Spatula, Spoon and Saturday

Apples and beetroots from Jim’s garden. Prettiest beetroot ever. Pure sugar hit.

This is a recent invention. Well, not really an invention per se. More like a neat replication. I went to this Korean restaurant somewhere east coast of Singapore. The food was thoroughly average (compared to the nice meat you could get for Korean barbecue I’m used to in Melbourne) and I thought was well overpriced. However, the highlight of the meal was the complimentary iced cinnamon tea they served at the end of the meal. It was beautiful! I think I had like three cups because I liked it so much.

So we start with a litre of filtered water. I really hate the taste of tap water so I actually made my Mum bring over a Brita filter jug from home which gets rid of all the nasty chlorine, metalic and what-have-you tastes that linger in the tap water. I rinse two cinnamon quills to get rid of any dirt that maybe on it and add it to the boiling water. Let this boil for about fifteen minutes. Towards to end, rinse two tablespoon of pine nuts (again to get rid of any dirt and what-have-yous) and add it to the tea. I generally add two tablespoons of white castor sugar and two tablespoons of molass sugar to taste but you can leave it unsweetened and add sugar when you drink it like any other tea.

That’s it. You can drink it hot or chill it to make iced cinnamon tea (which is very fabulous). I once added quartered apples in for that slight tang and that also worked really well although the cinnamon pretty much overpowers any apple scent there was in tea leaving only very subtle fruity tang in the tea. It was nice but without is just as lovely. I also really like biting into the pine nuts which seems to take on the very sweet cinnamony nutty taste. Perfect.