friederike's Reviews
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The New Tea Book: A Guide to Black, Green, Herbal and Chai Teas
By Sara Perry, Alison Miksch, Alison Miksch
Chronicle Books - 2001
Leapin' Lizards Chai Tea : page 70
It's nice enough, though I'm not sure it would make lizards leap. The reason it receives only a 3 star rating is mainly due to the recipe itself.
First, it was unnecessary complicated. Why do you need to place the tea mixture in a plastic bag, inflate and shake, if you're then going to fill it into a glass jar which you could just as well shake to mix?
Then, mathematics. 3/4 cup of spices + 1 cup loose black tea = 1 cup dry tea blend. How is that supposed to work? And you'll need 2 tsp tea blend for 2 servings, but they claim 1 3/4 cups of tea blend will yield 48 servings. If I'm not wrong, 1 3/4 cups = 420ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml, so that would be 84 servings.
The recipe was also slightly unclear regarding the cardamom pods, though it might be me, too. I'm just used to discarding the green cardamom pods and crushing only the black seeds inside. I assume that that's not what you're supposed to do here, but I would have liked the recipe to be a bit more explicit about it. Also, I'm not sure if the green husks also impart any flavour, but right now it looks like they mainly add mass to the tea mixture, making it more difficult to get a good mix of spices.
Last, 3/4 cup of water and milk each won't be enough for 2 servings, you'll need at least 1 cup each, plus extra for any liquid that will evaporate.
I noticed too late that we didn't have any loose black tea, so I just used a tea bag and just 1 teaspoon of tea blend; I guess that could have been more.
Correction: The spices (without tea) actually yield about 1/2 cup (or a little less), so you'll get 1 1/2 cup of tea blend and 72 servings.
Edited 30 March:
Back for more comments. The first time, I only made half a portion. Now I made a full portion, and I really recommend that you crush all ingredients individually. The problem is that the lighter matter in the cinnamon sticks and the cardamom pods prevents you from really crushing the pepper, cloves and black cardamom seeds well.
Also, don't make more than one recipe at a time, rather make less - because the ingredients of the spice mix differ so strongly in size and weight, you need to be careful that you get a good spoonful of all ingredients and not just the ones floating on top. For this reason, I actually didn't add the tea, but prefer to add a spoonful of both individually.
I've now made the tea three times, once with Lapsang Souchong in a bag, once with Earl Grey in a bag, and once with an Assam blend, loose. I liked all of them, but I think I prefer Lapsang and Assam. I've noticed, though, that if you use 1 cup of tea for 1/2 cup of spices, you'll end up with a 2:1 proportion of tea to spices, which I find too much - 1:1 is better, meaning that you would get 1/2 cup of tea, 1/2 cup of spices. 1 tsp or tea and spices each per 2 servings is not quite enough, it should be 1.5 or 2 tsp each.
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