Coltrane, Monk, and Chai

I'm turning the corner on finals week, and I've been busy studying and working and making decisions (or rather, hemming and hawing over decisions) about what to do next. Which has left little time for complex food indulgences.

So I've been eating simple brain food things - like this - for dinner: black beans (of course), spinach

sauteed with onion and garlic from the day before, a sunny side up egg, and TJ's tomatillo salsa.

Anyway, all this hecticness wears me out like a kid playing outside, or an old person running errands, I'm not sure which. Passing out at 10:45pm fully clothed, with lights on, ON TOP of my bed resulted in a chilly, restless night of sleep. Here's some thing I don't understand: how come I can be dressed warmly, but wake up with a chill if I don't have a blanket on while I sleep? Is it psychological? If anyone can tell me why... lemme know. Needless to say, 6am dawned on me a little uncomfortably.

What's a girl to do? There's only a few things I find that can really take the edge off: a fire, music, tea, love, or hard liquor. Since I woke up alone, sans fireplace, and it was still.... 6am.... I put on a Thelonius Monk with John Coltrane record, and started making Chai.

After reading countless webpages and a few magazine articles on more than a few occasions, here's what I've learned about Chai. It's made traditionally in India, as commonly as we would make coffee. You shouldn't have to say "Give me some Chai tea, please" at a cafe, because 'chai' means tea. (However, it feels really awkward to do this in America... it just seems like you spaced out in the middle of your order.) As with everything, there's a bazillion different ways to make it, but a few spices are most commonly used, and you should use a black Indian tea like darjeeling. Also, it's delicious.

Here's my variation.

Need:

• 6-7 cloves
• 1.25'' of cinnamon stick
• 6 cardamon pods
• 1/4'' sliced FRESH gingerroot
  
• 4-6 tsp of sugar (depending on how sweet you like things)
• 3/4 c. milk or soymilk.... 2% or non-reduced fat is better
• 2 c. water
  
• 3 tsp darjeeling tea

• Put 2 c. water in a small pot that HAS A LID.
• Put all the spices in, WHOLE. (Isn't that great? You don't even have to spend the effort to crush or cut the spices....... except for the ginger I guess.)
• Bring water to a boil with the lid on. (Tangent/rant: I don't know why everyone leaves the lid off while trying to boil liquids. First of all, you cut the time you have to wait for it to boil by about half. Second, you don't waste precious amounts of gas or electricity. I just don't get it.... to me it's the same thing as trying to bring the oven up to 350 with the door open. Yet I see people do it all the time.)
• Uh, anyway, bring to a boil with the lid on. Once it boils, reduce the heat and let it simmer, with the lid on for about 10 minutes.
• Next, add the milk and sugar, and stir. Bring again to a boil (this time with the lid off because the milk will foam up if you do), then simmer for 10 minutes. The idea is to burn off 50% of the water and leave the milk behind. This gives it the creamy texture. If you've used milk, you ought to stir it frequently to make sure it's not forming a film or burning. Soymilk inherently requires less work due to its non-dairy properties.
• Turn off the heat, and add the tea leaves. Let them steep for 3 minutes.
• When it's finished, pour through some sort of straining device to filter out the spices.

So:

• water + spices = boil
• simmer 10 mins
• +sugar + milk = boil
• simmer 10 mins, stirring
• + tea leaves = steep for 3 mins
• strain
• drink!

I stood on my deck sipping this tea, squinting into the early sun and snuffing out the morning chill...

P.S. leave comments if you have them! :)