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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781612127385 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Storey Publishing, LLC |
| Publication date: | 11/25/2015 |
| Sold by: | Hachette Digital, Inc. |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 8 MB |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Journey Begins
When tea was served in these special chai cups, it also took on that very special, wonderful other taste of the earth.
— Madhur Jaffrey, author of numerous cookbooks and an authority on Indian cuisine
Sounds, smells, heat, dust.
These are currency in the memory bank of everyone who has ever visited the complex, fascinating country called India. While some visitors seek a spiritual connection, others absorb the majesty of the scenery, from the towering Himalayas to the genteel luxury of the Goa seaside or the countless other exotic sights that lure thousands of tourists here every year.
For lovers of the leaf, like me, the lush green tea gardens are a must-see. The first stop for many of us is Darjeeling, home of the "champagne" of teas; next, Nilgiri, where we can inhale the fragrance of the Blue Mountains. Certainly we must travel to the birthplace of the Indian tea industry, Assam, with the fabled Brahmaputra River cutting through the greatest tea-growing region of this incredible country.
India's richly layered culture attracts travelers to its Hindu temples, built thousands of years before Christ was born, and a reminder that Hinduism is alive and well and practiced by millions. Buddhist temples abound, a testament to more than thirteen centuries of presence in India. There are Muslim temples, Jewish synagogues, and churches and temples for many other religions, concrete examples of applied tolerance.
Other man-made wonders, like the Taj Mahal, lure visitors to the more romantic side of India. This monument from a shah to his beloved wife is more than a tomb, it is a work of art from the vibrant Moghul period (a.d. 1526–1738), when Islam was the religion of the ruling class.
Today India is the world's largest democracy, despite turbulent times and constant changes, chaotic weather including yearly monsoon rains, mountains so high they literally take your breath away, and a vibrant patchwork quilt of culture found nowhere else on earth. Since opening its doors to foreign investors in the last few decades, after years of economic isolation, India has experienced tremendous progress, and some growing pains. As in centuries past, part of India's wealth lies in its incredible range of spices that have lured adventurers to this country and continue to fascinate chefs and diners alike.
These condiments inspired world trade and not a little piracy. They continue to intrigue, although today it is businesspeople who come through the traditional channels of commerce for spices that not only give sparkle to complex cuisines, but provide health and cosmetic benefits. Perhaps the most significantly "new" role for Indian spices is scenting and flavoring the Indian spice tea specialty called masala chai.
Tea people connect with tea in the way a monk connects with his monastery — when he is in his monastery he is in a state of total bliss.
— Julie Sahni, author of Julie Sahni's Introduction to Indian Cooking
What is Chai?
In India, where its people speak many many languages, the generic word for tea is chai. It derives from the Chinese word for tea, cha, which the British turned into tay, which then evolved into tea; this is what the western world came to call the leaf of the Camellia sinensis plant. Today, both the Japanese and the Chinese say "cha" for tea, and the Indians say "chai."
The focal point of this book, however, is the tea drink known as masala chai. This beverage reflects the addition of masala, a combination of several spices that are popular in various Indian cuisines. Here in America, many masala chai blenders offer premade drinks with milk and call them chai lattes, following the style of the popular milky coffee drinks.
Whether it's called by the "proper" name of masala chai, or the generic name, chai, this stimulating, calming, nourishing drink of tea, spices, and sometimes milk and sugar is utterly delicious.
Choosing and Brewing Indian Teas
Indian teas grow in three regions — Darjeeling, Assam, and Nilgiri — and each region produces fine blacks, some oolongs, and some greens. The blacks of each area are great in chais and offer different flavor profiles for your chai. Darjeeling, for example, is lighter and more delicate and goes well with cardamom. Nilgiri teas accept flavorings easily and will not cloud when iced. Assams are great for hot chais and can hold up well with stronger spices like pepper and ginger. Experiment with all three to see what tastes best to you.
To brew with loose leaves, measure out one teaspoon. Add about six ounces of hot water (195–200°F) to the leaves and allow to steep for several minutes, or as suggested by your tea merchant or tea blender. Strain and serve.
Making Indian Tea into Masala Chai
To make your Indian tea into chai, add spices to the loose tea leaves, then add the water. Allow the water to boil with the leaf/spice mixture for about five minutes or more. Add milk and simmer for another five minutes. Strain and serve.
An alternate way of brewing chai is to strain the leaf/spice mixture and add heated milk prior to serving. Or you can add sweetener at the same time you add the spices to intensify the sweetening ingredient. Some people prefer to add the sweetener upon serving. If it's the richness of fine tea flavor you want, avoid oversteeping. For CTC black tea (sometimes called ground tea) cooking it with spices and milk for a long time only enhances all of the flavors.
The Magic of Tea
I have gathered a collection of favorite recipes, anecdotes and travelers' tales gleaned by charmed visitors to India, who share here the pleasures they receive from the remarkable drink called chai.
I will give a glimpse at the unique history of tea in India; we'll take side trips to the country's three major tea-growing regions and I will introduce some classic and contemporary Indian poetry, share thoughtful observations on this wildly diverse country, and give you a great time.
Please join me on the road to discovering the pleasures of masala chai and the fine teas of India.
CHAPTER 2
The History of Indian Tea
Tea is much more than a mere drink ... It is a solace, a mystique, an art, a way of life, almost a religion.
— Cecil Porter, Gemini News Service
China has grown and used tea as a beverage for thousands of years, yet India's earliest recognition of the tea plant dates from only the first century a.d., and no records of India's wild tea plant being made into a beverage exist at all. Yet in less than two centuries (since the early 1800s) India has become the largest producer of tea in the world. Drinking tea there now is almost akin to breathing.
The story of the modern tea industry in India is inextricably bound up with the story of British presence there. It begins as the Empire was aided, abetted, and assisted by the most powerful commercial venture of the world at that time, the East India Company.
The Persistence of the EIC
The East India Company was founded in 1600 as "The Governor and Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies," under the royal charter of Queen Elizabeth I, to trade with the spice islands of the East Indies (Indonesia). The company subsequently introduced its spices to the West Indies and many other stops around the globe.
Pursuing trade routes to the Orient, it was instrumental in creating two of the most powerful port cities of trade, Singapore and Hong Kong. This enabled the company to grow so large that it had all the strength and power of a country: its own army and navy, its own currency, and its own territories.
In the seventeenth century, the EIC introduced China tea to Great Britain. The matchmaking worked: Britain remained the EIC's chief Chinese-tea customer for nearly two centuries. Indeed, the Empire's purchases of tea began to adversely affect its budget. The company tried to balance this assault on British coffers by selling British goods to China, but the Chinese continually refused to buy them. Emperor Ch'ien-lung, who ruled from 1736 to 1796, reportedly informed King George II that "I set no value on strange or ingenious objects and have no use for your country's manufactures." What he did have use for was silver bullion. This was the only British item the emperor would accept for his tea, and for his other popular selling commodity, silk.
Trade Wars
It was the EIC, not King George, that was actually responsible for the infamous Boston Tea Party in the United States. Anxious to settle its growing pile of debts and whittle down an expanding stock of tea, the company "encouraged" the British government to pass the Tea Act of 1773, which allowed it to sell tea to the Americas, collect taxes on tea, and open up a new port of trade. Neither the EIC nor the royal court realized how the colonists would react to such high taxes. The captains of EIC ships were met with protests at Boston, Charleston, Philadelphia, New York, and Annapolis before the company finally realized the error of its ways. (Americans continued to buy chintzes from the EIC but refused tea well into the nineteenth century.)
Incidentally, the EIC also began transporting Bengal-grown opium from Calcutta to China as part of its attempts to balance international trade. This was in direct violation of an imperial prohibition on opium smoking in China and the Edict of Peking, which forbade import of the drug. For a while it was believed that this infamous attempt at the balance of trade between two world powers would be helpful, but it depleted the coffers of both countries in order to feed two addictions (although tea can certainly be deemed harmless compared to opium). It was not until 1906, nearly seven decades after the violent first Opium War (1839–1842), that China and Great Britain finally agreed to a reduction of opium growing in India.
The British Crown finally absorbed what remained of the East India Company in 1874, ending a remarkable chapter of history in which a commercial firm was able to hold world leaders prisoner (Napoleon), hire pirates to do dirty deeds (the most famous of these was Captain Kidd), and help Elihu Yale establish one of the greatest personal fortunes in America — which continues to support the university that bears his name.
Queen Victoria Steps In
The success of the EIC was due in no small part to the support of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (1819–1901). The queen, whose beverage of choice was Scotch, was keenly aware of her subjects' thirst for tea. She also understood that her country's continually wavering financial position was as much at the mercy of China's appetite for silver during her reign as it had been for nearly a century before her. Eager to keep her inherited silver at Windsor, so to speak, she realized that growing tea "at home" in India would be infinitely easier than continuing the trade wars with the Chinese. She requested, as only royals can, that everything be done to grow tea in one of her colonies.
The East India Company was only too willing to help, but it was four particular Britons who literally did the work. This quartet of pioneers included two Scottish brothers, C. A. (Charles Alexander) and Major Robert Bruce; Lord William Charles Cavendish Bentinck; and the English botanist Robert Fortune.
Cutting a Path through Assam
The Bruce brothers had been stationed for a number of years in India, then Great Britain's largest colony. They were happy to heed their queen's request. Major Robert Bruce explored what was then known as Burmese Assam in 1823, where he made several botanical forays into the nearby Beesa Hills. There he "discovered" native tea trees. (An Indian native, Moneram Dewan, actually pointed out the plants to the major.) In 1825 his brother C. A. took some seeds from those Assam tea bushes and, as an experiment, planted them in his own garden in Sadiya, a town in Darjeeling. Major Robert Bruce died that same year, before he could know that his simple "discovery" of a wild Assam tea plant would found an entire industry.
The year 1825 is important in the birth of the India tea industry for yet another reason. The English Society of Arts offered a gold medal or fifty guineas "to the person who shall grow and prepare the greatest quantity of tea of good quality, not being less than 20 pounds in weight, in the East or West Indies, or any other British colony." Although Lieutenant Andrew Charlton received this gold medal, historians usually attribute most of the work during this pioneering era to C. A. Bruce.
The First Commercial Assam Tea
A former lieutenant in the Royal Navy, C. A. Bruce was the first Superintendent of Tea Culture, although he was not educated in botany. He was, however, an experienced explorer who had lived in India many years and understood its climate and people, particularly those of Assam.
Barely accessible and barely livable because of enormous floods from heavy monsoons, Assam was thoroughly dangerous as a breeding ground for malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Undaunted, C. A. spent more than four years cutting a swath through the Assam forests, planting and cultivating tea plants. These efforts finally paid off when, using the simplest of techniques, he made the first drinkable Assam tea for the British market. His methods involved withering the tea leaves in the sun, rolling them by hand, and drying them over charcoal fires. Thankfully for historians of tea, he recorded his findings shortly thereafter in a pamphlet called Account of the manufacture of the black tea as now practiced at Suddeya, in upper Assam, by Chinamen sent thither for that purpose, with some observations on the culture of the plant in China, and its growth in Assam.
Other British planters soon took up Bruce's work in Assam. After traveling by boat up the Brahmaputra River, often for as long as a month at a time, they entered the jungle on elephant, lived in makeshift huts, and helped clear the bug-infested jungle. Their companions were solitude, wild animals, and the ever- present danger of cholera, yellow fever, dysentery, and malaria. Many died, but those who survived were able to send for their families, build better housing, and establish a community that reflected their cultural roots: polo, cricket, and Sunday outings "at the club." Of course, these Englishmen did not perform this backbreaking work alone, but literally enslaved many local Indians, giving rise to the phrase that Assam was "bitter tea," a sentiment barely eased by growing Indian independence in the twentieth century.
Interest in the infant India tea industry was growing, but Chinese teas still lured both vendors and consumers. This grew particularly worrisome in 1833, when Britain's trade treaty with China expired and the Chinese government chose not to renew it. On January 24, 1834, Governor General Lord William Charles Cavendish Bentinck (1774–1839) therefore convened the now-famous Tea Committee, charging it to submit a plan for introducing Chinese-tea culture into India. He gave great attention to his task, gathering the data, organizing it, and drawing conclusions. Alas, he died before his work could be completed. Many tea pioneers and historians feel that Great Britain owes Lord Bentinck a debt of gratitude for bringing Chinese tea plants to India.
The committee continued Bentinck's work, successfully introducing the first lot of Chinese tea seeds throughout India: in Assam, the Himalayas of Darjeeling, and the Nilgiri Hills.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Chai"
by .
Copyright © 1999 Diana Rosen.
Excerpted by permission of Storey Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
The Journey BeginsThe History of Indian Tea
Classic Masala Chai
Masala Chai Comes to America
A Tea Lover's Tour of India
A Guide to Spices and Their Ayurvedic Benefits
Chai Accompaniments
Recommended Reading
Glossary
Resources
Index