Cooking with tea was an inevitable journey for Chef Heidi Fink. Passionate about both food and tea, it was the perfect way to merge her two worlds. Fink’s innovation and creativity has taken her from Executive Chef at Rebar Modern Food in Victoria, British Columbia to sharing her love with others through cooking classes and culinary tours.
Fink’s culinary tea journey began more than 10 years ago, when Daniela Cubelic, owner of Silk Road Tea Store, asked Fink to develop a series of tea recipes for a cooking class. Fink has been experimenting with culinary uses of tea ever since.
“I had a really intense period of experimenting… it wasn’t something that accumulated over a long period of time, I had one month before the class ran,” recalls Fink. She tested a variety of leaves and discovered the fundamentals. One of which she stressed, is that you can’t treat tea the same as a spice. It is much more delicate, she explains. To truly be successful in cooking with tea, you need to recognize the value of its ingredient on its own. Fink recommends spending some time with the tea, experiencing its flavor and then thinking about how this particular flavor could enhance food.
