Ginger tea

Dear Appu,

Remember those spectacular cups of tea Amma used to make? She would wake up from her nap, and go into the kitchen, while we lounged lazily on the sofa watching Sony TV. She would first boil the milk using Nido powder and keep the tea for boiling on the side. Once it was ready, she would call out to us to come and get our mugs. Big large mugs of her special creamy ginger tea. Mmmmm mmmm. Nothing was closer to heaven in those days. We’d all sit on the sofa and sip from our mugs. Appa would be on the computer, and Amma would be with us.

I find that making ginger tea is actually a tricky business. I get a different taste from each batch I make. The one I made this morning turned out just right. Its going to be hard to describe the quantities to you, but I will try.

Ingredients of course are milk, water, tea leaves and ginger. For two people, I used 1 tumbler of water and 1 and 1/2 tumblers of milk. So if you see, that’s 2 and 1/2 in all, and when you boil it for a while, it reduces to about 2 tumblers. Perfect for two people. Use about 4 tsp of tea leaves and as for the ginger…the most important part…if you like the flavour of ginger as much as I do, you may want to use a nice big 3 inch piece. Remove the skin, wash it and then crush it well and add it to the tea water. I boil everything together. The water, milk, tea leaves and ginger.

There’s nothing nicer on a cold winter morning, than a nice hot, steaming cup of ginger tea and some crunchy rusk biscuits to dip into it!