Recipe for Afternoon Tea, or Jujube and Longyan Milk Tea (hongzao guiyan naicha 红枣桂圆奶茶)

For the chowhound, food souvenirs might be one of the most pleasurable aspects of travel.  I used to pore obsessively over Japanese guidebooks for their painstakingly detailed guidance on the representative specialties of each prefecture and the oldest purveyors still practicing the most ancient, time-tested methods.  Under globalization, it’s charming, and ever so slightly delusional, to believe that there still are local goods that can only be found in their place of production.  And even if they can be bought millions of miles away, few things feel as authentic to a transient as participating in the local economy by buying something as simple, common, and necessary as food.

Last week I was in Xi’an to see, of course, the terracotta warriors and the Qin emperor’s tomb.  Shaanxi province is famous for its jujubes or red dates (hongzao 红枣), of which there are seemingly millions of varieties.  Wandering through the Muslim quarter, I saw dried big red dates (dahongzao 大红枣); knobby-topped “dog’s head” dates (goutou zao 狗头枣), grown only along the Yellow River in Yanchuan county, Shaanxi; skinny “black oil” dates (heiyou zao 黑油枣);  fat Guifei dates (guifei zao 贵妃枣), named after the concubine Yang Guifei, who made exquisite plumpness fashionable in Tang China and came to a tragic end, in spite of her beauty.  Presented as abundant piles heaped in oval straw baskets, you can bite into the crimson dates on offer.  Inside the crackly thin red skin, they are caramel-colored and addictively chewy, textured somewhat like a very healthy marshmallow.  I ended up buying “dog’s head” dates for 28/jin (500 grams) for snacking and “black oil” dates for 18/jin for the express purpose of making this special milk tea.  On the entire thirteen hour train ride back, I was plotting my first foray into jujube and longyan milk tea.

I used to get a special frisson when I ordered pearl milk tea, but nowadays it’s so widely available it no longer seems special.  These days I see jujube and longyan milk tea at fancy little coffee shops around town, and drank it with my Dadong roast duck the other night.  Smooth and subtly sweet, it seems to have experienced a surge of popularity.  In traditional Chinese medicine, jujubes and dried longyan fruits (“dragon’s-eye” fruit, similar to lychee; known as longyan 龙眼 when fresh, and guiyuan 桂圆 when dried) are believed to have warming properties.  Jujubes apparently raise energy levels, are calming, and are also supposed to be very good for the skin, so many women drink concoctions made with jujubes.

What I’ve detailed below takes a bit more effort than plonking the dates, longyan, condensed milk, and tea in boiling water, but it’s worth the extra level of refinement.  This tea is like a crocheted blanket and, I like to believe, a really expensive moisturizer in one for this harsh, skin-dessicating Beijing winter.

Ingredients, for one

• Dried jujubes, about 3
• Dried longyan (guiyuan), about 2
• Black tea (something cheap and strong, with very little bergamot, like Lipton Red/Yellow Label in China, or PG Tips)
• Warmed milk, about 1/4 cup
• Brown sugar OR rock sugar OR condensed milk, 1 teaspoon or to taste (you won’t need much of this, as the dates are naturally sweet)

1.  Clean the jujubes of dust and remove the seed by slitting it lengthwise and pulling the kernel out.  Crack and remove the hard shell of the dried longyan.

2.  Place 3 cups of water, the dried longyan, and jujubes in a pot.  Bring to a boil over medium heat.  Pass this mixture to a filter, like a cheesecloth or strainer cloth, and put it back into the pot.  This is the longyan and jujube base.  I sometimes don’t bother with filtering the tea, but this leaves a lot of sediment in the final result.

3.  Put one tea bag into the pot, and heat over low heat, without boiling the tea, for three minutes or so.  It should be quite strong, as it’ll be cut by the milk.
4.  Pour milk into your teacup, and pour in the longyan and jujube base.  Add brown sugar, sugar, or condensed milk to taste.  Bear in mind both the jujubes and longyan are inherently sweet.

5.  To make it pretty, you can put the jujubes and longyan back into the teapot or cup.