An Indian friend visited awhile back, Suzana Syiem, and passed on some interesting tea, and some Indian snacks, and masala chai spice mix, which is what I'm writing about here.
I usually make masala chai once the weather gets a little cool; it seems to help me pretend that it's winter, even if it's still hotter than a US fall out (or summer, in most places). There was just a touch of chill in the air a couple weeks ago but it didn't amount to much; it wasn't down below 25 C / 77 F even in the very early mornings. It warmed back up and I'd missed my chance. Now that it's past Thanksgiving, and Loy Krathong, I'm making masala chai anyway, even though it's not cool at all.
Later edit: it was down to 24.5 C this morning, around 75 F, positively chilly for Bangkok, finally!
Looking at the blend ingredients it's not like the versions of masala chai I make every year, from-scratch versions. Those include cardamom, cinnamon, clove, and ginger. Per my understanding star anise and black pepper are also relatively standard spice additions but I typically leave them out.
That package label shows the ingredients in this: fennel seeds are listed first, with clove at the end. Cassia is related to cinnamon, per my understanding (and Wikipedia's take) more often sold as cinnamon. This blend version won't be like what I've been preparing. It's a powdered spice blend, which is completely fine, only an issue related to storage conditions and storage time after you open it. Recipes and some individuals recommend grinding or crushing fresh spices with a mortar and pestle right before use, which of course would be a little better, but powdered spices work too, especially when they're fresh.
I'll keep this explanation of brewing process and tea description short. I simmered the spice mix along with a Thai version of CTC black tea I bought for blending (around a year ago; I don't get to that much), and threw a couple of Lipton tea bags in to shift the black tea character. My wife picks those up in hotels when they're in the room and such, and they tend to just sit around. That Thai black tea isn't astringent at all but it is a bit woody for flavor aspect, not typical of CTC teas in general. Malt doesn't really stand out either, or mineral undertone, mostly just the mild wood tones.
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kind of an odd look while it simmers, before adding milk |
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not ideal as black tea goes but it works well enough |
I added some cloves to bump up that spice flavor range, really the only adjustment. I also added a small dash of salt since I like the way that evens the balance. It wouldn't take much of that to be way too much. Instead of carefully measuring it all so that I could duplicate and adjust amounts later I sort of just dumped it in; one and a half very small spoons of the spice, a spoon half the size of a teaspoon, and unmeasured black tea. It's possible to adjust the intensity a lot by adding more milk at the end, a factor that doesn't come up in almost any other teas I prepare, maybe just the orange Thai spiced (artificially flavored) black teas I've been drinking more of recently.
It would be possible to simmer the milk with the tea or to not, to just boil it with water. I added the milk at the end to get some of that effect since boiling it does seem to change the taste a bit. I'm not sure it matters much how long you simmer tea made like this since it's ground tea with powdered spice. It boiled around 10 to 15 minutes and I think adding another 10 minutes probably wouldn't have changed much. For more-whole spices it would make sense to give it a longer infusion, maybe by simmering a little, leaving it sit, re-boiling, then leaving it sit. Or simmering for awhile; it probably wouldn't matter which.
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after a bit of simmering |
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palm sugar; the shapes it comes in vary |
Sweetener is the only other factor. Using white sugar would seem normal. Oddly we don't keep white sugar at the house all the time; funny how that works out. I used up all we had that was nicked from hotel room tea and coffee set-ups with that Thai tea I had been making.
Often we will have palm sugar around; that's a good alternative, not so different than brown sugar, just not exactly like that. That seems to be the same thing referred to as jaggery I've seen in discussions about making masala chai online. Since we're out of both I went with honey. I love honey on toast but I'd as soon just use white sugar in a tea like this, but it sort of doesn't matter.
Skipping to how it turned out: it was nice. It was much different than what I was used to, the quite-different spice blend version, but it was good. I didn't like it as well for it being less familiar, but it was hard to split out the impact of the blend balance not being optimized from that factor, just dumping it all in at no set ratio. The other masala chai versions I'm used to have a lot of kick from the ginger and clove standing out and this was a lot milder. Fennel seed was hard to identify as a separate flavor since it all integrated.
I'm guessing that using two thirds as much spice and half as much tea for the same amount of water would've turned out better. It's hard to judge how much tea went into it since both the tea leaves and spices expand a lot simmering but it looked like way too much for two large mugs of tea produced at the end. After drinking both my nerves were a bit jolted too. I think beyond that factor, ingesting too much tea at one time, the flavors would balance better not made really strong. All the same it worked well enough.
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my son made breakfast again (bacon needed another sear, otherwise very nice) |
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when people ask about how to get dosed on caffeine this will come to mind |
I usually make a Christmas blend around this time, and a version last year was based on a modification of masala chai (adding white chocolate and a touch of bitter orange marmalade). I'm not sure if I'll get around to that or not. Throwing some peppermint and a touch of chocolate into a black tea could count as one, maybe along with some orange peel for balance.
It would be nice to be back in the States since pine needle would be a great input for one, and I could walk outside in lots of places and collect that. Per past experiments I suspect dried pine needle might work best (versus just brewing it fresh then), but that would easy to arrange, laying it out for a bit, or speeding that up by putting the needles in a very low temperature oven for half an hour.
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making a chocolate covered cherry themed Christmas blend |
I bought some Christmas decorations today (when writing the draft); maybe finding our tiny artificial tree in storage and putting up some lights and the rest will make it seem more natural to get back to that theme. Cooler weather wouldn't hurt but there's nothing to be done about that. It's typically cool for about a week at the end of December but it's also not consistent. Even though it never really seems like we re-create a US version of the holiday, missing the weather, not doing decorations justice, or hearing much of the songs, my kids appreciate how much we do manage to observe, so we'll make what we can of it.
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awhile back; like a plastic version of that Charlie Brown Christmas tree |
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in Murmansk last year; odd to go to Russia to experience more of that holiday |
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