Even if your devotion to coffee is unwavering you can’t have failed to notice the suddenly ubiquitous presence of the chai latte on café menus, and the presence of numerous brands of chai on the shelves of retail stores (for the uninitiated a chai latte is a mixture of tea and spices infused in milk usually taken quite sweet; a purchased packet of chai contains black tea blended with various spices, typically cinnamon, cardamom, ginger and clove; it is also a flavour concept that has made its way out of the beverage category to be applied to food items: I have sampled chai flavoured almonds and I reckon chai ice-cream can’t be far off). So pervsasive has the chai latte become in modern café culture that it can now be found on the menu of up-market coffee shops frequented by India’s aspirant and monied classes. At this point I can imagine that you are probably thinking ‘ so what, chai comes from India, of course it is served there!’. And I would reply ‘well there is a lot more to it than that, why don’t you sit down, put up your feet and while I make you an excellent chai latte I will tell you a story about this beverage (the reader can take my making them a cup of tea figuratively in the form of the recipe I have given below).            You will have to bear with me through the next paragraph while I indulge in a bit of nit picking but as a sophisticated consumer of food and drink I think you will value the educative outcome of my pedantry.

Chai means tea in Hindi (the major language of North India) so if you ask for ‘chai tea’ you are actually asking for ‘tea tea’ and committing the grammatical sin of tautology. Recently I was in a specialty tea store when the woman standing next to me waved a packet under her companions nose and said ‘ smell this, this is chai’. I was tempted to say ‘of course it is, you are in shop that sells nothing but tea’. Our use of the word chai to describe tea is not incorrect but it can be properly applied to any tea. Just as we use the word latte as shorthand for coffee (whereas a request for such in Italy would get you a glass of hot milk) we use chai to describe spiced tea but a request for chai in India will not necessarily get you that.

Many Indians, particularly the wealthy and those living in tea growing areas, take their chai ‘British style’; that is plain black tea infused with hot water in a pot or cup, to which milk and sugar may be added. If I was visiting my friend Kinny at her home north of Delhi and I asked for some chai, a tea tray would appear laid out in this style (also referred to as ‘tray tea’). If I wanted spiced tea I would ask for desi chai. This loosely translates as Punjabi tea and it is referred to as such because spiced tea is preferred in the Punjab region. In Kashmir asking for chai would likely get you a brew of green tea, almonds, cardamom, sugar and salt (properly called kahwa).

As a westerner a request for chai in a mid-level café, restaurant or hotel anywhere in India will result in a plain cup or pot of tea being served. In this situation you would have to ask for masala chai (spiced tea). It is at cheaper hole-in-the-wall or roadside type eateries that ordering ‘chai’ will automatically get you a drink akin to a chai latte.

Despite the association of India with tea it is not native to India. The British started growing tea there in the mid nineteenth century to satisfy the huge demand for it in the United Kingdom (and amongst the elite classes in India). It was not until the mid- twentieth century that tea began to be commonly drunk by Indians. Before then plain milk had been the most popular drink in India, particularly in the north (Southern Indians were already addicted to coffee, a habit they picked up from Arab traders centuries before the British arrived on the subcontinent). During World War II the Indian Tea Board, unable to ship their product to external markets, found themselves with a huge surplus of tea. To dispose of it they hit on the idea of promoting tea boiled in milk to make it appealing to the local population. An idea that was so successful that Indians now consume more than 630 million kilograms of tea per year and India has become inexorably linked with tea drinking.

I can number precisely the chai lattes that  I have drunk in cosmopolitan cafés in India — three —and all were awful

Two of these were produced by the type of sickly sweet ‘chai’ syrup commonly used in cafes in western The other was produced by a young man in a smart uniform flopping a cardamom flavoured teabag into a cup of not quite hot enough milk and slapping a handful of sugar sachets down next to it on the marble countertop. If the cup had been plastic instead of ceramic it could have mistaken for the lamentable tea that is now commonly purveyed at Indian railway stations (whereas it was not so many years ago that railway tea came sweet and hot in bio-degradable clay cups  -see previous posts ‘Tea and Trains’ and ‘Chai & Trains II’ for more details).

Recipe

Masala Chai

Chai (latte or otherwise) served in cafes is either made from a syrup (usually overly sweet); a commercial powder or mixture similar to that described above infused in milk.

It’s worth visiting an Indian grocery store and buying some genuine Indian tea to make up this recipe. While you are there pick up some brown cardamom (burra eliachi). You can use the more familiar green variety but the brown ones have a softer smoky flavour that adds depth to the tea. The amount of spice can be adjusted to suit your taste. You might also like to add a few star anise.

Ingredients

200g plain black tea

4-6 cinnamon sticks

2 tbsp cardamom pods

1 tbsp cloves

1 -2 tbsp black peppercorns

1-2 tbsp ginger powder

Method

Put all the spices except the ginger in the bowl of a mortar and pestle or an electric spice grinder and roughly grind the spices. Mix the spices in with the tea along with the ginger powder. Store in an airtight container.

Chai latte (Indian style)

You can use any type of milk for this and a sweetener of your choice. You don’t have to sweeten it but it does enhance the flavour of the spices.

Serves 2-3

Ingredients

500ml milk

3-4 heaped teaspoons masala chai

honey or sugar to taste

Put the milk into a saucepan. Add the masala chai along with sweetener. Heat over a medium high heat until the milk boils and froths up. Remove from the heat and let the milk settle*. Strain into cups or glasses.

This process may be repeated again depending on how strong you like your tea.