Tea and Soup Recipes and a Tea Contest!

Tea and Soup - A perfect paring (Image Courtesy: Sanctuary T)

Green Tea-Infused Melon Soup - Seriously Soupy

Tea and Soup. Some may say that they are an unlikely pairing, but I think they make perfect sense together. Tea, on one hand, is a comforting beverage that soothes the soul -- just like soup does. Soup comes in all types of recipes -- which are all unique, but tasty -- same with tea and their various varietals and methods of preparation. Tea is healthy and believed to contain powerful antioxidants as is soup (when used with the nutritional ingredients). What I think is the most exciting (and a different way to cook) is that the flavoring in tea also works really well as an ingredient in soup -- both to compliment and enhance.

Various Herbal Tisanes  (Image Courtesy of Sanctuary T)

Now for the contest!
The folks over at Sanctuary T, a tea restaurant in Soho are obviously huge tea fans and are currently running a tea-inspired recipe contest until September 30th. All participants have to do is fill out a quick entry form with their tea recipe -- and this doesn't have to be a soup and tea recipe, but can be anything with tea -- tea cakes, tea pudding, tea rice, tea vegetables...you get my point.  The grand winner will receive a $50 gift certificate to Sanctuary T Shop and have their winning recipe featured on the Shop's website. The runner-up will win a free bottle of T-Dust Seasoning and a 2 oz. tin of tea of their choice. Whether you have a tea soup or another recipe that uses soup, you should enter! For official contest form, visit: http://www.shopsanctuaryt.com/recipecontest.

6 Tea and Soup Recipes 
1. Peach Soup - I can't think of a better way to enjoy the last days of summer than with a tea-infused peach soup. This recipe, from Epicurious, is not your typical peach soup, but I like that it uses white and yellow peaches, ice cream, and of course peach tea for a semi-healthy dessert-like soup.

Now that a pretty looking soup - Sakura Tea Soup by Appon's Thai Food

2. Sakura Tea Soup - This has to be one of the most unique soups that I have ever seen. A native Thai recipe by Appon's Thai Food, this tea soup includes sakura (Japanese Cherry Blossoms) -- whose purpose is mainly for display -- carrots, pickled radishes and beans that is topped off with hot green tea. After this, the flowers open and a beautiful soup is ready to be consumed.

3. Shiitake Mushroom and Green Tea Soup -Green tea is quite the popular ingredient in soup - perhaps for its high dose of antioxidants and earthy-like taste. This recipe, by Herbs for Life, uses the equally earthy shiitake mushrooms, noodles, kombu (dried kelp) and onions. Herbs for Life also notes that green tea, shiitake mushrooms and seaweed are believed to fight certain cancers. While I can't verify that, eating a soup like this can definitely be a part of a healthy diet.

Tea-Scented Pumpkin Soup by Han Feng from Food and Wine magazine

 4. Tea-Scented Pumpkin Soup - Now this is one soup that I'm really excited to make this fall. Pumpkin (and butternut squash) are definitely favorites of mine and the addition of Ceylon tea is a nice change of pace to those standard classic recipes.

5. Barley, Tofu, Pumpkin and Green Tea Soup - Another variation of a pumpkin soup, except this time with the hearty goodness of tofu and barley. Created by Peter Gordon, this chunky soup also includes leeks, red onions and green tea -that Gordon says is a "culinary feast."

6.  Green-Tea Infused Cantaloupe Soup - In the post one cantaloupe, three soups, I made a green tea cantaloupe soup and was shocked by how much I loved how it came out: a little earthy and naturally sweet. It was also very quick to prepare and used minimal ingredients -- cantaloupe, water, honey, lemon, apricots -- that can be easily modified to use another blend of tea like chamomile, pomegranate, white tea, etc.


Seriously Soupy Serena