{"id":5179,"date":"2018-01-29T23:37:28","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T02:37:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/?p=5179"},"modified":"2018-01-29T23:40:34","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T02:40:34","slug":"a-cup-of-india","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/2018\/01\/29\/a-cup-of-india\/","title":{"rendered":"A Cup Of India"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I drink tea. I drink a LOT of tea. Black tea mostly but with green, oolong, and pu-erh tossed in for good measure when the mood hits. A cup of &#8220;builder&#8217;s Assam&#8221; with a touch of cream is on my desk more often than not. I&#8217;ve managed to ween myself off sugar there but occasionally I feel like something sweet and spicy and that&#8217;s when I pull out the pan to make <em>masala chai<\/em>. Translated it simply means &#8220;spice blend tea&#8221; but the term chai in general has become synonymous with the method of prep found across the Indian subcontinent and (more recently) the trendy cafes of the west.<\/p>\n<p>While there are concentrates and ready-made bottles galore on the market in the west, I&#8217;ve never found one that compares to either a proper railway <em>chai-wallah<\/em> (chai seller) or homemade. The sweetening is usually the culprit being far too overbearing or the spice notes are simply not to my liking. The beauty of the beverage is in the complex tastes the likes of cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, and peppercorn lend to the finished cup but that of course is only the tip of the spice rack that can make its way into a recipe. If you like ginger, toss some in. Fennel? Sure. Extra cinnamon or citrus? There are very few wrong answers in <em>chai<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"740\" height=\"416\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/D1j_qg3yvN4?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"autoplay; encrypted-media\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>My own rules are simple with spicing and sweetening measures left to personal preference. Any combination of flavours you can imagine works and everything from jaggery sugar to honey to ordinary refined white can sweeten the mix according to what you have available (and prefer).<\/p>\n<p>Steep the freshly crushed or ground spices in water for a longer duration than the rest of the ingredients. Cinnamon needs more time than tea.<\/p>\n<p>Steep your black tea of choice for a time you would otherwise use in making &#8216;plain tea&#8217;. For stronger tea flavour add more tea instead of extending that time which tends to bring out bitter tastes. My own dose usually overs around 5g per cup but that can change with every new batch of tea I gather from the wilds of the tea trade. Luckily testing is an easy chore and the multiple cups I drink every day gives me ample opportunity to experiment.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t over steep or &#8220;cook&#8221; tea leaves in the pan with applied heat despite the fact that this is often done in India. They nearly always have a better selection of tea that can be chosen for the task. We&#8217;re stuck with the leaf available to us halfway around the globe which doesn&#8217;t always work as well with applied heat. Of course whichever tea you choose should be drinkable in its own right, not the stale dusty leftovers found in the cheapest of teabags. Be sure to give your tea leaves plenty of room to expand since that&#8217;s how they release their delicious flavour into the brew.<\/p>\n<p>After extracting the tea leaves, cook the milk (or other dairy of choice) to finish incorporating the flavours. Cooking changes the taste (and milk proteins) for the better and brings the whole recipe together.<\/p>\n<p>For the traditional frothy top you can attempt to pour between two vessels from a height as the experts do in India or you can avoid the disastrous mess and just use a whisk. The risk is yours to choose. Personally I never got the hang of it and have failed miserably at the show of it all but it still tastes great, frothy top or not.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\">More Spork Here<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I drink tea. I drink a LOT of tea. Black tea mostly but with green, oolong, and pu-erh tossed in for good measure when the mood hits. A cup of &#8220;builder&#8217;s Assam&#8221; with a touch of cream is on my desk more often than not. I&#8217;ve managed to ween myself off sugar there but occasionally &hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/2018\/01\/29\/a-cup-of-india\/\">Read More &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5180,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[859,640,857,858,856,855,80],"class_list":["post-5179","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cook","tag-black-tea","tag-chai","tag-cup","tag-cuppa","tag-india","tag-masala","tag-tea","odd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5179"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5182,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5179\/revisions\/5182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5180"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5179"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5179"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/northfarthing.ca\/spork\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5179"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}