h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't know if this is common anywhere else but here in the northwest(of the USA) there is Chai(pronounced like tie except with a ch instead of a t) tea- the most common kind is sold in little things like soy milk comes in and is is concentrated and you mix it half and half with milk. If you are going to drink it right though you have to go to an esspresso stand or somthing because it should be heated like a latte with the little steam thing- except no froth- if you try it at home with out a esspresso machine it is a dismal dissappointment. oh yeah there are like three flavors of the good brand(Oregon Chai Tea)- original(which is regular tea with various spices and honey- reminicent of pumpkin pie- mmm very good), green tea(which obviously is made with green tea and has different spices- this is my favorite), and chamomile(which is ucky and tastes like soap). also it is very good iced- you just dump the ingredients in your cup with ice and get a bendy straw, which are indispensible for any cold beverage in my opinion, and drink up.

If I'm not mistaken, the word Chai means Tea, in some another Earthly language. To call a drink Chai Tea would be the same as calling a beer 'Bierre Beer'

Making chai at home isn't really that difficult.

-Make the tea, allowing the leaves to steep for at least 5 minutes for loose leaves (longer than usual -- you want the tea to be really strong, and a little bitter)
-Add honey to taste, 2 tablespoons if you'd like it to tase like the stuff served in coffee shops. Stir until the honey's dissolved.
-Add heavy cream. Milk just dilutes the mixture. If you can use an espresso steamer to heat the cream, do so. The steam changes the flavor, and keeps the drink from becoming lukewarm. It still tastes good without steaming, though.

You can order decent chai in the US from Upton at http://www.uptontea.com/ or The Republic of Tea at http://www.republicoftea.com/ .

Oh, in defense of "Chai Tea", I present "Pizza Pie". Correctness and common usage have nothing to do with one another.

As far as I'm aware, 'chai' is originally an Indian term. (which has become corrupted into (British) English slang as 'char', as in 'a cup of char', meaning any (normal) cup of tea.
The method used by a friend of mine (who'd spent some time in India), to prepare chai is to add tea leaves, sugar, a few cardamom pods, and milk to a kettle of boiling water, and simmer until the desired strength is acheived.
The end result (at least when he made it) was excellent, even using powdered milk, and when brewed up a mountain a couple of km above sea level, where the difficulty of making a good cup of regular tea can be most disheartening to the average British backpacker.

The Russian word for tea is also Chai. An interesting variety is 'Chai S Varenjem', or tea with jam. The jam is used as a sweetener in stead of sugar. Quite good!

'Chai', which we are led to believe by coffee houses can only be made by buying an expensive carton of concentrate from them and mixing the contents with milk, is actually a sort of tea latté originating in India. It's made by brewing loose tea and spices (traditionally cardamom, ginger, cinnamon, and black pepper) in milk. Chai made from scratch like this is excellent; it beats the pants of the prepackaged chai from coffee houses.

You can find more information about this sort of tea here: http://www.csn.net/chai/whatisit.html

-N.

Just another recipe for Chai-Tea:

Make green leaf tea aka 'gunpowder' chinese tea.
Now pour this into a pot with 1/3 milk. Add honey (as much as you like) and add some ginger, cinnamon, anis, indian anis and green cardamom (crush the cardamom slightly so the black dots at the inside can come out). Optional ingredients: liquorice, fennel, juniper, mint and vanilla, altough I never tried the first three as I dont like them at all. Let this boil for about 5 minutes and then pour the tea into a glass. filter it so you wont get all the spices in your mouth. I like it served with a dash of lime juice added to it but thats a matter of taste.

This is a really great tea for the summertime: the cardamom and ginger make you sweat (cardamom is the stuff that makes curry hot) and in return the sweating cools you down. Actually its damn healthy too.

Sounds nice I will try it as soon as I find out what anis is. I found a cafe selling chai in England and got anougher recipy: Cinnamon, Cardamon and cloves, I use cinamon sticks and brown suger, but I must admit that honey sounds nicer.
A freind of mine who spent some time in Southern India said in his region this was called "special chai" but he was not sure about the recipy.

Fellow Guideaholics ;

As an Indian, permit me to contribute my two bits here :

Chai is essentially made in the same way as *usual* tea, the only difference being the ingredients. In most places, people put crushed ginger into the water as it boils, along with cardamom.

Depending on your religion and politics, you might want to substitute honey for sugar ( Very Good for a sore throat)

This is what my grandma told me. It is difficult, if not impossible, to get a standardised recipe for chai. (As for most Indian dishes)

Well I think thats just a cultural barrier what were talking about now. Here in my hometown most people think currypowder is that yellow powder sold here at the mall!

Because they only see one kind they expect it to be the same everywhere on the world (like McDonalds). You could get a similar request from somebody who was born and raised in the deep dessert and let him taste some grilled fish. He probably expect fish allways taste like what he just ate. The idea of different preparations (cooking, frying) is quite comprehensible but dont expect him to get the idea of more than one species all by himself.
Also the cooking and frying thing was easy but nobody told him you can cook this fish (what a coincidence, again the same fish species!) with more than one recipe: add tomatoes and garlic. I would love to see him order the dish in one of those fancy restaurants downtown...

I know when I cook I just throw spices in the pot by intuition.
When I serve the dish I often cant tell you the recipe because it changes everytime. When I make Chai I pick spices from what I have in the cupboard. I think the probability I will make Chai 3 times in a row with the exact same tast is a chance from one in a million.

The recipe I gave is just one way of making chai and I happen to like it this way. If you dont like an ingedrient or want to experiment with other ingredients you think Ok. Well do so, even if you decide not to call it original chai tea, all that matters is that its the tea you like. Regard any recipe as a guideline, as an indication on how to get the specific taste your looking for.
If that taste happens to be authentic or not? who cares?

You are indeed correct. 'Chai' being Hindi. A corruption of which into the English language explains why tea-ladies are sometimes called char-ladies. India is a great place for English folk to travel around because of the cheap 24-hour availability of chai, on trains, beaches, mountains in fact everywhere. Chai is not entirely unlike Tea. They take a saucepan filled with water add loads of loose leaf tea, loads of sugar and milk powder, bring to the boil and then allow to simmer. This mixture is poured into a small glass through a strainer each glass is 2-5 Rupees (4-10 Pence). Ideal traveller refreshment; it's boiled therefore safe and full of sugar for energy. Unfortunately it does give you a taste for v. sweet tea.

driverchris (white with two)

better late than never, but after a few years, a minor correction. cha is a mandarin word. like tea itself it moved from china (and relatively recently it is worth noting). we can see this in the term yum cha (drinking tea) and in japan with sen cha.

one point i noticed in all this voluminous conversation was how little discussion went into the quality of the actual tea itself. arguing about whether milk goes in first is largely irrelevant when the tea you are using is most likely commercially grown in many different countries and cheaply processed. the deterioration in tea blend quality has been marked in recent years. and even in specialty tea shops, the storage of tea is appalling. often enough they are kept in large plastic display counters, exposed to air and light.

search for a single origin tea that has been vacuum packed at point of harvest. high grown teas are near unviversally understood to be the best. this means ceylon, darjeeling and a few others. if you have traditional (read british) tastes, then assams are THE choice.

i choose different tea at different times, for tea is not a single beverage. during the day i prefer sen cha. light, refreshing, fast brewed. no milk or sugar. for general purpose tea i prefer ceylon. white with sugar. china black (keemun) is a nice change.

but for special occassions golden yunnan is my favourite. i don't care if it is straight black, with milk, sugar or no sugar.

as for making tea, this will vary depending on the type of tea you drink and how you prefer it. for normal black tea which you intend to at least have an option of adding milk or sugar, this is the way.

have everything to hand. boil water. just prior to water boiling, pour about half a cup into the teapot and swish. this warms the teapot preventing the tea from cooling too fast. remove this water. add tea to the strength you desire. by tradition this is one for each cup and one for the pot. HOWEVER, a teacup is about half the size of the sorts of cups most folks use today. you can safely double this number. just as the water boils pour the water into the pot over the tea leaves and give a quick stir. immediately put the lid on. on no account use a tea cosy.

leave for at least 2 minutes depending on how strong you wish your tea. remember that colour is extracted ahead of flavour so colour is not a true indicator the tea has brewed sufficiently. most people seem to prefer a brew of about 5 minutes or so.

i do not believe the 'milk in first' routine has any basis in science despite the many assertions of such. the nanoseconds difference in equalisation of temperature is highly unlikely to make any substantive difference in final taste. i might have believed this in the days before homogenised milks but i find this incredible a proposition.

regarding the sociology of 'milk in last', the answer is simple. at the time tea came to britain the wealthy also had chinese made porcelain with excellent thermal properties. the cups would not crack with hot liquids. the working classes used earthenware, equally unlikely to break. the people in the middle had european imitations of chinaware. until the 19th century these were inferior in every regard and quite likely to crack. hence milk in first. the inherited consequence for us today is that the 'milk in first brigade' are really just today's version of the aspirant middle classes. it's a false snobbery thing.

as for the insistence that it TASTES different 'milk in first', i suspect the reason for this is the same reason folks argue you can't control the milk quantity. in short, milk in first nearly always results in a milky tea.

tea is actually fairly forgiving of how it is made. i have had lovely cups of tea made in a variety of different ways. so long as the water is near to boiling, a fair approximation of tea leaves are used, and it is brewed somewhere around 3 minutes give or take, it will produce a pleasant drink.

what will absolutely ruin any chance of this is bad tea to begin with, water which is not hot enough, insufficient tea, and inadequate brew time. amazingly, this failure is achieved almost everywhere outside of a private home in which a briton or an asian is living.

LMHO Sami

JAM