Chai Tea

Ingredients and Method

Firstly you need to know that chai simply means 'tea' in India as well as Russia, Bulgaria and I suspect other places. So when I write of Chai tea, I'm actually writing 'tea tea' but as chai has become synonymous with spicy tea in western countries I'm really meaning spicy tea.
In India chai differs from region to region, but in general it has stacks of sugar and added spices, normally cardamom (whole pods at times) but also cinnamon and ginger. I prefer the cardamom so my recipe emphasies that. You may find chai with heaps more spices than this, and there are also more authentic methods, but this is an easy way to do it at home.
Take one tea bag of finely flavoured organic tea, place it in a cup and add boiling water. Shake some ground cardamom, cinnamon and a tiny bit of ginger into your brew, remove tea bag, add about 3 teaspoons of sugar, stir and add milk.
In India they heat everything together in the kettle over a fire often in a gutter. The chai wallahs (chai sellers) also walk along the train stations yelling "garam chai!" which just means 'hot tea' It used to cost about 10 rupees or something like that when I was there in 1995. Go there and try it, it's very delicious sir/ madam.
If you have any pictures of chai wallahs, please e-mail them to me and I'll place them on the chai wallah page... for more information e-mail me.