this month) was a good excuse to make a recipe for Queso Fundido with Roasted Poblano Vinagrette. That's a fancy name for a the rectangular pan of gooey cheese sauce that is pictured above. This is a Bobby Flay recipe that I saw posted somewhere (can't remember where) when the Super Bowl was approaching and people were talking about what to feed the masses in front of the TV. Mr. Flay suggested this as a dip, not as a fine family dinner, but we were a happy crowd of chip chomping, cheese scooping maniacs (I made a separate little pan for the kids with cheddar cheese on top and no poblano vinagrette). And since Momma is a little on edge today, having a dinner in which not one word of complaint was uttered was worth the nutritional vacuum.

I know they say that salt, alcohol and caffine (which I have also had a great deal of today) make PMS worse, and maybe after this cycle is over, I'll try to be better next month. But once the monster is there, chomping on your brain, making you bitchy about the stupidest things, I find that feeding the monster and feeling happy is much better than attempting to be virtuous and getting meaner.

I feel a little ill right now from excessive cheese consumption, but I think that it'll have subsided in time for me consume a bar of bittersweet chocolate I have stashed away while watching some crap TV later tonight (because really, after salt and alcohol, one must complete the PMS trinity with chocolate, preferably eaten in front of the TV. No PBS allowed unless it is a soppy costume drama.)

Queso Fundido with Roasted Poblano Vinaigrette
from Bobby Flay

Cheese Goo
3 T butter
3 T flour
3 cups whole milk
8 oz monterey jack cheese, grated
1/4 t salt
fresh ground pepper
6 oz goat cheese, crumbled
3 T chopped fresh cilantro
Roasted Poblano Vinaigrette (see recipe below)
a whole lot of Tortilla chips for scooping

Make the cheese goo:
1) Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the flour and cook for a minute. Gradually whisk in milk and cook until thickened. Remove from heat, add grated monterey jack cheese, and stir until melted. Season with salt and pepper.

2) Preheat the broiler. Scrape the mixture into a 9 inch ovenproof pan and sprinkle the goat cheese over the top. Put the pan under the broiler until the goat cheese is golden brown on top. Remove from the oven, drizzle with poblano vinaigrette and sprinkle with chopped cilantro. Serve hot with chips.

Roasted Poblano Vinaigrette
2 poblano peppers, roasted, peeled and seeded
1/4 C red wine vinegar
3 cloves peeled garlic
1/4 C canola oil
salt and pepper

Place the peppers, vinegar, garlic and oil in a blender and blend until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

The much maligned prune

I don't understand the American aversion to prunes. I think that they have become so linked to constipation that people don't realize how wonderful they are; instead they seem to raise the "eeewww" reaction as often as that other much-abused produce item, the beet (of which I am also a champion). Those of us with a bit of eastern European culinary indoctrination swoon at the idea of prune-filled pastries. If you ever want to buy me a punzki in Hamtramck, please get me prune-filled.

I'm going to do a little celebration of the prune, starting with a pretty conventional usage, in a muffin. Still to come in this prune fest: a chevre prune salad, prune stuffed pork loin and possibly a chicken dish cooked with olives and prunes.
These muffins are from Dorrie Greenspan's latest book Baking: From My Home to Yours. I've tried 4 recipes from this book and this one is the best of them. I also tried the lemon cream tart--excessively unctuous, pumpkin muffins--not pumpkiny or spicy enough for me, and a cookie called a chocolate chunker--which was overwhelmingly rich. All three were OK, but not recipes I'd make again.

But these muffins are fantastic. I want them for breakfast; I want one at tea time (especially with Earl Grey tea because the bergamot in the tea brings out the lemon in the muffin) and I sometimes have another muffin instead of dessert. Greenspan calls them "Great Grains Muffins" which is accurate in terms of ingredients, with the oats, cornmeal and whole wheat flour, but a little inaccurate in terms of the taste that you get. When I think Great Grains, I picture something darker and more bran-muffin-like than these. These muffins don't look like they are good for you. There is only 1/3 C of cornmeal in the recipe, and yet the corn flavor is quite prominent. I've made a few tweaks (added lemon zest, replaced some butter with canola oil, used white whole wheat flour instead of regular whole wheat) and I prefer to call them "Lemon Prune Muffins". They are good plain, but my favorite way to eat them is with a chunk of sharp cheddar cheese and, if you really want to go over the top, butter and marmalade.


Lemon Prune Muffins
adapted from Dorrie Greenspan's Great Grains Muffins in Baking: from my home to yours

1 C all purpose flour
1/3 C white whole wheat flour
1/3 C yellow cornmeal
1/3 C old-fashioned oats
1/4 C sugar
2 t baking powder
1/4 t baking soda
1/4 t salt
finely grated zest of one lemon
1 C buttermilk
1/3 C maple syrup
2 large eggs
4 T butter melted and cooled
4 T canola oil
3/4 C prunes, cut into quarters

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (or 375 degrees if you use a convection oven). Spray a muffin tin with non-stick spray.

In a large bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients. In another bowl whisk together the wet ingredients.

Pour wet into dry and stir gently. When about 1/2 combined, add the prunes and continue stirring until there are no more dry spots. Divide the batter into the muffin cups and bake for 18-20 minutes until the tops are golden. Cool for 5 minutes and then carefully remove muffins and put on a rack to cool.

Countdown

OK all, you have 224 days to read Philip Goldman's The Golden Compass trilogy before the movie opens (on December 7). The series is another of those marketed-as-YA-though-only-because-the-main-character-is-a-young-girl books. Because, you know, all the ten-year-olds I know are busy meditating on the nature of good and evil and the mutability of the soul and whether Milton's poetics in Paradise Lost is representative of our world....yea right.... I'm not sure if the marketing in England was as youth directed or whether my Aunt is just super cool, because she sent me a copy of The Golden Compass in 1995 when it was just published in England under the alternative title Northern Lights (I do prefer The Golden Compass as a title). Since then, I've re-read the trilogy twice and I'll probably read it again in the next 224 days.

Once you've started the first book, you'll start thinking about what form your Daemon (an animal manifestation of your soul) takes--shrew? eagle? snake?

The folks who made the movie website are smart enough to realize that readers everywhere start thinking about their own Daemons pretty much as soon as they figure out what Daemons are. So they installed a nifty 20 question quiz that supposedly takes your personality traits and assigns them to an animal. (Go to the section on Daemons, then click on the Meet Your Daemon link to get to the quiz). My Daemon is named Adan (at least I think that fancy script says Adan, not Adon. I like the arty-ness of the script but find it damn hard to read).



I took the quiz twice, once answering honestly, and once answering as though someone as unlike me as possible were taking the quiz--I picture this person as an optimistic extrovert, about as unlike me as you can get. "Opposite-Kate" got a terrier as her Daemon. I'll stick with my lion Daemon--since I am kind of suspicious of people when I first meet them, I like the idea of having a big old lion there to back me up.

Lemon love

Blame it on Spring: it's too early for strawberries, too late for (decent) apples and grapefruit, so I'm obsessing about lemon desserts.

I do plan to try making the elusive ideal lemon tart again, but I had a craving this week that did not involve crust so I took a little interlude in the land of puddin'cake. What's that term "puddin'cake"? It refers to a dessert that can't quite decide under which category it should be filed: lemon pudding cakes.
I've made a chocolate version of these which are rich and wonderful, but it being Spring, I was looking for something a little lighter and fresher. I saw the recipe on the Fine Cooking web site, a place I stop by now and again to check what they are up to. I stopped subscribing because the subscription wasn't cheap and there were too many issues that I'd glance at and not want to cook any of the recipes. But it has been a couple of years and as I've let a few other subscriptions lapse, I'm considering re-subscribing. This recipe certainly helps me lean in that direction.

The puddin'cake was true to its name--very airy cake on the top and gooey and more intensely lemony on the bottom. Bright flavors, lovely textures, just what the recipe promised. Really, the only thing I have to question about the recipe is their suggestion that serving it with whipped cream on top is optional. This is what the puddin'cake looked like without a whipped cream cap:
Pretty homely, eh? If you are making them just for yourself to eat while watching TV (yes, I confess, I did eat one just like this while watching crap on TV) and the aesthetic element is negligible, then go ahead, omit the whipped cream. The flavor is fine on its own. But this dessert is nice enough for company and company deserves something pretty (really, you do too). The whipped cream makes them look much more attractive; it also does take them up a notch in the richness department which is fine right now with there still being a bit of a nip in the air. When I make this in the summer (yes, I fully intend this recipe to become a regular part of my repertoire) I think I'll plan for a fresh fruit layer to cover the crevices in the top--some fresh raspberries or blueberries, perhaps with a sprinkling of powdered sugar on top, would both serve to disguise the unattractive part and would complement the lemon without adding a degree of richness which I don't find as appealing in the heat of the summer.

Lemon Pudding Cakes
Adapted from Fine Cooking recipe by Nicole Rees
Yields eight individual cakes

Ingredients

Softened butter for the ramekins
1/4 cup un-salted butter, melted and cooled slightly
1 cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs, separated, at room temperature
1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour
1/4 plus 1/8 teaspoon table salt
1-1/4 cups whole milk, at room temperature
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice, at room temperature (from about two lemons)
1 tablespoon finely grated lemon zest (from about two Lightly sweetened whipped cream or fresh raspberries (enough to cover the tops of each cake) for serving

Position a rack in the center of the oven and heat the oven to 350°F. Butter eight 6-ounce ceramic oven-proof ramekins or Pyrex custard cups and arrange them in a baking dish or roasting pan (a 10x15-inch or two 8x8-inch Pyrex dishes work well).

In a large bowl, whisk the melted butter with 2/3 cup of the sugar and the egg yolks until smooth and light, about 1 minute. Add the flour and salt and pour in just enough milk to whisk the flour smoothly into the egg yolk mixture. Then whisk in the remaining milk and the lemon juice until smooth. The mixture will be very fluid.

Put the egg whites in a large bowl. Beat with an electric mixer (a hand-held or a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment) on medium speed until the whites begin to foam, 30 to 60 seconds. Increase the speed to high and beat just until the whites hold soft peaks when the beater is pulled away, another 1 to 2 minutes. Reduce the mixer speed to medium. With the mixer running, very slowly sprinkle in the remaining 1/3 cup sugar; this should take about a minute. Stop the mixer and scrape the bowl. Beat on high speed until the whites hold medium-firm peaks when the beater is pulled away, about another 30 seconds.

Scrape one-third of the egg whites into the egg yolk mixture, sprinkle the lemon zest on top, and whisk until combined. Gently incorporate the remaining whites into the batter, using the whisk in a folding/stirring motion. The batter will still be thin.

Portion the mixture evenly among the ramekins; the cakes don’t rise much, so you can fill the ramekins to within 1/8 inch of the top. Pull out the oven rack and put the baking dish full of ramekins on the rack. Pour warm water into the dish to reach halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Bake until the tops of the cakes are light golden and slightly puffed, and when touched with a finger, they should feel spongy and spring back a bit but hold a shallow indentation, 25 to 30 minutes. Using tongs, carefully transfer the ramekins to a rack. Let cool to room temperature and then refrigerate for at least 2 hours and up to 24 hours before serving, with whipped cream if you like.

What we do when it is too cold to camp

While the weather was worse in Michigan this past week, it was a little shocking to go to DC and find snow on the cherry blossoms. The small people had their spring break (these kids have had some sort of break every other week since the new year--a teacher in-service day here, a week there--I don't know how parents without flexible schedules can handle it.) Normally we head southish to do some camping this week, but as a frigid blast was covering every place within a reasonable driving distance, we went to DC and Pennsylvania for a little cultural tourism instead.

As completely disgusted as I am by many of the people in our government, there is a weird feeling of ownership when it comes to DC. Maybe it was just knowing that a wee portion of my taxes cover the free admission to all the Smithsonian museums, or the swarms of tourists from all over the country, or just being able to walk from the capitol building to other buildings of major governmental importance, but it did remind me that patriotism shouldn't be a word co-opted by right-wing discourse.

Two kids, on their way to the Air and Space Museum, trying hard not to become airborne themselves due to the fierce winds.

I'd have to say one of the biggest pleasures of the trip was occasioned by a very small creature:

The Elephant Shrew

All the people crowding around the panda area at the National Zoo, elbowing each other in the ribs to get a glimpse of a rotund, pee-stained bear lazily eating bamboo do not know what they were missing. We loved the small mammals house more than any other place in the zoo and spent about twenty-minutes watching this little elephant shrew with his incredibly expressive snorkel of a nose scamper and peek and hide with his two other family members. We were laughing so hard that we drew a crowd. The absurd-looking and very wriggly naked mole rats were a close second in the humor department.

Food wise, traveling with my kids is always a challenge. I always want to hit the local ethnic places and they want a little culinary security when the rest of their world is in flux. Despite these challenges, I was determined to get some Vietnamese food while in DC.

Vietnamese food and DC go together in my head because I first tasted this cuisine when my parents took me there for my museum extravaganza when I was ten, and being a pretty flexible eater (for a kid) they took my sister and I to our first Vietnamese restaurant. I don't have strong memories of the food, but I do remember the lemonade served--it was fresh squeezed, lightly lemony and sugary, and I loved it. I remember being so surprised that my mouth wasn't being assaulted by excessive acid but that the flavor wasn't washed out, just delicate.

My kids, being no where near as flexible eaters as I was, would not go quietly to a Vietnamese restaurant (maybe Fiona on her own, but she follows Ian's lead when she sees him reject unfamiliar food). But thank god for take out. I hit a Safeway and got them frozen mac and cheese that we could nuke in the kitchenette at our hotel, then called in an order to a Vietnamese place that turned out to be really good called Minh's (their web site is still under construction). I felt reassured when I went in to pick up the order and saw mostly Asian people eating there.

I got us some classic Pho:
An eggy crepe studded with shrimp and stuffed with bean sprouts:
And a classic grilled pork vermicelli noodle bowl:
It was terrific stuff, the only change I would have made would have been more garlic and fish sauce in the dipping sauces because I like mine on the pungent side.

I would have liked to eat some more Vietnamese food while we were there, but felt grateful to have managed even a little. We did get to have another good meal which was made even more memorable for the company. Debbie met us at a kid-friendly Italian restaurant and I got to see her break pretty much every major Passover and Kosher food rule in one swell pizza!

Let's see, we have leavened pizza crust, bacon, and the mixing of meat and dairy with some gooey melted goat cheese...

I had an arugula, radicchio and Parmesan salad with a nice lemon dressing and a plate of good penne with broccoli, garlic, hot peppers and lots of anchovies.

The next day we headed north to Lancaster, PA. It may be the center of the Amish population but (little did I know before being married to Brian) it is also a pilgrimage place for choo-choo fanatics. I won't bore you with choo-choo sites other than to say that the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum is worth a visit, even if you are only mildly interested in trains. And Brian and the kids were kind enough to leave me behind at times so I got a bit of fiction writing going rather than waiting impatiently for them to emerge from various train sites and shops.

As a break in all the train talk, I organized a little outing to Hershey, PA to take the kids to the World of Chocolate:
I'm no lover of Hershey's chalky chocolate but I am a great lover of things that make my kids' faces light up. (For a wonderful, funny examination of enduring crap and loving it because it makes your kids happy, you must read Dutch's entry on how a grown up can cheer for Elmo.)

The rampant consumerism of this enterprise stunned even me--I was expecting buying chocolate to be a big part of the place, but was amazed that the only "free" thing in the entire place was a 15 minute ride that explained how chocolate is made in a Hershey's factory. We went on it twice and the second time through, Fiona was so excited to see these mechanical singing cows that she mooed to them:
We headed into the insane gift shops and let the kids toss around Hershey Kiss pillows, test drive Hershey matchbox cars, and squeeze many a candy themed stuffed animal. Thankfully the kids were pretty happy when, at the end of wandering among chocolate merchandise, we offered to get each of them a 55 cent candy bar and thus exited the place having parted with only $1.10.

If you are a parent and are into, you know, making your kids happy out of their mind, you might want to take a trip to the Hershey mercantile enterprise, but I do have to make a plug here for a much better candy factory tour. Back in the summer of 2005 when we were back in the Bay Area showing the kids my old stomping grounds and eating good burritos and sushi 'till we felt ill, we also ventured inland a little ways and stopped at the Jelly Belly Factory in Fairfield, CA.
The tour of this place was awesome as it actually took you over the real factory and not just some toy ride version and it was 40 minutes long. There were people buzzing about, making huge batches of jelly beans and cool robots packing up the stuff. At the entrance they have a (free!) Jelly Belly tasting bar where you can stand and request flavors until your own belly is pretty jellyish. They even encourage you to try weird flavor combos like Mango Tango Salsa (chew together 2 mango, 1 lemon lime and 1 jalapeno jelly belly all together; it isn't as gross as it sounds).

This place had such an impact on Fiona (who was 2 years 4 months old at the time) that it still appears in her stories. Many evenings at bed time, we'll be asked to tell the story about how she and her favorite stuffed animal of the moment got on a train to go to the Jelly Belly Factory. On the way there, they have lots of adventures all of which culminate in a Jelly Belly sugar feast at the end of the trip.

Now, thanks to this most recent venture into kid candy land, our stories involve getting on a train in Hershey, PA with the singing cows and taking them on a trip across the country to the Jelly Belly factory.

Linked Stories

I've been dwelling on linked stories lately; you know, the kind of book where a minor character in one story appears as the main character in another, or some plot method is used to link up seemingly disparate stories. I tend to really like this type of fiction, with the possible exception of stories that are themed around "who owns this object," the most prominent of which I remember disliking being E. Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes.

Recent books in this vein that I've liked include Joan Silber's Ideas of Heaven: a ring of stories and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. My friend Ami is currently writing a beautiful collection of linked stories, two of which I've felt lucky to get to read in (close to final) draft versions. Maybe I'm just a copycat, but it occurred to me recently that if I find the form so appealing, maybe I should try it myself. I have a whole bunch of different fictions started and abandoned; much of what those files contain is crap, but there are parts that I simply know are good. And I'd like to rescue them from the rest of the gunky story in which they are wallowing--to steal Joan Silber's term "a ring of stories" might be just the form I've been looking for.

So, I'm looking for more quality examples of this form of fiction to read; I'm planning on creating some writing time for myself this summer (maybe I'll be crisis managing a little less with Ian out of school, though that might be naive of me to think so), so until I have liberated that space in my schedule, I plan to pursue a study of the form. I'm looking for suggestions for linked stories that you have read--whether you enjoyed them or hated them (I learned a lot from Accordion Crimes though I didn't enjoy reading it); please send the titles my way.

Tea response!

Yea! I got a response/translation/information about the Tea that Brian brought back from China for me! Isn't the web wonderful? The info was left in the comments section, but I'm re posting it here so all can benefit from the wisdom. Can't wait to try the monkey-picked tea (bright green box)!

1.Pu-Er:
Originally from Yun-nan province. Taste is mild(but could be weird to some people). Tea made from it is so dark that you recognize it immediately(and got a good coloring effect). Strongly recommended after each greasy meal. It washes out the fat/calorie you eat, yet won't cause uncomfortable feeling even if you drink a lot on a regular basis. Its function is common knowledge in Canton area where I'm from; It's not my favorite though.

2. Tie-Guan-Yin:
Most-popular pick in Canton morning-tea and other tea sessions. Nice after-taste. Smells really good...Also wash out fat. But don't over do it.

3. Like you said, jasmine tea. It's tea that absorbed jasmine aroma during the making. I think it's weird taste...just not what pure tea is like to me.

4. Long-Jing:
Quite popular in other provinces, but definitely not in Canton. I don't drink it much, so I'm not allowed to make a comment on it. Quite light compared to 2nd.

5. Dong-Ding-Wu-Long:
Expensive stuff if this is the genuine stuff. The name comes from the legend that: this tea only grows in mountains that only monkeys can climb on and pick, thus making it real...special. Originated from Taiwan I think. I don't remember what that taste like, let me know after you've tried it?