Guest Post: Fermented Tea Leaves, by Kirsten K. Shockey
Kirsten K. Shockey and Christopher Shockey are the coauthors of award-winning The Big Book of Cidermaking, Fiery Ferments, best-selling Fermented Vegetables and award-winning Miso, Tempeh, Natto and other Tasty Ferments. Kirsten is the author of Hombrewed Vinegar. Kirsten is a co-founder of The Fermentation School a women-owned and women-led benefits corporation supporting the voices of independent educators to empower learning and build culture. This post is an extract from her Substack post, the complete text is available for paid subscribers. It appears here with her express permission.
Fermented Tea Leaves: Exploring laphet in Myanmar, fermenting tea leaves at home, finding laphet, By Kirsten K. Shockey
A few weeks ago, I started reading The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane, a novel by Lisa See. I was immediately delighted by the luscious description of the cloud-forested mountains and ancient tea trees in the remote regions of Yunnan Province. (Though I do not live in anything close to a cloud forest, for the last few days, my home’s mountainous ridges have been shrouded in low clouds that hide and reveal trees in misty, ever-changing renderings of the forest in the first hours of light. This somehow amplifies my imagination.) I am also enchanted because I know this region is just east of the area we visited in Myanmar. Camellia sinensis, the tea plant, is thought to have originated in these mountainous regions in the borderlands of Myanmar and China. Reading this transported my memory to this region of the world and the tea plants that we saw. While we didn’t see the making of pu’er (or pu’erh) tea 普洱茶, the fermentation and processing of which is described in this book, we did see the arduous sorting and processing that is also described for the reader. We did see tea fermentation, but that was for laphet လက်ဖက်, fermented tea leaves for eating.
Back to Myanmar and laphet in a moment. This was the second time in the last few months pu’er came across my consciousness. I needed to understand this tea more. I spoke to a friend and she arranged a tea course at our favorite local tea shop two weeks ago. It was an amazing experience, and I learned I am only just beginning down a rabbit hole that could swallow me for years. I will write about the pu’er tasting next week, meanwhile back to the post I’d planned.
Meet Laphet
In the northern mountains of Myanmar, the climate and soils create a perfect combination to grow tea—not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too dry, with mountain soils that are not too fertile yet still rich and slightly acidic. Of all the tea-growing regions in Asia, it was here in ancient times that people started also to eat their tea leaves. Eating tea leaves is older than written history. Stories tell of indigenous tribes fermenting the leaves in bamboo tubes and other vessels. So many of the world’s ferments have origin stories that stem from haste that results in neglect that causes a seemingly magical transformation. The beginning of this practice is lost to time. Folklore indicates that tea was introduced into what is modern-day Myanmar during the Pagan dynasty, the Burmese kingdom that unified the regions, around the twelfth century. Somewhere along the way, laphet became a symbol of peace and an offering between warring kingdoms. It was shared and eaten after settling a dispute throughout pre-colonial times.
We went to Myanmar in December of 2016. The we, being Christopher and I with our youngest two children, who were 17 and 19 at the time. On our second day there, we met our first laphet thoke (tea leaf salad) at a small stand in the Yangon Zoo. If only I could take you down this tangential path of white tigers and hand-feeding wilted greens to the hippopotamus in a journey of the horror and grandeur of a colonial past. I only mention it because this is how ubiquitous laphet is as an afternoon snack. Laphet thoke is the nachos of Burmese snack bars. We sat in this surreal zoo, tiny chairs around a small table, and our knees hugged the edges as we bent over the salad. It was served with hot tea. It was delicious, and because of that, or the dizzying heat and long hours of jet-lagged walking that had landed us there in the first place, Christopher and I decided at that moment to eat laphet anytime we recognized it on a menu. It was love at first bite. (Our teenage children may not have felt the same way.)
While it could be called the national dish because everyone eats it and crosses all social barriers, it is prepared differently from place to place. Two makers next door to each other using the exact same ingredients would come out with a unique plate of laphet. The spicy, salty, bitter, crunchy, oily bits all go together magically and cannot be compared to anything in Western culture.
Laphet thoke is a meal-like salad and ahlu laphet is the snack. The basics are similar but served differently. The snack is served in divided lacquer dishes, with each element separated like spokes around the center of fermented tea leaves, which have been flavored with garlic, chile peppers, salt, fresh lemon juice, and peanut oil. For the meal-like salad, the parts are served together piled in a bowl with a little bit of fresh cabbage and perhaps some fresh tomato. The elements are various deep-fried crispy crunchies; deep-fried garlic pieces, fried prawn bits, deep-fried peanuts, fried split peas or garbanzo beans, deep-fried shallots, and toasted sesame seeds.
We were exploring Bagan and were due to go to Namshan in the northern mountains of the Shan state the next day when I received a message from my contact in the Shan state. “Sorry for my late reply due to a bad connection. I’m not sure if it is a good time to come here for you because a few fighting are happening around Kyaukme and a lot of Palaung people are coming to Kyaukme for their safety.”
A little research confirmed that rival ethnic militias were clashing with guns in the, at times, war-torn Shan state. We’d known this area was usually off-limits to tourists, but things had been calm, and we’d been assured we could visit. This was the part of the trip I’d most awaited, but after a few more broken-English emails between my contact in Yangon and in Kyaukme it was clear we were not going to Namshan, the center of tea and laphet. As a small aside must admit, for all my excitement, it was also the part of the trip I’d anticipated with dread. A small part of me was relieved.
No, not the warring factions, but my own gephyrophobia combined with acrophobia coalescing on a rickety train across the Goktiek Viaduct—spanning 2,260 feet, over 360 feet off the ground. A suspended track that was just wide enough for the tracks, no guard rails to even falsely give a sense of safety. I didn’t know if I could do it. Our son, at the time was a freshman engineering student and history junkie and had been sharing “fun facts” about its construction and condition, along with placing terrifying YouTube footage of the clanking, lurching historic train crossing the extraordinary expanse in front of me, saying, “It will be fun!” Our seventeen-year-old daughter, who dangles off of shear rock faces on thin ropes, kept telling me, “You got this.” I never found out.
Instead, we went to Inle Lake and further north to Pindaya, on the edge of the Shan state, as suggested by my contact in Yangon, who signed his name Ya ba da ba doo, in homage to Fred Flintstone. He thought we would be able to find a few small tea plantations that make laphet. We changed our plans and went on the most jaw-dropping, swaying, cliffside-hugging, all-day bus ride to Kalaw. I began to suspect the viaduct would have been better. From Kalaw, a hill station in the mountains, we went on to Inle Lake, and finally, 4 days later, we were in Pindaya. We were now on our own, no contacts or help to figure out where the laphet was produced. We started at the market. To say we attracted everyone’s attention is an understatement. We were not only the only foreigners, but three of the four of us were over 6 feet tall in a country where the average height is not quite 5 feet 3 inches. We were watched constantly, and the attention came in the form of shy smiles, giggles, and requests to take selfies with the family of giants. Nobody understood our requests to find laphet producers. It is essential to note that laphet can refer to both the green tea you drink and the fermented tea leaves that you eat. This made finding the process for the fermented version a little more confusing in conversations that already had meanings fall away when they were lost in translation.
What does laphet taste like?
It is hard to describe because it is like nothing else I know. I would say the plain leaves, not dressed, have an earthy umami, they are both slightly bitter and sweet. Despite being fermented, I don’t find it sour. However, when dressed with oil, garlic, and salt, the fermentation’s more pickle-like flavor qualities are brought out, and then it almost tastes as if there are green olives in the mix. I encourage you to read this wonderful blog, Burmalicious blog by Suu Khin. In it you will find many delicious recipes and also this Tea Leaf Salad Recipe.
As far as finding laphet, an online search will bring you to many options. You will see that you can get it “dressed” and plain. Dressed has the spices and oils added already. You will also find “kits” that come with the crunchy bits too.
Down the rabbit hole
Here is an interesting study where the researchers looked at health benefits of laphet by looking at it through the lens of gut health. They specifically were looking at polyphenols, antioxidant activity, and prebiotics. Interestingly, the polyphenol content of fermented (drinking) teas such as pu’er is lower than that of other teas. However studies showed that laphet (for eating) is a richer source of polyphenols. This study wanted to look at the changes in polyphenols and antioxidant activity but monitoring this food as it goes through our digestive system (where gastric juices and bile acid affect stability.) Because laphet is consumed as a whole food, they wanted to look at its food matrix. Tea leaves contain a good amount of fiber they felt it was important to look at the prebiotic effects as well.
They found that the prebiotics in laphet encourages the growth of our commensal bacteria, Bacteroidetes spp. They concluded that consumption of laphet can deliver significant amounts of polyphenols, antioxidant activity, and dietary fiber to support a healthy gut.
This post is an extract from Kristen’s Substack post, the complete text is available for paid subscribers. It appears here with her express permission.
