Our first week in India, spent in Mumbai (Bombay) with friends who are living here, has been an impression of the new, the overwhelming, and of sensory explosion. Everywhere we've wandered has brought a collision of smells and sights and sounds - and flavors as well. The pleasures of food have ranged from the very simple to the very labor intensive, but the common theme is delicious.
I have had the wonderful opportunity to be able to spend several afternoons in the kitchen with an amazing teacher - our friend's housekeeper and cook, Monica. Monica loves to cook and teach what she knows, and has been gracious in sharing her time, recipes and techniques with me. She reveals through demonstration and explanation the proper combinations of food and spices, as well as the refinements of flavor by fine-tuning with ingredients. Her food is the best we've eaten in Mumbai by far.
The first thing I wanted to master was one of the most simple – masala chai. One of the nicest respites from the busyness and intensity of Mumbai is a break in the morning or afternoon for a cup of the milky spiced tea.
Monica makes delicious masala chai. I watched her make it for the first time paying casual attention to what she was doing. A little ginger, a little cardamom, some black tea, a little sugar, a bit of milk, and voilá, masala chai. How hard could it be?
While chai is the generic word for tea in Hindi and in many more languages as well, masala chai refers to tea prepared with spices - masala means spices - as well as sugar and milk to create a strong, spicy and sweet milky brew. Any combination of freshly crushed ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, peppercorns and clove are used, but the tea can also be made with as few as two of the possible spices and still be completely authentic. The addition of a sweetener is important, however, in melding all of the flavors, and especially in heightening the intensity of the spices.
The first cup of masala chai that I made the following morning was a far cry from the perfect cup of tea. It was watery, thin, too milky and totally bland, even though I had cut up fresh ginger and crushed a pod of cardomom seeds. So I watched more carefully the next time Monica prepared it, and I realized my mistakes: I needed triple the amount of tea leaves and more than double the amount of sugar, and I needed to boil the heck out of it for a few minutes.
The nice thing about striving to perfect something like a cup of masala chai is that you become very alert to all that is happening around you (from all of the caffeine), and there is always someone willing to share. And while a cup of it tastes very cooling on a 90 degree day here in Bombay, it will almost certainly taste very warming in other parts of the world, like Minnesota, for instance.
So divorce yourself of the notion of "chai" being an overly tannic brew served syrupy sweet with frothed milk and whipped cream. This is the real thing - masala chai: simple, spiced, and delicious.
