Scents and Sensibility
London's best parfumer has opened an inviting tea salon, reports Susan Kurosawa
September 19, 2009
Article from: The Australian
A TINY salon-style setting at the rear of a shop in ever-so-posh Mayfair is the venue for London's most fragrant place to take tea.
Lyn Harris has one of Britain's best noses; this young French-trained parfumer has gained a reputation for her range of unusual fragrances -- she even produces a perfume based on the sharp smells of the salt marshes of Normandy -- and she has branched into the aromatic world of tea leaves.
Harris says drinking "rare and beautiful teas has always been an essential luxury" for her. So combining a discerning palate with that fine nose, Harris has collaborated with a leading "teasmith", Tim d'Offay of Postcard Teas in Mayfair, to source a selection of black, white and oolong teas from "the finest tea gardens in the East".
She has blended these precious leaves with her favourite comestible natural essences, including bergamot and warm spices, to create the Fragrant Tea by Lyn Harris range of three blends, which was launched in September last year in her Miller Harris stores. The beautifully packaged teas seem to have acquired a natural home alongside fragrances, candles, single-note oils and bath and body unguents. Surely anyone who walks into a Miller Harris store must instantly twitch their nose in joy.
On a spring morning I take tea with Harris at her serene Bruton Street flagship store. There are just a few tables in a setting of bentwood chairs, banquettes and fabrics with buttercup-yellow botanical prints. From Royal Albert porcelain teacups of the flowery design best used by dainty ladies I sample her three signature blends. No milk or sugar entertained, of course, as such additives sully the pure taste.
She tells me that experimenting with food-grade versions of her perfume ingredients, such as bergamot and rose, started "as a fun thing". We start with bergamot, Harris's bespoke version of classic earl grey. "Pure bergamot can be too harsh," Harris says, so she has added tangerine vert and, "to give it a final twist", the base has "a pinch of vanilla". The tea is so deliciously heady it's hard to know whether to drink it or dab a bit behind the ears.
We progress, via baby cupcakes with rose icing, to Petales, which has a core of white tip oolong tea from Taiwan and geranium bourbon from the Reunion Islands off the west coast of southern Africa. In itself that sounds like an aromatic recipe but Harris has tempered the blend with notes of vanilla from Sri Lanka and rose absolute from Turkey. It is like drinking a bouquet.
Third in this epicurean range is Fume, a smoked variety that I imagine could be a cross between my favourite teas, russian caravan and lapsang souchong. It is and it isn't; Harris has used vanilla bourbon from Madagascar and cinnamon and cardamom from Sri Lanka blended into a black tea smoked over cinnamon wood. Now I am out of the garden and into the spice dens of the Orient. It is simply delicious, like a smoky, complex chai elevated to a sublime level.
Harris has been working on her second range since my May visit and she will launch a further three blends this month. The trio consists of bigarade, a full-bodied breakfast affair of second-flush Assam perked with Sri Lankan vanilla, while Violette, as its name roundly suggests, fuses this flower (and blackcurrant buds and green mulberry leaves) with the "sweet muscatel notes" of second-flush darjeeling.
The third, Sauvage, uses rare Tong Mu Mountain tea blended with accents of rosemary, French lavender and "the sweet, malted notes" of pekoe.
Harris is widely considered the leading independent parfumer in Britain and in her domestic laboratory has been experimenting for more than 10 years; she set up the Miller Harris brand in 2000 and regularly releases new fragrances. Her latest is Fleurs de Bois, which she says has been inspired by "walks through the secret garden in London's Regent's Park". The scent is green and woody, like dewy grass on a cool morning. Like her teas, its smell is utterly transporting.
Fragrant Tea by Lyn Harris costs pound stg. 16 ($31) for a 50g caddy; refill, pound stg. 9.95. The Miller Harris Fragrant Tea Room is at 21 Bruton St, London W1J 6QD (off New Bond Street, near Mayfair and Piccadilly). Open Monday to Saturday from 10am to 5.30pm. The new Fleurs de Bois perfume costs pound stg. 70 for 100ml eau de parfum; Miller Harris also designs bespoke fragrances for clients. Products are available online. More: www.millerharris.com.
From the UK's Daily Mail.
The Nigella effect strips supermarkets bare of semolina for perfect Christmas spuds
For generations who were subjected to sticky milk puddings at school, semolina is the stuff of nightmares.
But thanks to Nigella Lawson, the ground wheat product has been transformed into a 21st century must-have.
Supermarket shelves were stripped bare by fans desperate to follow her instructions for making 'perfect roast potatoes' as part of Christmas dinner.
The TV cook and self- styled Domestic Goddess suggests sprinkling semolina on parboiled potatoes as an alternative to flour before roasting them in goose fat.
She first used the idea in her Christmas Kitchen series two years ago. It was repeated this month with three extra programmes to coincide with the release of her book Nigella Christmas, which also features the recipe.
A spokesman for Asda said its sales of semolina had already doubled because of Nigella and there was a further increase of 65 per cent in the run-up to Christmas.
'The only explanation is that people are using it for Nigella's roast potatoes. Luckily we did not sell out anywhere.'
Sainsbury's said its sales of semolina had increased by 35 per cent in the last year. 'Obviously Nigella is a very influential person. There was a similar big increase in demand a couple of years ago when she recommended using goose fat.'
The best-known figure for sparking huge sales increases in products and types of food is Delia Smith The term 'Delia effect' to describe a rush on any item she recommended entered the Collins English Dictionary in 2001.
Delia's recipes have previously led to a huge increase in sales of cranberries, limes, salted capers and liquid glucose. When she recommended a ten-inch metal pan as 'a little gem' for omelette making, it rescued the struggling firm, which had been selling only 200 of the pans a year.
Lune Metal Products of Lancashire had to take on extra staff to make 90,000 new pans in just four months.
Sales of asparagus shot up after being featured in Jamie Oliver's TV adverts, while Gordon Ramsay's cooking of tripe boosted sales by 400 per cent.
To commemorate one hundred years of quality bone china, Royal Albert has released its 100 Years Collection. There's a series of ten cup, saucer and plate sets: one for each decade from 1900 to 1990. Some of the designs are replicas of a design from that era, and others have been updated and modernised. I think they are all gorgeous and I want them all. They would go fabulously well with my existing mismatched teaset. I love especially the 1900 Regency Blue design and the 1930 Polka Rose. The 1960 Golden Roses is pretty awesome, but maybe in extremely small doses! Gold overload. There's a set you can buy: either 1900 to 1940, or 1950 to 1990. I think I would prefer the earlier years: they just seem so lovely and delicate.
Ha ha, yeah, it's hilarious. At the British Lolly Shop in Kings Cross, the lovely owner let me take a photo of this can of spotted dick, imported from the UK alongside lots of other drygoods, cereals, puddings and teas. Plus all the lollies.
Wikipedia says that the pudding is also known as:
"Time fo' a spot of Dicky Widmark, mum? Dotted lloyd? I'll make us a noice cuppa."
I wasn't quite ready to buy the tin and inspect its contents, for if I were to try a spotted dick I'm sure I'd prefer to make it at home rather than go the commercial tinned route. For now I'll savour my picture of slattern's bonnet and dream of what might have been.
I must resist. 