Organic matcha green tea

Matcha is the one green tea you do not infuse. The leaf is shaded before picking, which pushes the plant to produce more chlorophyll and more amino acids, then dried and ground to a powder fine enough to stay suspended in water. Nothing is filtered out, so a cup of matcha delivers the whole leaf rather than what the water managed to extract from it. That is why the colour is so strong and why the effect is different from a brewed green tea.

Preparing it

Sift a level teaspoon into a wide bowl, add a small amount of water at around 80 °C, and whisk briskly in a zigzag until a fine foam forms on the surface. Then top up. A bamboo whisk does this better than a spoon, but a small milk frother works.

Water that is too hot is the usual mistake and it makes the cup bitter. So does dumping all the water in at once, which leaves lumps.

Beyond the bowl

Matcha latte, hot or iced, is the version most people actually drink: whisk the paste first, then pour in milk. It also goes into ice cream, cakes, financiers and shortbread, where a teaspoon or two colours and flavours a whole batch.

Keep the bag tightly closed, cool and dark. Matcha oxidises faster than leaf tea and dulls from bright green to olive within weeks of opening, which is a taste change as much as a colour one. Buy the small format unless you drink it daily.