In China, I followed Polina into the tea.

Not every stop on this trip is about my cooking. Some of them are about hers.

Polina is building a tea company, Tea with Polina, and one of the promises I made her was simple: wherever great tea grows, we go see it together. So we went to Hangzhou, in the east of China, where some of the most famous tea in the world comes off these hills.

It rained the entire time. The fields went soft and green and completely quiet, rows of tea running up the slopes until they disappeared into the mist. We walked them in the rain and for once I stayed out of the way and let Polina lead, which is a good change of pace for me.

That's the whole point of doing this together. The trip isn't only mine. She's learning her craft on the same road I'm learning the next part of mine, and China was her chapter.