The Magic of Chai

The Indian obsession with chai is well known, I don't need to tell you about it. And it is highly likely you have tried it at some point but if you haven't the Chai Latte at Starbucks is a pretty good "in the spirit of" Chai substitute in that it is hot, milky, spicy, sweet and comforting. No honestly, trust me. But I accept that it is interesting that Chai Latte is not an option in Starbucks India. Too embarrassing I guess. Or a trade descriptions violation.

Well, I felt unwell on Tuesday in a sudden hot, clammy, achy limbs, internal organs sore sort of way so I put myself straight to bed after work for a lie-down and didn't wake up again until the alarm went off the next morning. I haven't really got to the bottom of this strange 24 hour illness, possibly Covid, possibly fatigue, possibly some other virus picked up in a mall. But I survived it and after a full 24 hours in bed, most of them actually asleep, I came back to work today.

After lots of sympathy, and much medical diagnosis by my work colleagues, it was unanimously decided that a Chai would work wonders and sort out whatever had made me unwell. A bit like a certain detergent cure for Covid.

And this was the first time I really understood the big boiling pot of milk in the Pantry. Have I mentioned this before? That there is a big pot of boiling milk constantly on a stove in the Pantry? No? Well, very strangely there is a big pot of milk on the boil in the Pantry everyday. And more weird than that is that no-one thinks its weird. They just continue their lives around it.

It turns out that at about 2:30/3:00 this boiling pot of milk is turned into Chai by the addition of spices and tea. And today everyone thought it would be good for me to have some of this to cure Covid, or some other virus.

My mother made chai. And it was delicious. But there were certain things that you could control by being close to the chaiwallah in that you could ask her not to add sugar to the pot and save it for the individual mugs and you could collect it as soon as it was poured from the pan so could drink it before it got a milk skin. Euch!

I managed neither today and what was delivered was a really sweet Chai with an elephant hide skin already formed! I drank as much as I could by constantly rotating the cup to avoid encountering skin but had to stop before I thought my teeth might drop out from sugar decay. I could have been polite and tried to finish more of it or spill it out in the loos before returning an empty cup but that would lead people to think I liked it and that I wanted to join the 3:00 chai drop and I can't face 9 months of navigating milk skin. So I handed in my half finished cup, smiled sweetly and said "not for me thank you". They'll just chalk this up as another weird feature of Mam.

However despite this chai setback I am absolutely obsessed with this Chai Maker I spotted in the WonderChef store in R City Mall. Discovering this was worth contracting Covid or some other virus for.

A machine in which you put all the constituent ingredients of a good chai; milk, water, tea and spices, press a single button to start the process and it does all the brewing, steeping, stewing, milking and delivers you fresh chai. Without burning the milk onto the saucepan, which is my father's complaint when I lovingly make him chai in his kitchen. I am absolutely buying this as soon as I move into my flat and will be fighting all sorts of viruses with my homemade chai.

I'll add it to my product portfolio on my website and let you know how I get on with it. If it's really good I'll take orders. But at a price point of just £40 how can it be anything less than fantastic?