As I have said before, I have to throw high quality tealeaves away. In my eternal quest for the usage of used tealeaves (see "New, unique (guaranteed) experience" thread) I found yet another application. Cooking! A while ago I saw a recipe of a Chinese soup with puerh and thought - why not try to use it as a marinade? Believe it or not, used green puerh leaves do wonders when used to marinade chicken and seafood (I have yet to try meat and I am not so sure). But both fish and chicken after soaking or several hours in old green puerh (I have not tried black yet) get tenderness, texture and flavor that is totally exquisite! To prepare the marinade I boiled some old green puerh leaves for several minutes, cooled the "tea" and poured it all over the fish together with leaves themselves. Then I made sure that leaves are evenly distributed between fish fillets and several hours later I poured the puerh out and cooked the fish (on skillet) allowing puerh leaves to cling to the fish. The taste is not at all "jumpy" or even "teaish". It has very fine gamma of undertones that I would never expect from tea at all. I did some cooking with black tea years ago and it was OK, but expectedly "teaish" and quite plain. The green puerh cooking is by far more interesting. You have got to try it! Chicken was done the same way - my wife and daughter ate it all (which never happened before) and told me that from now on NEVER to cook chicken any other way. I also tried prawns and that was beyond words!
My next candidates: scallops and I also want to try some shellfish.
Sasha.