Happy Bourdain day to all. I believe Eric Ripert said on the first Bourdain day to have a good drink on Bourdain day. I recommend elachi chai. It’s cardamom chai. I don’t have an exact recipe for you, but here’s some tips.
I like a lot of cardamom flavor. Crack about 10 green/blue cardamom seeds with a rolling pin or something else to release the aroma. Don’t make much black tea, but make it dark and strong. Simmer the cardamom pods with the black tea for 5 minutes minimum. Longer might be better. Do this because you’ll add a lot of
milk(or milk substitute). I’d say about 3/4 milk, 1/4 strong black tea. If you don’t use real milk, I recommend barista style oat milk.
Make it fairly sweet too. In India chai is usually quite sweet, but the serving is very small. So really it’s not more sugar than a large Starbucks drink order with “less sugar” because that large amount is just diluting the same amount of sugar as the super sweet chai in India. I prefer this strategy of a smaller, sweeter drink that is slowly savored.
That said, I’m a huge low carb guy these days, but tea and
coffee are one exception most of the time. I often use monk fruit when I’m being strict but it isn’t as good. Some days I treat myself with
honey, which is wayyy better. Real sweetness with carbohydrates work best to bring out the cardamom flavor. This is why I recommend oat milk for a substitute, it has more carbs and natural sweetness than some other milk substitutes.
Mix the milk with black tea, gently simmer together another 5 minutes. Turn off heat, remove cardamom. Add sweetener. Well, maybe I did give a full recipe. Whatever. Happy birthday to my hero.
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