Afternoon Tea: Cucumber + Butter Sandwiches, Lemon Financiers, and Soba-Cha!

Happy Saturday. I'm super excited about Afternoon Tea today because I bought my first package of Soba-Cha at Sunrise Mart earlier this week. We drank Soba-Cha often in Hawai'i, but I more or less "forgot" about it after moving to NYC. To pair, something classic and simple which would let the Soba-Cha stand out. So we have...Cucumber + Butter Sandwiches.

Crusts off. A generous helping of room-temperature butter (the more butter, the better). Extra-thin cucumber slices. I used a vegetable peeler which worked well. Kyuri cucumbers. Japanese Kyuri cucumbers are perfect for tea sandwiches - very crunchy, no bitter flavor, small and thin with hardly any seeds. Then black pepper and sprinkle of sea salt. I made the first round plain, and did a second round with toasted sesame seeds. Will definitely keep the sesame seeds in the future...all the small things make the biggest impact!

Cucumber + Butter Sandwiches
- Butter, room temperature
- Kyuri cucumbers, thinly sliced
- Salt and Pepper
- Toasted Sesame Seeds

On the sweet end we have Lemon Financiers from Les Canelés de Céline. She also does them in vanilla and other flavors, but I most often go with the classics. Each financier is a single bite, almost too adorable to eat.

Here's a better look at the Soba-Cha. This 200g portion bag was $9.99 at Sunrise Mart. Soba-Cha = Buckwheat Tea. It's made from roasted buckwheat and has an addictive, super nutty, somewhat malty flavor. Unlike normal tea leaves, you can actually eat the buckwheat. And this is my favourite part! Some of the buckwheat berries float to the top so you get little crunchy "bites" while drinking the tea. The rest sinks to the bottom and I just spoon them up after I'm done with the tea.

To make Soba-Cha, I put about a teaspoon of the toasted buckwheat in the cup. Pour in the hot water directly over the buckwheat. And then if I want it more intense, I'll put extra buckwheat into a bamboo strainer so I can control the intensity of each cup.

I like my Soba-Cha very "bold," while Monsieur P prefers it light. I poured out some of his tea into a ramekin so you can see how "light" he likes to drink it. We brew each serving of buckwheat twice, and by the end of the second cup, the buckwheat opens up and you can see the contrast of the white-colored interior to the roasted, dark brown exterior. So good to eat just like that!

I went to Cha An (conveniently around the corner from Sunrise) to buy the bamboo tea strainer. This was only $1.50. What a good deal. Broadway Pandhandler also carries the same thing but they charge $2.

Think I'm going to made a third round of these cucumber + butter sandwiches...they are addicting. Monsieur P is convinced they are healthy as well - guess he doesn't see how much butter I add heheh ;)