The Evolution of Tea, with Australian Masterchef Simon Toohey

This transcript was created automatically from the audio and checked for names. Minor errors may remain.

Welcome back. Welcome back to my friend. I'm going to tell you in a minute who he is. You know, in 2010, we had this incredible mixologist, long blonde hair. Now it wasn't her, it was him. She was Isa, the photographer who was also with the mixologist and the team maker, but there was Simon and he was a lot of fun. But then he saw the light and he became a chef. And the finalist in MasterChef Australia, no less the finest. And then he saw the light again, and he became a sustainability advocate. So he talks about good food, good health, vegetarian food, vegan food, and all the stuff that helps us to live longer, to enjoy more tea in life.

Now he's all three. Welcome Simon. Happy to have you here. So good to have you back in Sri Lanka. Great to be back in Sri Lanka. And I tell you what, I love it as much this time as I did the first time, even with my very long hair and my loud, loud, well my loudness has been changed. That's for sure. I'm still quite loud, but my hair is shorter. I've become a little bit more rounder. I want to tell you what I've moved into the food world. I've moved into the understanding of sustainability, plant-based food and the healthy elements of all that sort of stuff as well.

So it's been a wonderful journey since we saw each other last. You've been doing some incredible stuff going out with our Lost Ingredients Lab and meeting entrepreneurs. All this week, we went to three or four sites, met some amazing people. See, the best thing about this is not only do they produce great food, which is the number one thing we're sort of like talking about here, but we've got to understand the people behind that, the owners themselves, the people who run the system, wonderful entrepreneurs, great thinkers, forward thinkers. In fact, I like to say that they think historically about how food has grown and they're reliving it again, because really all we're doing is doing stuff that our forefathers have done before. And there's just this big center part in the middle we're still part of, which is trying to fight the system and add chemicals and whatnot. Really sort of like monocroping, as we say. But these wonderful entrepreneurs are changing the way we look at

food again by looking in the back. And you did something amazing. So we launched Genesys. Genesys Project is, it's a, the Dilmah Center for a Sustainable Future yesterday. And Simon was the first show back at the old Dilmah head office and factory complex in Malagawa to where Genesys is based. And he had a masterclass. Tell us what you did there. What did you do with tea and plant-based food? So the idea was to show and express all the amazing ingredients we found on the journey, but not only that, we caught plenty of tea and of course the only tea. So we did a few dishes. There's 35, I think, chefs that came in to see us. And the space is beautiful. It's really, really, really beautifully put together. But at the start we did, I forgot, what did we do at the start? We did a cabbage that I slow braised in tea to make it really rich in spices like ginger, of course, Ceylon cinnamon, and a few others.

I made a grilled watermelon salad. That was fun. So obviously watermelon is in season right now in Sri Lanka. The problem is you still have seeds in your watermelons, but we don't have seeds in Australia. So the first, the last half hour of prep, I was picking the seeds out. But they're sweet. It's sweet. It's nice. Oh my god, so sweet. Really high heat, grilled. And then we've got gottugola. We put gottugola. We put that on top. Let me translate. Gottugola. Gottugola. Sorry, apologies. We call it mugwort. Mugwort. Mugwort, okay. So gottugola, and then some cashews, the cores, and then toddy treacle that have been infused with green tea and jasmine. Beautiful flavors in the treacle.

And that one sizzled over the top. Kettled. Kettled treacle, right? Right. Okay, that's right. So that was sweet, fresh, kind of hot cold. And then the final one we did was using velveteen. And this is something that was phenomenal to me. Velveteen has the highest protein count, I think, across all legumes. It has 31 to 41 degree grams of protein per 100 grams. That beats beef, chicken, pork, all of the meat. So we talked about the world of plant-based eating not getting their protein levels. Tell you what, this is a magic bean. And I reckon it's the future of food when it comes to sustainable eating.

So as part of a balanced diet, you would need your velvet bean. Absolutely. Add that as a little bit of double up with some chickpeas or something to bulk it out because they're really high in protein. So you get a bit of buzz. No, I'm kidding. But the growers did say that. The growers said if you have too much of it, I can get you a little bit. And I was like, I'm not ready for that. So just use chickpeas to sort of bulk it out and then use that with the kochigola again, a beautiful made of vinaigrette from coconut vinegar and coconut oil. And I saw you playing with a few teas. How did you integrate the teas in all of this?

Sort of that one was using, what did I do with that one? That one was using a leaper through the vinaigrette and so cold infusion. So then you get a swing to flavors of both the green flavors. The cabbage was steeped in Ceylon tea that cooks down. So you get the richness through the tea and that incorporated through the spices, the lost ingredients of spices. And then that infused with the cabbage. And so then when I cut the cabbage in half, it grilled it, it created some really heavy aromats and reduced the sauce down to a demi-glade sweetness. And you pour that into the dressing over the top. So each a different way to incorporate tea in the food.

And it's like, you know, if you think about how beautiful and how much tea you can stretch in water or in an infusion, you can get so many different elements of flavor that are unique to cuisine. When we were chatting earlier, you were telling me about how the beautiful cocktail could have tea as an essence. Yeah. The one you spoke of, it's my favorite. Delicious. Oh my gosh. So this is a great little drink that I'm going to claim. But if you get some of your Ceylon premium tea, right? And let's just say you get that four or five bags, you really want to go over the top and kind of cross the friendship barriers of what you really should be doing with tea and apologize about it later and ask for forgiveness. And then you reduce that water down to a really small amount. And I'm talking to the point where 500 mils ends up being maybe 50 mils. So quite a lot. Yeah. And then you extract the tea bag,

pick tea bags out, put that liquid into it in a drip or a jar or whatever or boring thing or whatever. And then a teaspoon of sugar at the bottom of a glass, three or four dashes of the Dilmah Ceylon premium bitters. So it's gone from tea to bitters. Super, super pungent. Stir that around to get that sugar to dilute and then ice and then your favorite booze. So whiskey, bourbon, aged Iraq would be really beautiful, as we mentioned before, something like that to help carry out the flavors. And I think garnishing with an orange twist or a bit of an orange wedge. I think that's perfect. Simon's old fashioned. We're going to try this. We're going to make it.

Yeah, I love it. Let's do it. We should make it tonight. Done. Okay. That's a deal. Okay. So from the ingredient, tea as an ingredient goes well, right? Oh, you think it does heaven in food? Absolutely. Gastronomy. Yeah, you've hit a very unique and the eye rolling essence of why have no, why has no one thought about that before? Tea as an ingredient in food and drink, cocktails and mixology makes so much sense. Going back to the mixologist and the tea maker, I remember you saying exactly that. Looking at the different ingredients and making your cocktails and so on. It's a rich ingredient, but okay. Going from tea as an ingredient to tea as a beverage.

Let's do a little bit of tastings. Now here we have our silver Jubilee tea. This is the line of gourmet teas that we launched when we were 25 years old. We are now 37. And you know where we launched? Do you know where we launched? Question to you. I'm guessing Australia. Yes. Was it at Opera House? No, that was the 25th anniversary, but it was in Rosehill, I think. Yes, that's right. It was in Rosehill. It was in September 1985. Now that was a while ago. Launched, launched. Yeah, the original launch. No, so yeah, you're right. You're right. This silver Jubilee of the 25th anniversary at the Sydney Opera House. What a beautiful place. What a beautiful place.

And I got to meet the singer. Come on. He was there. Yes, because he's an old friend. He's been gone for a while. And I got to hear this song. Finally. That's it.

Sorry, no, I shouldn't. We're gonna lose those viewers. Okay, so we're looking at tea. Now, the thing we're looking at differently here is the tea on the eye. You have the colour. So, looking at tea on the eye, you have the colour that indicates intensity. So, you've got light through to to to tense, but tea on the eye here also connects with the leaf. So, now you see here a whole leaf and you get the astringency you can feel. So, you know, this is from a broad leaf Ceylon tea. So, typically the Camellia sinensis variant Assamica is what we have here. But in China and in Japan, you have a much smaller leaf. It's Camellia sinensis or Camellia sinensis Japonica, which gives you more sweetness. So, here we get more astringent. So, it's perfect for black teas, different, unique in terms of green tea. So, you're getting a, and you know, so what you see there is reflected. Maybe you want to try, would you like to try that Ceylon

whole leaf green tea? Trying to get to your level of slant. You're there, you're there. Don't choke. Don't choke. Good timing. So, that's a, but it's got an astringency. It does. Hopefully good in a drink, but I mean, it's, you know, there's a tea for every mood and every occasion. So, when you come to this next one, so this is, this is a green tea with jasmine. So, it's very, very delicate. It's beautiful, isn't it? It's really great. Lovely floral note. So, it's a soft green tea that we've used jasmine petals. Yeah. Close the back of the throat. No one knows me. Oh yeah. I adore jasmine. I just think it can go one or two ways. It ends up going towards the household side, or if you do it right, it goes down as gorgeous, soft as summer, spring flowers for me, which I really love. And it's got to be gentle, you know, I think the principle behind adding anything to tea is to maintain the harmony, that is essence of gastronomy. So, it's about petals

and not flavor. And that's what we do here. And that's how we get that gentle, the softness where the jasmine is so naturally a part of the tea. It's one profile. It's not something that is alien to the tea. Jasmine and green makes sense. It's beautiful, isn't it? Absolutely. Absolutely. So, now we're going to try something a little different. You have a slightly different personality it's much lighter. So, this is a softer tea. That's cool. It hasn't been, hasn't had so much sunshine and so on, but it's softer, it's lighter, it's bright. So, can we talk about that just quickly? Okay. So, this is, can we talk about it? Yeah, stunning. Can we talk about the level of light in tea and what that affects in flavor? Because is it the same thing? So, if you have a shaded or an elevated piece of land that doesn't get as much sun as someone that has getting a lot more sun, does the flavor profiles change? Absolutely, because the flavor, the taste,

aroma, the texture in tea is determined by the juices within this or the cell sap. And the cell sap is influenced by light, by heat, by humidity. So, when you have shade, you have, it influences the metabolic system of the plant, of course, through photosynthesis and therefore you get a softness. So, in Japan as an example and parts of Sri Lanka even, we shade some teas if we want to get softness. But then if you don't, you want to get more intensity, like some of our low-grown teas. You have humidity, you have heat, you have a short diurnal range. So, daytime 34-35 degrees, nighttime really wouldn't be much lower than 26-27. So, you know, not too much of a gap.

Whereas up in Nuwara Eliya, where you have some of our lighter teas growing, you have a diurnal range that might be, say daytime could be 21-22, nighttime you could be looking at 6-7 degrees. So, it's a big difference. What kind of weather?

Well, yeah, you know, you were only there last week, you know what it's like, it's getting cold now. Absolutely, and talking about Nuwara Eliya's and Victoria, this is a black tea, but it's got some citrusy notes. It's a high-elevation black tea and it's a smaller leaf, so it has some strength, some briskness. It has intensity, but it is, it has briskness, but it's still soft in comparison with. That's good dog. Yep, yep, that's, I'm going to try to find you. Okay, so we've got some of our, okay, right. Yeah, okay, we're going to try that. Okay, this is what I was looking for. All right, so now we have a breakfast tea and so you feel, it's a little more fruity in terms of the heavy, a little bit more woody.

It's got cedar, it's got very different characteristics and in fact, you can see in terms of the color, a distinct difference and that's the elevation. It's the soils, it's the temperatures, more stringent. Yeah, it's grabbing the tongue, isn't it? Absolutely, we call it gut. Yeah, okay. So the gut comes from the sunshine, from the soils, but also from the humidity. I'm going to remember that term, that's great. Because tannins? No. No, polyphenols. Polyphenols. See, this is something that I think I've been saying wrong. Hands down, I've been saying tannic and it's not. So talking about the gut is actually that, is what you would say if you're talking about the structure on the tongue, that sort of dry, almost powdery flavor or velvety flavor.

Exactly, and polyphenols are also part of a group of antioxidants that are responsible for all the goodness in tea. So it's that, that protects us from dementia, from heart disease, from stress and a ton of other stuff. So it's a good thing. When your tea is fresh, it's going to be rich in this, in polyphenols and it's going to have the flavor because it's connected. So now we're going to try something a little bit different.

Yeah, this is very much this, you know, the silver Jubilee was designed to offer teas for every occasion. So this is a Christmas tea. It's got mandarin, it's got marzipan in it. And the key, you know, some people will say, look, I'm a purist, shouldn't have anything in tea. But the key to it is add something, because it's been done through history, but do it respectfully. Respect the flavor, the aroma, the character, the intensity in the tea, and then add. So if you're adding Earl Grey, for example, make sure that the tea is strong enough to balance. If you're adding mandarin and marzipan, make sure the tea can balance.

So I know it's been doing it for a long time. I was talking to you with Steiner just before saying, it's also a different generation. You know, with these chefs changing the way we look at food, you say they're cooking Italian food and they're cooking Italian food. What does that even mean anymore? You know, be okay to test the waters as long as you're doing it, respectfully. I think that's the key. And you know, sometimes people say, oh my goodness, my your father will just shudder if he sees what you're doing. Thankfully, he's at home. So he's not seeing what we're doing. But no, really, it's about respecting the principles, respecting the artisanship in how we make tea, but also then respecting the characteristics in the tea and making sure it stands up to the criteria, which is taste, natural goodness, ethical purpose.

If your product has that, you can do what you want. That's it. That's it. Not doing anything. All you're doing is creating a wonderful relationship with the tea itself. And whatever flavor you add to that, you're going, does this work? Does it complement? Is it ethical? And will it work as a product? Because if it doesn't, again, you're just not taking all the boxes. Because ultimately, the tea that you like best is the tea for you. So in ancient China, in ancient China, they wanted softness in tea because it was an elegant occasion. So they put jasmine into the tea. That's a thousand year old tradition in parts of Europe.

When there was a shortage of sugar, they would make jams out of fruit. And they would add that into the tea and they would stir that in. And that is the beginning of flavoring in tea. So whatever you add to tea, make sure it's respectful. So what we do is, for example, the cinnamon, we put in real cinnamon, the stuff that we grow in the world. That's it. It's a long cinnamon. It's good for you. You know all about it. So now here's something rockin' meat as well, isn't it? Like tea and they add mint to it. And they grow mint like crazy. It's got a strong functional reason. Now with tea generally, when you drink tea, of course, you enjoy the taste, but then it aids digestion. And today, digestive health is critical. Whether you want to sleep well, whether you, I mean, you know more about it than I do. But then when you after a meal, when you have a cup of tea, you are then aiding your body in its digestive process.

You're helping your body to be calmer when you're going to bed to be able to sleep and so on. So there's a natural fit. So Moroccan mint green tea, sorry, we haven't got it out for you today, but Moroccan mint green tea has a beautiful synergy because the menthol in the mint helps the lower gut, the intestine to relax. So after a meal, you have the ECGC. That's a, it's a long word, epigallocatechine galate, which is responsible. So ECG is what is the element in green, black, oolong, white tea that is responsible for all the goodness, all the good stuff. So ECGC helps the body, it multiplies the paths, helps the body in terms of the antioxidant goodness. And the menthol relaxes the gut. What a pair. Oh my gosh. That's it. Okay. Here's one that you're going to laugh at, but I'm going to tell you what it is. Well, you're going to taste what it is. So, you know, it's a tea with strawberry. Typically you see that on the shelf and you'll

say, ah, no, it's not for me. But what we do, we take a wild strawberry and we take a tea that is medium bodied from the Navalapitiya region. So it's, it's multi strawberry. We look at the taste profile of strawberry and we balance it out with the tea to make sure that, so in this case, if we put the same tea that we have in the marzipan and mandarin with the spice and so on, you would end up overpowering the, the strawberry. So strawberry has a certain softness. It's got a wild note behind it. And so important thing in every sense, essence of gastronomy, harmony, harmony on the palate. So that's what we do. Different teas. That's a beautiful thing about tea. A great thing as well as you think is, I think a lot of times people think strawberry as a sweet drink. Yeah. You go get a, you go get us the iced tea or like a, I don't know, like a soda drink or whatever. And it's always sweet. Yeah. So as soon as you mentioned

strawberry, you think I was just getting sugary drink, but it's not, it's balanced. It's powerful. It's not sweet at all. You're really focusing on the team with essence of strawberry. To me, this is a perfect desert tea. So I have teas like our mandarin and marzipan, our strawberry at the end of a meal, because I crave sweetness, but it substitutes beautifully for sweetness. Yeah. Not a bit of sugar, no calories. And, uh, cut through the richness. If you do have absolutely, absolutely. That's it. That's it. That's it. Okay. So what are we, oh, this is a nice one. Okay. So, um, let's nose it first. So, you know, as, as tea, tea tasters, we first look at the tea, um, in its dry form. Then we look at the tea in the infusion with this, we call this the infusion. It's the infused leaf. So typically when you look at the infusion and you see the colors, the shape, pretty much don't need to taste the tea. You can, you can tell most

tasters worth their salt can tell you with a 70% degree of accuracy what the tea is going to taste like. Yeah. So this is a little different because it's got honey and ginger in it, but it's a beautiful combination and let's give it a shot. So I'd love to know how this might work with some nice black face foods. Beautiful ginger, nice roundness and sweetness. It's great. That is any sauce. Finish that off in a sauce. I think it'd be perfect. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. Also this wonderful world of like modernizing food in a back bag. If you're going to sous vide things, I can make a slightly stronger version for something you'd have where it's still brewed properly, but as in like still stronger, so less, less, less water. And then, and then sous vide or back bag something and then slowly poach it in that liquid. It's amazing how many people don't brew their tea, right? And whenever I travel to Australia or around the world, I keep telling people

please, because you've got to extract the goodness. So I was in, I was in an airline lounge a few weeks ago in your city and there they were. This lady comes along. She puts, puts a Dilmah tea bag in. She puts her hot water, puts her milk, and does this, chucks the bag, three seconds, tea, water, milk, and you know, and then I, I had to stop her, you know. Did you say do you know who I am? No, no, I didn't. I said, Madam, I work for Dilmah, but really that's not the way to do it.

But I did, I brewed it right. And she said, Oh my God, I thought your tea was so weak and I didn't like it. But you know, that's the thing with traditional tea. We make tea in the traditional way. We wither the tea, we roll it. It's a traditional way to respect the environment, respect nature and what nature has done in the leaf, but it needs proper brewing. So you need to have filtered water. You need to give it three minutes. If you're brewing the tea with, with if you're going to have milk in the tea, then you need to brew it for an extra minute or two.

So you give it a good five minutes. Thank you. That's why I like you, Simon. You're a good man. But you know, I think, yeah, you've done a few things with our tea and I heard you've been up to some, up to no good. So I'd like to see because before we wrap up, you know, I, I've always been the same, you know, you've got it. Yeah, I know. I saw things coming in, I'm coming on the set and some crazy stuff happening. So what have you been up to? Oh my goodness. To my father's tea maker's private reserve. What have you done with Simon? I found, I found, I found it in the back. I was like, Oh, what's in this? And I go, you'll start showing me this. And I tell you what, I lost my mind. So I've, I've come with a bit of inspiration in the concert. I've got a bit of my own DIY sort of fixer upper or slash breaker. Fantastic. Taping the back of it down. Yeah. But what we've done

is I've taken a lot of inspiration on the world of cold drip coffee, cold drip coffee, you go into some of the cafes, I'm sure you've been through in Australia, you have a giant blast thing full of ice, coffee at the bottom. And it's got a little swirly straw. So I got what I would think would be something relevant to coffee, sort of richness, full body. And this is this I come to find as your Ceylon Souchon. And I'm sure you've talked about it before, but smoked with cinnamon, right? That's it. When you smell this, you have to get a chance to get a hold of it. Anyone out there. That to me is, is the creme de la creme of tea.

So I was thinking, imagine if we used ice to slowly melt through your tea. Now, instead of doing the sort of like 2.53 grams of tea leaves at a hundred or 90 to a hundred or whatever the appropriate amount of temperature of water is, let's do 12 grams of tea. Just cause you know, I'm never going to be able to get free tea again, right? Am I? So let's use as much as I can and top it full of ice. After you brewed our tea in ice, Simon, I am seriously considering kicking you out right now. I had a feeling this is going to be the case. But we can't, you can't hate the mess. You can't hate the, I can't, well I'm not the mess, am I? No, but it's a first. It's a first. So let's try it. I think that's, that's where the proof is.

Now the goal is to see if it extracted it properly. Now I don't know if it's really done. It needs a little bit of work because it was a first off hit, but the color's there. It's there. There is color there. It looks like a beautiful white tea. Looks like a white tea, yeah. It should be, what color would this normally be out of its mind if it were to properly? It would be here. Right. It would be an amber. Right. That's cool, right? So now of course, it didn't get much out of it. It's been about a half an hour. Let's give that a go. It's, it's got the aromatics. Well done. It's got a nice nose. Yeah. Wow.

I love it. I love it. That's what cold brewing should be. So cold brewing takes all the aromatics, gets all the light stuff. So if you take a taste profile as this, it takes the top part. It doesn't get too much of the intensity and the strength, but that's what it's about. This is beautiful. You've extracted a different personality of the tea. I've never seen tea brewed in ice. Well done, my friend. Cheers. I'm glad. Cheers, everyone. Thank you guys. You can watch us on Facebook and you can see the recording if you want to check it out. But Simon, thank you very much. You're amazing. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you.