Raspberry Matcha Latte — A Recipe and Mini Origin Story
The first raspberry matcha latte that I made!
I’ve always been a fan of strawberry matcha lattes. Boba Guys has a great one, as does Percolate (my FAVORITE boba place in LA). However, instead of paying $10+ to get one delivered to me, I decided to try and make one myself!
Instead of just making a basic strawberry matcha latte, I put a little twist on it and made a raspberry matcha latte. Raspberries are one of my favorite fruits ever, and I figured that the tartness would pair well with the bitter / earthy flavors of the matcha. I was right! I’ve been drinking this latte almost every day this week, and I especially like drinking it in the afternoons when I’m just a liiittle hungry but not hungry enough to snack on anything substantial.
Potential Benefits of Matcha
For those of you who typically need a little pick-me-up during this time of day, this drink is perfect for you. The sweetness of the homemade syrup will give you a little energy boost, while the naturally occurring, slow-release nature of the caffeine in the matcha powder will help you sustain that energy through the rest of the work day without causing you to crash. This characteristic of matcha (and of most other teas) is what makes it a unique source of caffeine. The amino acid L-theanine (present in all tea leaves; it’s what gives tea its distinct umami flavor profile) promotes relaxation and harmonizes with the caffeine to deliver a calming, smooth wave of alertness.
In addition, because you are consuming the whole tea leaf when you drink matcha (vs. just drinking tea water), you are by default consuming more vitamins, minerals and antioxidants than you would by just brewing up some green tea! There are sources all over the internet that tout the superfood properties of matcha and how it can do things like boost your metabolism and help lower cholesterol levels.
I am not a doctor by the way (much to my parents’ dismay), so please don’t quote me! If you want to learn more about the benefits of matcha, you can click here, here or here.
Origins of Matcha
Of course, before posting this recipe, I had to do a little homework on the origins of matcha. Although matcha has only recently become mainstream in America, it’s been around for over a thousand years. I’d always thought that matcha originated in Japan, but turns out it actually has roots in China!
Apparently, during China’s Tang Dynasty (which began in 618 and ended in 907), tea traders would mix pulverized tea leaves with salt and steam the mixture to form stackable blocks that made the tea easier to transport and trade. Then, during the Song Dynasty (from 960 to 1279), Zen Buddhists began making powdered tea from the dried tea leaf blocks and would make the powder into a drink by whisking it with hot water. During this time, a Japanese Buddhist Monk who was studying in China brought some tea powder back with him to Japan, where the method of making matcha was perfected and woven into the the country’s cultural traditions and history.
The incorporation of matcha into specialty drinks and desserts (matcha ice cream, matcha crepe cake, matcha Kit Kat, etc.) is a relatively recent phenomenon (within the past 2 - 3 decades) and seems to be getting more and more popular as East Asian ingredients and flavors have become more mainstream. Back when I was in high school, many of my friends had never even heard of matcha before, and Starbucks didn’t even have a matcha latte on their menu yet (it might have been called “green tea latte” or some other obscure name, but I definitely don’t remember seeing the word “matcha” anywhere on the menu)!
Today, you can find matcha of various grades all throughout Japan— from the free matcha offered at hot water stations in conveyor belt sushi bars to the expensive, ceremonial grade matcha used for traditional tea ceremonies, that varieties of matcha that are available for purchase can be overwhelming at times.
I will say this though: the type and grade of matcha that you buy DOES make a difference. I’ve had so many friends and family members tell me that they hate the taste of matcha, only to change their minds after having a cup of good matcha (Patrick, I am looking at you). Do NOT just blindly buy the first matcha that you see on Amazon! My two favorite stores to get matcha from are Lupicia (the best bang for your buck) and Ippodo (they have a physical store in NYC). Ippodo has a nice guide on their website that outlines the different types of matcha and explains the different flavor profiles of each type.
As always, I am not a historian, so please forgive me and let me know if I’m butchering any aspects of the history behind matcha. This is just a very abbreviated summary of what I’ve gathered from reading articles online.
This one’s a strawberry + raspberry matcha latte!
The Recipe (2 servings)
Utensils needed:
Matcha whisk (yes, this is absolutely necessary)
Small bowl for whisking
Clear glass jar or mug
Reusable straw (trust me on this one; it tastes better through a straw)
For the syrup:
Ingredients:
6 oz raspberries
Sweetener of choice (monk fruit sweetener works really well for this recipe, and there’s no weird aftertaste!)
Water
OPTIONAL: 1 TSP of corn (or other vegetable) starch
Steps:
Wash a small, 6 oz container of raspberries, and put them in a mini saucepan
Fill the saucepan with just enough water so that the berries are about 1/3 of the way submerged
Pour your sweetener of choice over the berries. You can be generous! This is meant to be a concentrated syrup, so it’s okay if it tastes too sweet at first; you can always just use less syrup in the drink. With raspberries, you definitely want to add enough sweetener, or else the tartness of the berries will overwhelm the whole drink
Simmer on low heat over the stove top for about 10 minutes
OPTIONAL: Dilute 1 TSP of corn starch or another vegetable starch in 1 TSP of water and stir into the pot. This will help the syrup thicken into a nice, “jammy” consistency. However, I don’t really like using fillers in my food, so I would personally skip this step
Let the syrup cool down
For the drink:
Ingredients:
Steps:
After the syrup has cooled, scoop half of it into a clear glass jar (this is KEY because you want to be able to see all the pretty colors!)
Add some ice cubes (I like my drinks super icy, so I add like 12 ice cubes hahaha)
Pour in about 8 oz of oat milk (you can use any plant-based milk, but I prefer oat milk for my matcha lattes because it gives it a nice, creamy consistency)
Whisk 1 - 2 TSP of matcha with 1 - 2 TBSP of water in a small bowl until a pourable paste is formed (I like to go heavy on the matcha, so sometimes I’ll use up to 1 TBSP, hehe). Make sure that you whisk away all the clumps!
Pour the matcha paste into the glass jar and watch it swirl into the oat milk
Stir stir stir and enjoy! I actually don’t like to stir my drink all the way, as I kind of like having the fruity layer at the bottom, but it’s totally up to you!
OPTIONAL: If you prefer a lighter drink, feel free to add some water or almond milk to thin it out. This drink is pretty filling, so sometimes I’ll just use less oat milk and use more almond milk to make a thinner drink
Vegan Bibimbap - A Recipe and Mini History Lesson
The finished product
I never planned on sharing any recipes on my blog, but COVID-19 has forced us all to change our plans, amirite?
Anyways, I gotta say that I was super proud of how pretty (and yummy) this bibimbap turned out to be, so I thought I’d share how I made this with all of you. I’m no chef (I literally only started cooking out of absolute necessity during quarantine so that I wouldn’t starve to death), and I don’t really know how to share recipes “the proper way” with fancy checklists and step by step instructions, so this post will be more like a stream of consciousness.
Before we get into the whole thing, I just want to put out a disclaimer that I am very “flexible” when it comes to cooking in that I don’t typically follow precise measurements. I have two reasons for this: One, I hate washing dishes, and dirty measuring spoons / cups are a pain to clean. Two, I grew up in a very traditional Chinese household where measuring instruments weren’t even part of the kitchen vocabulary (if you know, you know). Therefore, I typically just “cook to taste” and adjust the recipe as I go. That’s why, for the most part, you won’t see me giving out precise measurements for anything. It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I literally don’t even know what the “right” measurement for any of the ingredients actually is, haha.
History of Bibimbap
***Disclaimer: I am not a historian, so please forgive me and let me know if I’m butchering any aspects of the history behind this dish.
Alright, let’s talk about bibimbap. I LOVE bibimbap for a variety of reasons: it’s warm, it’s nourishing, it contains so many different vegetables, and it can easily be made vegetarian or vegan! As I was researching the origins of bibimbap, I came across a few articles that explain the humble origins of the dish; apparently, bibimbap originated in rural Korea and was invented as a convenient way for working class mothers and wives to quickly whip up a nutritious, tasty meal when there wasn’t enough time or space for a traditional meal complete with banchan (small Korean side dishes that are served with almost every meal) while doubling as a way to utilize leftovers and kitchen scraps. One of the papers that I read suggests that bibimbap was also popular with the rich and among high ranking government officials.
TLDR; anyone can eat it, and it’s just so damn delicious. If you want to learn more about the history and origins of bibimbap, I’ve linked a few informative papers and posts that I found helpful during my research in the notes section at the bottom of this post.
The Recipe
This particular bibimbap that I made (the one pictured) is 100% vegan and 200% yummy. The one I made separately for Patrick has a fried egg on top for extra protein, but the yuba noodles in my bowl were enough protein for me.
This dish might look hard to make, but it’s actually incredibly easy! In fact, I’m typically able to make it in under an hour (which is good for me, since I’m clumsy and slow AF in the kitchen). It’s so filling and nourishing — the perfect, guilt-free way to replenish your body after a long, hard day of work. It’s also pretty to look at, which definitely doesn’t hurt.
Instead of laying out the recipe step by step (since there’s really no “order” that you need to follow), I’m just going to go over each component of the bowl in order of appearance. Keep in mind that, depending on how long it takes you to cook every item, some of the things you cooked and set aside in the beginning might get cold, and you might have to reheat your bowl before you eat it. Maybe I’m just super slow at cooking, but I always have to pop the bowl into the microwave for a minute or two before serving. If you’re able to find a good workaround for this, let me know!
A wild bibimbap in its natural habitat
Clockwise, starting from the top:
Carrots - I just grated some raw carrots and set them aside. Super simple, nothing fancy here. Some people like to cook their carrots, but I prefer the crunch from raw carrots, and they’re more nutritious this way anyways!
Rice - I cooked some medium-grain white Japanese rice in the rice cooker and sprinkled on some black sesame seeds (Patrick scooped it into a cute little ball for me hehehe).
Seaweed - I took some dried wakame seaweed that I got my the local Japanese market downstairs, cooked it in boiling water for about 3 minutes, strained it and dressed it with a mix of sesame oil, soy sauce, mirin and monk fruit sweetener (you can use any sweetener of choice). I topped the resulting seaweed salad with white sesame seeds for funsies (sort of a yin / yang situation going on with the black and white sesame seeds, haha).
Zucchini - I chopped the zucchini into thin strips and cooked it lightly with sesame oil and a tiny bit of salt. You can add some crushed garlic if you’d like, but I skipped it this time around because I didn’t want to have to wash the garlic crusher, lol.
Mushrooms - I like using shiitake mushrooms because they give off an amazing umami flavor, though you can use almost any kind of mushroom you’d like (enoki and oyster mushroom would work great as well). I just chopped them up and cooked them in a little bit of sesame oil, soy sauce and hoisin sauce. I added a touch of salt towards the end to bring out the umami flavor a bit more, but you can totally skip this step if you’re watching your sodium intake.
Kimchi - From Whole Foods. I had originally been using the big jar of kimchi that you can get at Costco, but I later realized that the Costco one isn’t 100% vegan because it contains anchovies, so I’ve since switched to a vegan brand. I’m currently using one by Mama O’s, which you can find at Whole Foods, but there are a ton of vegan kimchi brands out there; just make sure to read the label and make sure that there are no fish products on the ingredients list!
Spinach - Blanched and drained (I don’t usually put any seasoning on this, since the gochujang will flavor everything in the bowl and you don’t want your bowl to become too salty)
Center:
Yuba Noodles - Packaged and precooked by Hodo Foods (available at Whole Foods). I just heated them up a bit in the pan before serving. I got the spicy flavor, but they have a sesame flavor as well that I want to try.
Dumpling - Leftover veggie dumpling pan fried with the little bit of residual sesame oil from cooking all of the veggies earlier
Microgreens - Got these at Whole Foods as well (seeing a trend?)
Gochujang - Vegan gochujang by Mother-in-Law’s (available at Whole Foods)
Some tips:
For the raw veggies and anything that can be served cold, make sure to prepare them ahead of time so that your hot items don’t get cold
Cook the veggies one by one if you want to be able to plate them / make them look pretty, but it’s totally fine to just cook everything together if you’re short on time and don’t care about taking pictures for the gram
To make the pretty lines with the gochujang, I spooned some into a plastic baggie, cut off one of the corners, and used it as a makeshift squeezy tube
Sesame oil burns at high temperatures, so make sure to cook everything using medium / low heat
The gochujang will flavor everything in the bowl, so don’t worry if some of your veggies don’t taste salty enough on their own
Notes:
Here’s a well-written research paper all about the history, origins and different types of bibimbap
Here’s a more casual fun post that’s easy and fun to read