The Veggie Blog

Chai tea is to Indians what a cup of black coffee with cream and sugar is to the rest of the world. For the coffee drinkers, it is important to get good coffee AND get it quick. At 6 AM in the morning, when you wake up from sleep and walk towards the kitchen you don’t want to have to use log tables to figure out the coffee formula. Hey, that’s exactly how I feel about tea. Now, I’ve probably had 50+ kinds of teas and at least 10+ kinds of Indian chai teas, ranging from really simple to complex ones that could take a good 30 minutes to make just one cup of tea.

Well, my favorite is the simple one. I love that regardless of where I am in the world, I can make my own little cup of Indian chai tea in less than 5 minutes. Yup, no kidding, less than 5 minutes, I’ve timed it - takes between 4-6 minutes.

So, without further ado, here’s the recipe for THE simplest chai tea in the world.

Ingredients:

1. Chai Tea powder (My favorite is one called Vagh-Bakri Chai that you can get at any Indian stores. Tata Tetley will do it too. Of course the long-leaf expensive Sikkim tea is the best, but I am going for the rather low-end everyday tea for this recipe).
2. Whole Milk (NOT skimmed milk and NOT 2% reduced fat milk. It only needs a little and that’s when it tastes good. If you can’t handle whole milk, I have a tip for you at the end of this reciped).

Sugar

Preparation:

For 1 cup tea,

1. Take half a cup of water in a regular pan.
2. Add 1 teaspoon tea leaves/powder to it and heat on a medium flame.
3. Add half a cup of milk to the mix and keep on the medium flame for 2-3 minutes to let the milk blend well with the tea.
4. Strain the tea leaves using a strainer. Add sugar to taste (usually 1 teaspoon) and serve hot.

THAT’S IT.

Extras - Now, for those of you looking for a little more, here are some ideas.

1. Add peeled, mashed garlic ginger to the water before adding the tea. There you go, you got Ginger Chai Tea now.
2. Add green cardamom or even better black cardamom to make your Cardadmom Chai Tea.
3. OR just buy Indian Chai Masala from the store and add half a teaspoon to the mix for Masala Chai tea.
4. Add clove or cinnamon for a spicy Indian tea.
5. Here’s the tip for those of you that don’t like whole milk. Just add only half a teaspoon of tea leaves instead of 1 teaspoon and then add 1 cup water instead of half. Now have the tea without any milk, and you have Vegan Chai Tea.

Not bad for 5 minutes, eh?

This is not the fancy Dal Makhani that you might have had at the Indian Restauranta. Not the oily Dal Fry either. Just the simple Dal recipe that a lot of Indian people actually eat on a daily basis. It is simple to make, not too spicy, easy to eat (babies to bed-ridden old people can have it), and best of all, just tasty. Like with anything else, simple is usually the best.

Try it and let us know how you like it.

Ingredients

1. Toor Dal: 1 cup
2. Onions: 1 medium sized
3. Tomatoes: 2 medium sized
4. Garlic: 2-3 cloves
5. Green chillie: 2
6. Fresh coriander leaves: Few sprigs
7. Red chillies whole: 2-3 (optional)
8. Mustard seeds: half tea spoon
9. Cumin seeds: half tea spoon
10. Oil: 2-3 table spoons
11. Asafoetida-a pinch
12. Salt: to taste
13. Lime juice: 1 tbsp (optional)
14. Curry leaves (optional)

Preparation:

1. Wash the dal and cook the dal well with 4 cups of water in a cooker.
2. Once cooked, mash it nicely. You can add water if it is too thick.
3. Peal and finely chop the onions. Wash and finely chop the tomatoes. Peal,wash and crush the garlic. Remove stems and chop  green chillies and coriander leaves and curry leaves. Remove stems and break red chillies into 2 each.
4. Heat oil in a pan .Add mustard seeds to it. Once the seeds crackle add the cumin seeds and whole red chillies and a pinch of asafetida.
5. Add green chillies and the onions. Once the onions turn golden brown, add the tomatoes and fry it till the oil from the tomatoes separate.
6. Add the cooked dal to the tomatoes mixture, add salt and bring it to a boil.
7. Sprinkle chopped coriander leaves and curry leaves
8. Lastly add lime juice and its ready!!

A very subtle variation of this recipe can make you tasty Dal Soup as well. Just mash the Dal finer, use some additional water, leave out the coriander leaves and that’s it, you have Dal soup instead.

If you have ever tried copying text or images from word to wordpress, you know how that can be a totally frustrating experience. I have done that many times and painfully tried to get the formatting right. I know HTML pretty good but despite that, it can be a challenge. There is just something about MS Word text that messes up wordpress altogether. Especially if you have things like numbered points or bulleted text, or interesting fonts, forget it.

THe simplest way to work around this problem is simply copy from MS Word to Notepad first and then copy from Notepad to Wordpress and format the text as you like in Wordpress.

I wish I knew this years ago!