Starters To Prepare With Tea Infusions

It is always good to have at hand new recipes or renewed recipes that help us to vary our daily menus.

Do you like to do it too? Then, stay tuned, because we have compiled some recipes for starters to which you can add different tea infusions that you can find in Hummingbird Tearoom without any problem and that will surprise you, because far from completely changing the taste, what they give is a touch so special that, if you’ve never cooked with tea, you will not want to stop doing it from now on.

Hummus With Matcha Tea

In addition to being healthy, it is a cheap dish, easy to prepare, and offers many possibilities. Why? Because it can be served as a starter, but also as a first course with some vegetables and rice.

Also, it goes well at any time of the year and in case you have children and it is difficult for them to eat legumes, it is a different way for them to do it. If you accompany it with carrot sticks or red bell pepper, in addition, you are adding another ingredient that is great for them.

So to give a different touch to this trendy dish/starter, we wanted to add one of our favorite teas for cooking: matcha tea.

What ingredients are needed? 1 jar of cooked chickpeas (500 grams) or, if you prefer, you can cook them yourself at home and use them to make, for example, a fresh chickpea salad.

On the other hand, you need 2 cloves of garlic, the juice of half a lemon, a dash of olive oil to taste, salt, sweet paprika (unless you like it hotter), and half a spoonful of cumin.

Is there anything missing? Of course! The two tablespoons of matcha tea that you are going to add will give a very attractive greenish touch to the hummus. You can also add a dash of Tahini sauce, to give it a more oriental touch.

Once you have the ingredients, you just have to put them all together in a blender glass, blend and leave the texture as you like it. Some people like it very smooth and others prefer it rougher and thicker.

When serving, I recommend sprinkling a little matcha tea and a small teaspoon of olive oil, unless it has already been well flavored, with what you have added to the hummus itself.

To take the hummus, you can opt for pita bread, and breadsticks or make sticks with carrot, celery, or red bell pepper, for example. You can also make toast and spread the hummus on it.

Quinoa, Tofu, and Matcha Tea Salad

Let’s go with another healthy, easy to make and very complete, which can well be carried in a tupper to take on the beach, at the pool or in the mountains, because it does not need to be taken either hot or warm; it can be taken perfectly cold.

What do you need? 100 grams of quinoa, 200 ml of water to cook the quinoa, 125 grams of lamb’s lettuce, 1 orange cut into small pieces, 1 tablespoon of matcha tea, 1 tablespoon of oil, salt, and apple cider vinegar to taste. In addition, optionally (but it goes great), add a spoonful of soy sauce.

When preparing it, it is made like a normal salad, but the dressing is mixed in a sprayer so that each diner can then add his or her own dressing to taste. This dressing includes, of course, matcha tea and soy.

Another option would be to eliminate the soy sauce and make a mixture with the juice of half an orange and half a spoonful of pure honey.

Fennel and Potato Cream Soup

Cream soups are perfect to take care of our intestinal flora. The body appreciates it much more when it is made with natural and fresh products. That is why we have selected this cream that goes great as a starter but can also perfectly accompany a dish with red meat or oily fish.

What do you need? 1 carrot, 1 onion, 2 potatoes, 50 ml of cream, 1 tablespoon of fennel infusion, salt, oil, and black pepper to taste.

When you have all the ingredients, chop all the vegetables. First, sauté the onion over low heat and then add the rest of the vegetables. Leave it for a minute and add water until you cover the vegetables, two fingers above.

Then add the tablespoon of fennel and cook for 40 minutes. After this time, transfer the pieces of vegetables to a blender and add the cream, salt, oil, and pepper.

Once, well beaten and with the texture to our taste, serve in the dish. This cream soup is also usually served as a starter in shot glasses.

Bulgur with Vegetables and Black Tea

And we finish with a very typical dish in the Middle East, very healthy and easy to make. For this, you will need two tablespoons of Assam black tea, 300 grams of chard, 1 handful of fresh mushrooms, 5 grams of ground almonds, 1 garlic, 2 sprigs of celery, 150 grams of bulgur, a tablespoon of olive oil and salt to taste.

On the one hand, prepare the black tea infusion and set it aside. On the other hand, we cut the vegetables into small pieces and sauté them in a frying pan where, previously, we will have put the oil to heat. When the vegetables are crispy, we remove them and prepare the bulgur, which we will cook in the water of the black tea infusion.

Once the water has evaporated, in the frying pan where the vegetables are, add the bulgur, and mix (you can put the frying pan over medium heat to serve it hot) until all the ingredients are well integrated and serve.

In each of the plates to be served, add a pinch of ground almonds.