extracting the roasting smell of tea leaves

On a traditional shopping street in Japan, you often smell the roasting smell of tea leaves. It comes from a tea shop. They use a special machine for roasting and diffusing the smell. Why? To make fresh Hoji-cha (roasted tea) and also to attract the customers off course.

My experiment of today is, how to extract this smell!



The tea leaves in the beginning of roasting diffuse sour-sweet smell like the leaves of cherry blossoms.



Controlling the temperature was not easy.



After 30 minutes roasting.



The natural smell of roasting tea leaves was absorbed in the transparent fat.

This is a classical form of perfume called "pomade".

Neri-ko, the Japanese traditional incense

Neri-ko is a primitive form of incense made from diverse fragrant resin or wood powder that dates back to more than 1000 years ago.

Based on the try-out set released by Kogado, I made Neri-ko for the first time.



Mix the powder well,



then pour plum syrop.



Then make small balls.





Then burn the incense!

'Takimono-awase' is a form of game competing each other's recipe. In the "The Tales of Genji", the oldest romance novel written by Murasaki-shikibu more than 1000 years ago, Genji's wives and lovers competed with their own family recipes. How elegant!

I'm thinking about looking into the traditional recipes that are in "The Tales of Genji".

Kodo

Kodo is a Japanese traditional smell ceremony, like tea ceremony. I've participated in the introductory class at Kogado in Tokyo.

Kodo solely focuses on art of diffusing fragrant wooden piece. They also make guessing game out of it. The art of simplicity.

Edible Perfume Workshop in Tokyo

some more photos.















photo by one of the participants

Edible Perfume Workshop in Tokyo

Edible Perfume Workshop

organized and sponsored by Kaori-aru-project

January 11, 2009, 14:00 - 17:00
at Sekido Public Hall in Tama-city, Tokyo
15 participants



In a setup between a lab and a kitchen, Edible Perfume Workshop was taken place.

The workshop room was filled with the delicious aroma's and energy from the participants. FM Tama was reporting the entire workshop.

Let's see what the participants brought with them as a flavour couple.

• coriander & yuzu
  
• roubai plum ＆ pine
• apple & lavender
• lemon grass ＆ shitake
  
• Thai ginger ＆ lemon grass
  
• Mongorian cheese ＆ Edelwise
• Cherry blossom pickle ＆ mango
• raw sugar of sugar cane ＆ Oolong tea
• ginger ＆ butter
  
• spinach powder ＆ yuzu
  
• sisho ＆ lemon
  
• yuzu & cardamon　

After consulting with each person on extracting temperature and medium, each person started preparing the food materials.





An undefinable mixed aroma was filled in the workshop room.





The processed food materials were packaged in the special bag, and then the solvent was poured over them.





Extraction in progress. Some of the fresh ingredients were not heated up but warmed with the body temperature by hands.



Filtering.



Transparent liquid flow into the bottles.
"Beautiful!" Many people were impressed by the colors.



Two flavours were composed to a new creation.



After each composition, the created flavour was exhibited on one table. Everyone tasted each other's creation by dipping a sort of eatable paper in the flavoured oil or liquor.



There are in total 15 flavours. Our tongue got confused.

























All the flavours were somewhat surprising and at the same time delicious.

Edible Perfume Workshop | photo (17)

foAM Open Kitchen
Originally uploaded by schizophonia

The couple
Turmeric & Ginger

Edible Perfume Workshop | photo (16)

foAM Open Kitchen
Originally uploaded by schizophonia

The happy flavour couples.