苦丁茶
by PHILIP WHITE
"You seem a long way
off, Walter," I told my mate Clappis on the blower.
This was W. W. W. Clappis,
the biodynamicist behind McLaren Vale's opulent Hedonist wine on Strout Road.
While these Clappisses share a refined enlightenment at the trencherboard
and jug, Walter is not
to be confused with his cousin, Andy Clappis, the chef up the Range above
Willunga.
"Matter of fact I'm
in China," W. W. W. said.
"You're not in Shanghai
are you?"
"Yep. I'm here right
now."
"You're not in the
Old City by any chance?"
"Yep. Just came into
the square."
"Bullshit! See that
tea shop on your right? Can you duck in there and get me 500 grams of Ku-ding
Cha?"
This is the sort of thing
that happens when one commits to hunting the freshest, sweetest, most
efficacious Ku-ding. It's usually found in China, but in Vietnam is known as
Trà đắng.
It's a tea-like infusion,
not made from the regular Camelia sinsensis
leaf which is commonly fermented to blacken, but rolled straight and green from
the leaves of the Chinese holly, Ilex kaushue, which is also known as Ilex kudingcha. It's
a not necessarily a bush. It has shiny labial leaves like the sinsenis
shrub but it'll grow like a tree.
Regardless
of its loftier height and shape, it ranks with the Mediterranean wormwood (Artemus
absinthium); the tropical groundcover Gynara procumbens; hot
chillies; raw ginger and garlic at the pointy end of my bottle-scarred herbal,
foraged or cultivated. I live on this stuff. Now the cancer's suddenly rampant in my ramparts, and I find myself surrounded and advised by the best medical scientists and surgeons I've encountered, I feel I gotta sharpen my focus on every level.
Maybe
Radio Free China RT'd the InDaily news of the Australian Wine
Business Monthly's piece - no idea how he found out - but Walter called
again from China the other day when he heard that with the tumour farm I seem
to suddenly be running in my dark gizzards I'd probably be in need of a fresh Ku-ding shipment
any minute soon: two days later it was steaming on my desk.
I've had the whole
system set on RINSE since. Astute man that Walter.
I'm
sure the Degarelix helps, and some intensive photon radiation, but for whatever cause, various torrid odemas have since shrunk, which is not a surprise. I have long used Ku-ding cha to keep my plates o' meat trim enough to fit my favourite Spanish boots.
Ku-ding
is extremely bitter. Like the wormwood and the gall in the cranky old Protestant hymn so hard right it grieved founding Methodists John and Charles Wesley, it's about as bitter as
bitter can get short of death.
If it's
stale or cheap Ku-ding's just too far out for most humans. But get magic fresh stuff
like W. W. W. somehow tracked to an organic trader somewhere there in the little
matter of the Orient and let them leaves unroll in your bowl and you somehow have
one of the most refreshing and restorative anti-oxidant brewages known on
Earth. I
heard it fixed Merrill's gout.
Top-sheIf
Ku-ding finishes very gently sweet. One can enhance this: Keeping them intact,
split and slice a few of the new season cherries from Lisa and Mark McCarthy's vineyard
and orchard down here on Sand Road, and put them in the bowl with the leaves.
McCarthy's
are picking the perfectly luscious Sam cherries (pictured) again this week.
Do
the same with a couple of the semi-dried Jujubes (Ziziphus jujuba), add
the crackling hot rain and watch the leaves unroll.
I often let it cool; it's
fine with fizzed water on the rocks and makes a handy mixer. Even the addition
of honey barely touches that bitterness.
In
his determination to introduce foods which require less irrigation in the dying
Murray-Darling, Mark's father David brought this most efficacious date-like
fruit to Australia. He also introduced the pistachio through his enlightened research
farm near Mildura.
"They
thought he was mad," Lisa chirps, "replacing thirsty citrus, almonds
and grapes with these foods."
Lisa and Mark in the old vines at their McCarthy's Orchard, opposite Goodieson's Brewery on Sand Road, McLaren Flat. These clever folks even grow mangoes down here. This one, and photos above by Philip White
But
using Ku-ding with citrus juices, Bickfords Lime, and maybe a squirt of Cointreau
or Strega one can get soda-close to the bitter scaffolding of, say, the Seville
Orange rind in Campari.
I
like bitter flavours. I play with them. Juggle their bright aromatic hues. Add
vodka when required - it's like a photographic fixer in the developing tray. If
the Jujubes are still there in the cooling liquor of your cha, squeeze the
juice from them through the slits you've cut. Watch the stain spread.
Yum.
For
flavour direction, think Green Chartreuse: towards the terpenes you find in cannabis and Rosemary. Otherwise,
while that idea's better kept for the winter I'll have three or four pots of
hot water refill over the same leaves.
I'm
keen to see somebody rip into the scientific research of Ku-ding as thoroughly
as they've excavated Gynara procumbens, which
will drop dead in a normal Kangarilla chill: being jungle headland cover in
the tropics, the poor thing needs to come inside with lights and heat to
survive winter down here on the Great Southern Ocean.
But it's summer
now and the pots are blooming: I love this stuff in a roll or wrap with fish
and sprouts and fetta. It's like a crunchy carrot-flavoured watercress, and
goes just tricksy with Ku-ding made with cooling honeywater and an ooze of
lemon.
I'd
also like to see the pot researchers teach the Ku-ding/Gynara growers their
brilliant display wheels to interpret terpene flavours which compare their
sources and various medical efficacies. Spin me with science baby.
Our
three-or-four thousand years of the Cannabis revolution is only the beginning
of such great unveilings. Peel
open the millenia of forgotten natural efficacies and you realise these
enlightenments are never learned early nor won cheap. In the criminal case of
pot prohibition, we've permitted a century of big pharma's active stifling and
denial of the science surrounding this miracle plant.
Increasingly, marketers
fall shy and retreat from ancient and famous claims of many
restorative foods as medications while the the patent attourneys shred the
entire pharmacopoeia in their race to own and
exploit it. In the meantime, we're
left with unscientific fluff like this:
"With a reputation as being a longevity and
sliming [sic] tea the medicinal properties are vast. Chinese Medicine doctors
prescribe it for coughs and the common cold, itchy eyes and headaches. It is
also used for fever and bad diarrhea. Any memory issues can benefit helping
raise ones [sic] spirit. More contemporary western medicine acknowledges Ku Ding as a
tea that can help with blood circulation and blood pressure along with lowering
blood lipids like cholesterol."
Organic Coonawarra winegrowers from Highbank Dennis (left) and the late Morgan Vice with the author at an early visit to that miracle tea shop ... and below, discussing possible tea and wine investment projects with the Major of Yangzhou in 2007 ... not many Australian wine folk had dared make their way into China those few short years ago
Between you and me, and
you can do bitter, and track the stuff down, Ku-ding Cha's the duck's guts.
Focusing
tighter, ku means bitter and ding is nail so let's launch the new
marketing with something about nailing death to a tumour with Ku-ding then
winding up them photons in the nuke ward to vaporise the whole rotten mob.
Speaking of unscientific
fluff and my propensity to quote it, especially at this time of our saviour's
blessed birthday, here's that goddam Methodist hymn about bitter.
Check the buzzwords: even "prostrate"
seems perversely evocative whilst one tunes
the lyre, and we're seeing stars with the floating balls and old Jesse's
rod
before we even get close to the bitter end!
I prefer to sing it to the tune of Alex Chilton's The Letter.
All hail the power of Jesu’s
name!
Let Angels prostrate fall;
Bring forth the royal diadem,
To crown
Him Lord of All.
Let high-born Seraphs tune the
lyre,
And, as they tune it,
fall Before His face who tunes their choir,
And crown Him Lord of All.
Crown Him, ye morning stars of
light,
Who fix’d this floating ball;
Now hail the strength of Israel’s
might,
And crown Him Lord of All.
Crown him, ye martyrs of your
God,
Who from His altar call;
Extol the stem of Jesse’s rod,
And crown
Him Lord of All.
Ye seed of Israel’s chosen race,
Ye ransom’d of the
fall,
Hail Him who saves you by His grace,
And crown Him Lord of All.
Hail Him, ye heirs of David’s
line,
Whom David Lord did call;
The God incarnate, man Divine;
And crown
Him Lord of All.
Sinners! whose love can ne’er
forget
The wormwood and the gall,
Go—spread your trophies at His
feet,
And crown Him Lord of All.
Let every tribe, and every
tongue,
That bound creation’s call,
Now shout in universal song,
The
crowned Lord of All!
I'm thinking about becoming a self-hating Gentile.
Merry Exmess from the nuclear ward.