A vegan, gluten-free, sugar free version of the popular Indian Chai recipe with a caffeine free variation. This spicy tea will brighten up your afternoon teatime and cold winter days. Enjoy with Indian Laddu sweets.
This is the chai recipe used at the European Summer Retreat 2017 organized by the Holosophic Society International in Poland.
Serves: 4 people (1 liter = 4 cups)
Preparation time: 15 minutes
Ingredients
½ liter water
20 g (2 cm) fresh ginger root, freshly grated or crushed with a pestle in a mortar
½ cinnamon stick (5 cm), broken into pieces
10 g (2 level tablespoons) green cardamom, freshly ground in a coffee grinder
2 g (2 pieces) black cardamom, freshly ground in a coffee grinder
1½ g (¼ tablespoon) fennel seeds, freshly ground in a coffee grinder
15 g (2 level tablespoons) black tea
½ liter soy milk
Directions
Bring ½ liter of water with the ginger, the ½ cinnamon stick and all the freshly ground dry spices to boil.
Once it is boiling, add the black tea and boil for 3 minutes.
Add ½ liter soy milk and bring to boil three times. Each time it boils, lower the heat and then boil again.
Warm up a thermos bottle. Then quickly pour the hot chai through a metal tea strainer into the thermos bottle to avoid the bitter taste that results when chai cools down.
Variation
If you prefer the chai without black tea, you omit the black tea or use decaffeinated black tea.
For this variation boil the spices for 5 minutes to get a stronger taste.