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Science
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
Matcha, a finely ground green tea powder first imbibed by Buddhist monks in tea ceremonies, is now being used throughout the U.S. in ice creams, lattes and even bourbon.
Traditional matcha tea gets whirled, dusted, infused in US
LOS ANGELES — More than a thousand years ago, Buddhist monks in Japan began a daily ritual of grinding green tea leaves into powder, mixing it into hot water with a bamboo whisk, then sharing the tea from a single cup. Today matcha in the U.S. is considerably less monastic. It’s being blended into lattes, dusted onto cheesecakes, mixed into chocolate, even infused in bourbon. The finely ground green tea is experiencing a U.S. renaissance, with specialty matcha tea bars popping up from Los Angeles to New York and industry giants like Teavana adding it to their product lineup. Chefs are mixing matcha with grains, using it in toppings for Bundt cakes, and mixing it into cocktails, adding a punch of opulent green color along with a cool, mellow taste to playful culinary combinations. Teavana president Annie YoungScrivner even uses matcha as a beauty mask. “It’s fantastic,” she said. “It tightens.” The uptick in U.S. demand for matcha is having a spillover effect in Japan, where production of tencha, the raw green leaves that are ground into the powder known as matcha, has doubled in Kyoto prefecture during the last 10 years, rising from 564 tons in 2003 to more than 1,163 tons in 2013. Once picked by hand, advances in technology have paved the way for mass production. Specialized machines pluck the top leaves from tea shrubs and remove the veins and stems before the remnants are ground with granite stone and sealed in tin cans. Industry leaders hope matcha one
day will become a staple in the American kitchen the same way soy sauce did after World War II. They also hope the tea’s long and rich culinary history doesn’t get dissolved in the process. “Ideally, people will learn how to prepare tea as well, not just drink it,” said Kazumi Nishiguchi, a director at the Chamber of Kyoto Prefecture Tea Public Interest Incorporated Association. “We need to export the culture, too. And it’s important that it be done right.” Matcha was first consumed during China’s Tsang dynasty and later was brought to Japan by priests and monks. After a bloody war with the Mongols, tea ceremonies in China came to a halt but continued to flourish across the East China Sea in Japan. The Japanese developed intricate tea ceremonies combining prayer and meditation and perfected the process for making matcha: Tea plants were covered with a shade cloth two to four weeks before harvest, when the leaves contain the most chlorophyll and nutrients, then plucked. Monks praised matcha for its calming effect. Today more is known about the science behind matcha. Growing tea leaves in the shade boosts their amino acids, and because the entire leaf is consumed matcha also contains about 10 times as many antioxidants as regularly brewed green tea. It also gives an energy kick, but with less
caffeine than coffee. Matcha likely first entered the U.S. market through Japanese grocery stores in cities like Los Angeles, which has one of the largest Japanese populations outside Japan. Some of the biggest matcha producers are reporting big U.S. sales growth. DoMatcha, sold at Whole Foods and U.S. specialty stores, has seen an annual spike in sales of 30 percent, while Ippodo has seen growth of 20 to 25 percent in recent years and opened its first brick-and-mortar store outside Japan in New York City in 2013. Chains like Starbucks now offer green tea lattes with matcha; Teavana sells a bamboo whisking set. Across the Pacific, Japan hasn’t been immune to the forces of cultural adaptation either. “Matcha sweets are everywhere,” said Kenichi Kano, Ippodo’s international director. “Matcha cake, matcha chocolate, matcha macaroons.” As lifestyles in Japan get busier, ready-to-go matcha beverages have replaced tea ceremonies and restaurants are experimenting with matcha powder and extract in ice cream, beer and alcohol. “Japan respects the traditional tea ceremony,” said Rona Tison, a senior vice president with Ito En, one of the world’s largest green tea distributors. “But they are becoming Westernized as well.” (ap)
International
Space station getting Italian espresso maker CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida — The next space station grocery run will carry caffeine to a whole new level: Aboard the SpaceX supply ship is an authentic espresso machine straight from Italy. SpaceX is scheduled to launch its unmanned rocket with the espresso maker — and 4,000 pounds (1,800 kilograms) of food, science research and other equipment — Monday afternoon. The experimental espresso machine is intended for International Space Station astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti of Italy. It was supposed to arrive in January, shortly after her arrival, so she could get some relief from the station’s instant coffee. But it ended up on the back burner after a station shipment from Virginia was lost in a launch explosion. The espresso maker is dubbed ISSpresso — ISS standing for International Space Station. Italian coffee giant Lavazza joined forces with the Turin-based engineering company Argotec and the Italian Space Agency to provide a specially designed machine for use off the planet. NASA certified its safety. NASA’s space station program deputy manager, Dan Hartman, said it’s all part of making astronauts feel at home as they spend months — and even up to a year — in orbit. Already, Mission Control gives astronauts full access to email, phone calls, private video hookups, and live news and sports broadcasts. “The psychological support is very, very important,” Hart-
man told reporters Sunday. “If an espresso machine comes back and we get a lot of great comments from the crew ... It’s kind of like the ice cream thing, right, when we fly ice cream every now and then. It’s just to boost spirits. Maybe some rough day, a scoop of ice cream gets them over that hump kind of thing.” The SpaceX Dragon supply ship also holds experiments for NASA’s one-year space station resident Scott Kelly, who moved in a couple weeks ago. Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko also will remain on board until March 2016. This will be the California-based SpaceX company’s seventh station supply run since 2012, all from Cape Canaveral. For the third time, SpaceX will attempt to land its leftover booster vertically on an ocean barge. Both previous tests failed. Improvements to the first-stage booster and floating platform — based on lessons learned from the January and February attempts — should boost the odds of success this time to 75 percent or maybe 80 percent, said Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of mission assurance for SpaceX. SpaceX’s billionaire founder Elon Musk wants to save time and money by reusing the boosters normally discarded in the Atlantic. In fact, the company is transforming a former missile-launching site at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into a landing pad for its revolutionary flyback boosters. (ap)
Bali News
International
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Buleleng exports mangosteen to China SINGARAJA - Other than mangoes, Depaha village, Kubutambahan, Buleleng, also has a local fruit known in English as mangosteen, which has managed to penetrate the international market. This sweet fruit with a slightly sour flavour, is grown in many villages in North Bali but mangosteen farmers in Unggahan village, Seririt and Bongancina village, Busungbiu are exporting their fruit to China. Horticulture Production Division Head, I Gede Sebudi, with permission from the Head of the Buleleng Agriculture and Livestock Agency, Nyoman Swatantra, said on Monday that among the many mangosteen producing villages in the area, so far, only Unggahan and Bongancina villages are exporting their product. “Based on data collected, mangosteen from these villages are exported, while mangosteen grown in other villages are only sold to the local markets of Bali and Java,” he said. Sebudi said that there is no data that confirms exactly why foreign fruit importers only buy fruit from these two villages. But according to farmers and collectors, the fruit from villages of Unggahan and Bongancina are of good quality with smooth skin and a lot of flesh. The stems of these fruit are also shorter which makes them able to stay fresh longer, once they have been picked. Mangosteen that are chosen for export are not resold as fruit to be eaten but are processed into cosmetic and medical products. “Only mangosteen of the very best grade are able to be exported because they will be used for cosmetics and drugs,” he said. There are also no exact figures for the number of Buleleng Mangosteen that could reach international markets because Buleleng itself has no mangosteen collectors, only growers. These collectors then sell the
IBP/File Photo
Other than mangoes, Depaha village, Kubutambahan, Buleleng, also has a local fruit known in English as mangosteen, which has managed to penetrate the international market. fruits to exporters in Denpasar. “Mangosteen at Unggahan village sells their mangosteen to collectors from Lokapaksa, while the mangosteen from Bongancina village are sold to collectors from Pajahan village, Pupuan, Tabanan and these collectors then sell them to exporters in Denpasar,” he said. When Sebudi was asked about local mangosteen cultivation in Buleleng, he said that pests and diseases were the main challenges that farmers anticipate. Also that regarding fruit produced for export, special atten-
tion is given to its quality. To that end, the Field School (SL) provides guidance to mangosteen cultivators for the control of pests and diseases, such as thrips and mites (insect) that spread by fungi and cause yellow sap, so that famers are better equipped to deal with such situations. “Often these attacks go unnoticed until they have caused the crops to fail, so we are still providing guidance about how to overcome this challenge so that cultivators can meet the demands of the market,” he added. Since long ago, mangosteeen,
which are harvested once a year, have been grown in the subdistricts of Sawan, Seririt, Banjar and Busungbiu. The villages that produced mangosteen include; Lemukih, Galungan, Sekumpul and Bebetin (Sawan subdistrict), Cempaga, Pedawa and Tigawasa (Banjar subdistrict), Unggahan and Ularan (Seririt subdistrict) as well as Bongancina, Subuk and Tista (Busungbiu subdistrict). Farmers in North Bali have been growing mangosteen tress by using the intercropping system for many years, because they say that it gives the best results,
Copyright protection
“Buffalo race” style Endek cloth certified
This undated product image provided by Lavazza, shows a prototype of Lavazza and Argotec’s “ISSpresso” machine. The final version will be the first real Italian espresso machine on The International Space Station. On Monday, April 13, 2015, a version of the coffee maker is scheduled for launch to the International Space Station aboard a supply capsule. (AP Photo/Lavazza)
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NEGARA - Jembrana’s Endek cloth weavers, who produce the distinctive makepung or “buffalo race style” cloth can now breathe easy because their cloth designs cannot be copied or stolen anymore. This product of creative work has received a copyright certificate from the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs. Until now, the typical designs of Jembrana have been plagiarized or “knowcked-off” by producers from outside of Jembrana, causing the value of such cloths to go down.
Regent of Jembrana, I Putu Artha did not deny such facts and added that local producers of the buffalo race style endek cloths no longer need to fear that their designs will be copied. “All this time Jembrana entrepreneurs who created the buffalo race style have had to worry about their work will be plagiarized by entrepreneurs from outside Jembrana and outside of Bali who have been copying their designs, now, with the copyright certificate, Jembrana weavers will be protected,” said Artha.
What is more, with the impending implementation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) there will be even tougher competition all around. Regent Artha expressed his appreciation for the the Ministry of Cooperatives and SMEs’ program that seeks to provide copyright certification. Minister Puspayoga explained that new products, which issue from SME entrepreneurs trying to expand their businesses, are frequently plagiarized. Hearing the call for help from
SMEs, Minister Puspayoga worked to facilitate the provision of copyright certification. Many small creative company’s complain that when they join overseas expo’s, their products are often plagiarized and copyrighted by foreign companies. Then, when they go to the same expo the next year, they find that they are being asked to pay a fine for copyright infringement. Puspayoga added that the submission of requests for copyright certification is free of charge. (kmb26)
and allows for increased yields. The data for 2014 indicates that there were 59,762 mangosteen trees that produced a total of 1,915 tons of mangosteen. (mud)