Ours was a coffee household. And I am a coffee girl. The only contact I had with tea is when we go on long road trips mostly to visit relatives or for shopping or to get things done and my Dad asks to stop the car in front of one of those roadside tea stalls in the pretext of getting the person who is driving a glass of hot tea while it truly is for him! I also used to try some and never really took to it. I did love all those trips with my Dad and cherish them all the more dearly now that he is no longer with us.
Guess who the tea boy is? That is right! My husband. So I have gingerly come to accept this drink as an item in the house. We always make coffee and tea in the microwave so there never is a problem drinking what we each crave:-)
All this changed a little when we visited India last time. My HDad always gets up early and is the one who makes tea. His tea is good! The kids having grown up a little I had a chance to observe his tea making and after coming back we decided to make tea the old fashioned way sometimes. Now this is a must for us on weekend evenings..
How do you make tea? It is easy and the only bad part would be cleaning up the bottom of the pan after tea is made. But if you have already fallen for the drink then this is not a problem.
This will make tea for two.
To prepare
water - 1 cup
milk - 1 cup
tea powder/leaves - 2 tbsp (we buy taj mahal or red label from the indian store)
sugar - 5 tsp
The Way
Boil the water and milk together. Wait near the pan lest you have a spillover mess. As soon as the milk boils up remove from heat. Will take around 3 minutes or more. If you were a little late and the milk keeps boiling over, then blow on top to keep it down. Add the tea powder and sugar and close with a plate/lid to cover completely. No need to stir.
Now you can go off and prepare your snacks in anticipation or just wait 5 minutes at the least. We used to joke that after closing the lid we should now checkout the garden or read the newspaper like HDad would do for proper timing:-) The longer it sits, the stronger the tea will be. You can also change the tea powder/sugar quantities based on your preference.
Open the lid and stir lightly with a spoon. Pour to cups through a small handheld collander and you are all done!
Tips:
Number of cups should be the same as the number of people. Water to milk ratio is always 1:1.
Add as many table spoons of tea as there are people. Add 2times the number of people for sugar plus one more. So if you need to make tea for 5, that will be 2.5 cups of water, 2.5 cups of milk, 5 tbsp of tea and 11 tsp of sugar.
2 comments:
Hmmmmm Tea. Am a coffee girl too:-)
I've tagged u. chk it out:-)
Lan:
Any ideas of where I can get a good combo of powders to make 'Indian Coffee' here. At present I am using Cothas from Bangalore and mixing it with any brand French Vanilla...it's okay but not the greatest.
To prevent the tea boiling over, hubby and I use a large Pyrex jug/measuring cup in the microwave. This is worth it's weight in gold...for two cups of liquid I microwave four minutes to get it boiling...our jug is a ten cup jug. so it has to be BIG, remember or there will be a mess in the microwave! Time how long it takes to boil the first time, add tea and close etc. The main advantage is you /hubby have less scrubbing to do with a Pyrex jug!
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