Indian Ginger Chai

This is NOT ginger tea; that is, ginger boiled in water to make a tea, rather this is black tea with ginger added as an ingredient and the ginger gives the tea a little kick. You can adjust the amount of tea to your own taste preferences, but I like pretty strong tea. Some Indians use a good bit of sugar in this tea (and in spiced chai, called masala chai), and it's too sweet for my taste, so I use less sugar. Ginger tea is common in India, and "I assume" it is also prepared in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, but I don't know that to be a fact or to what degree it might be prepared in any of these countries. 

 

Ingredients (2 to 3 servings):

 

3 teaspoons black tea leaves or 3 or 4 tea bags

1 1/2 inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated

3 cardamom pods, cracked or slit open, or ground up

2 cups water

1/3 cup milk (or to preference) 

4 teaspoons sugar 

In a pan, add the water, ginger and cracked cardamom pods, bring to a boil and adjust the heat to maintain a steady simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes, then add the sugar and gently stir for about 1 minute to dissolve the sugar. Add the tea and simmer another 4 minutes, for strong tea, or just 2 minutes, for milder tea. Add the milk and stir to mix; simmer another 2 minutes, strain the tea into cups. Serve with cookies, cake or something more to the savory Indian side, like samosas. Samosas are pastries stuffed with potatoes and various seasonings, and you can get them at any Indian or Pakistani restaurant (hopefully you have one or more nearby), and they are common throughout the Indian Subcontinent. They are often served with some type of chutney.

WORD HISTORY:

Sparse-This adjective (and adverb, as "sparsely") is related to the main part of "disperse," a Latin derived word borrowed by English from that language, to "spore," a type of reproductive element of some fungi and some plants and other organisms, a word English borrowed from Latin, which had borrowed it from Greek, and it is distantly related to "spread," a word from the Germanic roots of English. "Sparse" goes back to Indo European "sper," which meant "to scatter," with the extended form "spreg/sperg," meaning "to scatter about, to strew, to sow (seed)," and this gave Old Italic "sparg," which gave Latin "spargere," meaning "to scatter (about), to shower or sprinkle, to strew," and a participle form of which was "sparsus," meaning "scattered, strewn about;" thus also, "speckled, spotted, spread about." English borrowed the word from Latin "sparsus" at some point between circa 1730 and circa 1750 (tough to pin this down).