It is hard to believe we have gone this long without writing about Chai. I believe Chai translates to "tea." But, most commercial versions of it in the US call it "Chai Tea?" Huh, does that make sense? I reminds me of when people refer to tortellini as tortellinis - adding the "s" to an Italian name for a type of pasta that is already in the plural form. On Sunday the kids and I went for a city hike to the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf on North Robertson. I'm not much of a fan for the great outdoors; I like the scenery and exercise but the lack of an available/reliable/clean loo is often a deal killer for us.
Back to the Chai. We tried a decaf iced version of the CB&TL Chai that had a very delicate cinnamon undertone. Solly was particularly fond of it. Later in the day we played around with our own versions in the kitchen. There are hundreds of different recipes easily found on the web. The one we made had a cardamon seed base with cinnamon and a little black pepper to which we added some fresh clover honey. The first batch didn't come out well and we used it to water the garden. The second batch was a bit better and we'll experiment with it some more over the next few weeks. One limitation to our test - we didn't add any dairy or soy substitute to it which is probably a good thing since it meant there was no cover up for Chai. Our recipe is as follows:
Spices: 8 black peppercorns, 2 cinnamon sticks, 2 cardamon seeds
Other: 1 1/2 cups of waters, 2 table spoons of clover honey, and 2 tea bags of strong black tea
We've attached a link below with some nice recipes to try out. Michael
http://www.chai-tea.org/recipes.html
