Thirst quencher

In my quest to keep myself occupied I decided to shift from poetry to sharing my culinary ‘gyan’, a welcome break for my roomies and my wellwishers, who think I am so obsessed with poetry, which I think I am ever since I returned form India. So here is my blog on anything that suits my palate which I am sure would benefit a lot of them out here.

So let me start with the simple seedha sadha ‘chai’ or tea. A drink that is very common in India. The ingredients that you will need to make authentic chai are, tea powder, dry ginger, know as shunti in Southern India, cardamom or elaichi, whole milk, sugar and water. I use crushed tea leaves that I got from Ooty, which really tastes good and cost my Dad a fortune, but heck when it comes to a thirst quencher you should, go for it.

There are many ways to go about making tea, the ‘pal tea’ a very common way of making good tea that simply tastes superb involves heating 3/5th portion of milk and 2/5th portion of water on the stove. To this add the required amount of sugar and then you can add a few shards of grated dry ginger and a few cardamom peels. You can also crush the cardamom seeds into a fine powder and add a pinch to enhance the taste.

Let this concoction come to a boil and then add the tea powder in the required amounts. You can switch the stove off when you see the tea rising. Then place a lid over the vessel and let the flavors sink in for about 5 minutes. Now drain out the ‘pal tea’ and serve in cups.

Tea tastes really good with hot banana bajji when its cold outside and everyone in the family is huddled around the table, one of those family moments which is so common in India. Since ‘pal tea’ requires a lot of milk, I make it rarely only when guests come and the likes, my usual tea just consists of water boiling on the stove with the cardamom and dry ginger and tea leaves. I follow the same procedure just that there is no milk. Then I drain out the tea and add milk separately as required.

Here everyone is so diet conscious and so I use 1% milk, and hence the taste deteriorates accordingly. Some people prefer to add the tea leaves in the beginning itself. It’s basically up to you, whatever suits your palate. Notice that I never specify proportions in detail, I just cant measure and add stuff to my dishes, I base it on the aroma, its ‘aandaz aapna aapna’ you see.

Among hot beverages, Ne stop thinking :D, I had to put that in there, I like tea, coffee and hot chocolate, but tea keeps me awake and in the words of my dear roomie, I am a tea freak, but I like coffee just as much, just that it should be made the right way, I love French Vanilla, but for some reason the French Vanilla brew at Deli isn’t working and so I had to settle for English toffee and Hot chocolate, they were so sweet. I like my tea sweet but I do not like my coffee or hot chocolate sweet.