Thread: Chai thread!
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AK AK is offline
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Default Chai thread!

Dominic T. wrote:
> On Apr 29, 9:03 pm, AK > wrote:
>> Milk or half and half?
>>
>> What's your favorite recipe?
>>
>> Does it matter much if spices are cheap or expensive?
>>
>> What's your favorite source for spices?
>>
>> What is the best sweetener - brown sugar, turbinado sugar, something else?
>>
>> -ak (rainy)

>
> My wife is more of a fan than me so by proxy I end up sampling a few
> here and there. The best chai I've had actually came from teabags and
> I think the brand was "Fantasy" they came in a plastic tub-like
> container from a now-out-of-business Indian market. With that I'd
> either use turbinado or a simple syrup made from yellow lump sugar and
> usually just some skim milk.
>
> I had a really good green tea chai latte (Geez that's hard to admit
> truthfully) from my local Border's bookstore cafe I believe it was
> Seattle's Best. It had a matcha base and was really great.


Would chinese greens work for chai?

>
> I normally have the spices just around for cooking purposes if I want
> to experiment with my own, I get them in medium sized clear plastic
> bags hand packed at a different local Indian market. They are super


How about latin-american or arabic grocery spices - we don't have indian
ones here.. ? I got green cardamom from an arabic grocery but the thing
about it is that sometimes grains in pods are black and sometimes (less
often) they're light brown. I suspect that's not a good sign of quality
of cardamom. I'm not even sure which ones I should use - I guess the
black ones & discard brownish? Latin-american groceries here don't have
cardamom at all... It's annoying that there are no health food stores
here because I'd prefer to buy organic spices.

I did try a cardamom-only chai recently. Pretty good, I need to use more
cardamom next time.

> cheap compared to buying spices in a grocery store and I'd have to
> imagine they are fresher and higher quality than most. I don't have
> anything perfected to actual amounts though since again, it isn't a
> major favorite of mine but I do love heavy cardamom and not much in
> the way at all of spices like black pepper. I do tend to make chai or
> Thai iced tea when we have guests over though so I get some practice.
>
> - Dominic