The Gunpowder Gardens or, A Time For Tea: Travels Through China and India in Search of Tea

Jason Goodwin's grandmothers spent their lives in China and India, daily observing the imperial custom of afternoon tea. Inspired by their memories, the author set off to explore the disappearing relics of their age - an exploration that reaches back into the extraordinary history of the tea trade. His journey takes him through the lost European cities of the south China coast, rediscovering a forgotten world of foreign concessions, islands and vanished mercantile clubs, and inland to the mountainous tea gardens of Fujian. On the trail of nineteenth-century tea imperialism, he travels on to India, to the cumbling city of Calcutta, held together by this most traditional of trades, with its 'tiffin-time' and Anglo-Indian etiquette. From the high tea gardens of Bohea and Darjeeling, he returns to the great tea metropolis - London, which reveals a fascinating hidden life of broking and arcane tea connoisseurship. Jason Goodwin evokes past and present with a lively sense of the ironies of history, following the tea trade from its origins in the Canton 'factories' through the Opium Wars and the settlement of British India, when planters were also empire builders, to its influence on the present day.Full of brilliantly observed detail, both historical and personal, The Gunpowder Gardens is informative, moving and funny, and was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. Armchair travelers and tea connoisseurs will welcome English writer Goodwin's lively treatise cum travel book on the cultivation and trade of tea. Starting in southern China, where cha originated as the drink of emperors, he follows the trail to today's English cottages and London drawing rooms. Each distinctive blend of tea is credited with unique medical and other properties, from rare lc per web oolong picked from 1000-year-old bushes to Darjeeling, grown in the gardens of Assam and traded at the world's largest tea auctions in monsoon-drenched cosmopolitan Calcutta. In each region Goodwin also observed the special rituals and appurtenances used to serve tea. The author interweaves wonderfully sensual evocations of place and offbeat encounters with the historical and economic roles of tea in lands that produce it, while also surveying the influence of tea trade on international relations Inspired by Jason Goodwins bestselling mystery novels, YASHIM COOKS ISTANBUL conjures a feast of Istanbul flavours, with dozens of recipes from meze and soups to pilaf, stews and fish. Recipes are combined with beautiful pictures and entertaining extracts from his thrillers. Among classics like imam bayld and i kebab, readers will find less familiar recipes for beetroot pilaf, baked lamb, nettles and yogurt soup. There are instructions on how to prepare a sheep for forty people, klephtic style, and how to stuff mackerel. Authoritative, entertaining and instructive, YASHIM COOKS ISTANBUL takes readers on a tour of traditional foodways in the eastern Mediterranean. Yashim Cooks Istanbul covers the full spectrum of Turkish cookery, from simple meze and vegetable dishes to meat, fish and puddings. Good in the kitchen, good on the table, it will draw the reader into the extraordinary atmosphere of old Istanbul. Imagine you could step back into Yashims world. Imagine that the flavours and colours of old Istanbul could come to life. Yashim Cooks Istanbul is about time travel and you dont have to leave your kitchen to make the trip Jason Goodwin. Simultaneously Published In Great Britain By Chatto & Windus Under The Title: The Gunpowder Gardens. Includes Index. Traces the history of tea, and describes the author's experiences visiting the places where the tea industry began