Cup of Tea

Passion Fruit green tea recipe

In Taiwan, our very favorite drink was passion fruit green tea from a place we called 50 tea shop. There were four tea shops on just one side of the street on one single block in our neighborhood. We’d occasionally try the other ones, but the guys at 50 recognized the foreigners and usually knew what we wanted before we even made it to the counter. I needn’t have bothered learning how to say baixiang lucha. It’s one of the very few things I can actually say in Chinese. I was an abysmal expat.

When lilikoi, or yellow passion fruit, started flooding our backyard, we knew we wanted to recreate our favorite drink from our former home. I came home from work one day to find that my husband had made a jug of lilikoi syrup. We went straight to the store to buy some green tea bags, brewed a cup each, impatiently waited for it to cool, dumped it over some ice and spiked it with the syrup. We were transported.

The lilikoi syrup could easily be mixed with plenty of other things. I’m sure a lilikoi margarita never hurt anyone. But a big pitcher of passion fruit green tea in your fridge when it’s 85 degrees in your living room really can’t be beat. It’s sweet but not too sugary. It also gives you a nice little hit of caffeine to help you through those hot afternoon slumps. It’s really the perfect drink.

Taiwan, US, UK, anywhere you can get your hands on some passion fruit, give this a try. And practice your Chinese. You can’t be any worse than me.

Serves 8

Sweet and slightly tart iced green tea infused with passion fruit syrup to get you through the heat.

1. 2 cups passion fruit pulp
2. 2 cups sugar
3. 2 cups water

1. 1 green tea bag per cup of water

1. Put sugar and water in a medium sauce pan over medium high heat. Bring to a boil and lower heat. Simmer and stir until sugar is dissolved. This should only take a few minutes.
2. Remove from heat.
3. Add passion fruit pulp to simple syrup. Put a lid on the pot and leave it to steep for two hours.
4. Strain out pulp and store in an air tight container or mix directly with tea.

1. Boil some water and soak tea bags to desired strength. It's making tea, not rocket science.
2. You can store the syrup in a separate container or combine it in a pitcher directly with the green tea. Fill up your desired container (short glass, tall glass, pitcher, bucket) with 3/4 green tea and 1/4 passion fruit syrup.
3. Serve over ice.