Give It A Whirl: Krishna Tea

I was first introduced to chai by my beautiful friend, Parvathy, who hails from Southern India. We went to graduate school together, and she, her husband Matt, and I spent many afternoons sitting around their cozy kitchen sipping chai. I continued to drink chai after I moved to Austin as one of the local yoga studios at which I practice serves it after class. And, for a while I even got on a Starbucks Chai Tea Latte kick. Needless to say, I love chai!

I was fortunate enough to travel to India last December to visit Parvathy and Matt. We drank lots of chai – this time in their cozy farmhouse kitchen outside of Bangalore. And, then when we traveled north, we drank lots more chai, particularly in the small city of Bundi. Every afternoon, folks gathered at Krishna’s tea stand to drink his delicacies. It was the best tea I’ve ever tasted. I tried to watch him closely, but he talked so much and so rapidly threw spice after spice into the boiling pot that I couldn’t really keep up.

After Bundi we traveled to Udaipur, and two of my traveling partners and I took a cooking class at a lovely woman’s home. Basically we watched her and took notes as she cooked; then we got to eat all the food, so it was a sweet deal.

One of the first recipes she showed us was chai, or masala tea, as she called it. I’ve come to call any variation of this drink Krishna tea after the exuberant chai wallah we met in Bundi.

Here is my version of our instructor’s recipe. This is only slightly altered to use already-ground spices. I have used whole spices and a mortar and pestle as our instructor did, and the difference in flavor is nice, but the process is definitely more labor intensive.

What you will need to make Krishna Tea:

1.5 cups of milk (soy milk will work fine as well)

1.5 cups of water

2 Tbsp of loose black tea (you can always cut open a couple of tea bags if you don’t have loose tea on hand)

2.5 Tbsp of sugar

1 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp cinammon

1 Tbsp whole black peppercorns

1 Tbsp whole cloves

Bring water and milk to a slow boil. Mix all dry ingredients, and add to boiling liquid.

Lower temperature. Over the course of five minutes, raise and lower heat several times. You want the tea to come to a rolling boil at least three or so times.