Cairo Chai

For the first of my Cairo-moniker’ed blog posts, I think I’ll talk a little about a brilliant discovery I made yesterday.

Besides finding a barber, one of my other goals was finding chai ingredients. I had brought my special Assam tea with me, but as Nicholas will tell you, “it’s all about the masala.” That meant I needed to find cardamom, cinnamon, and ginger to reproduce the same product. The search turned out a lot harder than one might’ve thought. People would tell me, “Just go to a spice shop.” Umm…ok, where the hell is a spice shop? Do you ever notice when you’re looking for something, you can’t find it, but when you don’t want/need something, it’s everywhere?

Finally, with the gracious help of Nisrin, I came across a shop selling a myriad of spices. After a quick sweep with my eyes, I couldn’t see cardamom anywhere. I thought, “Is it outlawed in this country or something?” Then, on one final glace, I saw a green sign with the word “Cardamom.” After being the focus of many a laugh, we were out of the place with exactly what I needed, plus a five Piastre (the smaller denomination of currency) coin. I’ll cherish that coin forever, because you won’t see them too often here.

One potentially crucial hurdle was the lack of any sort of chai infrastructure. Few houses expend the necessary capital outside the sub-continent, and mine was no exception. On a positive note, I got to improvise rather crudely. A flat pan was used in place of a sauce pan, and a potato-ricer was used in lieu of a strainer. A potato-ricer? Who does that anymore? Oh, and for mugs I used some soup cups with a recipe for Cream of Mushroom Soup on them.

Because the stove was natural gas, I was able to control the heat with far greater precision than electric. As such, there were no flare-ups or spills, just succulently thick chai brewing to perfection.

The finished product was pretty good. It will definitely take some tampering and experimentation, and infrastructure, before it can be worthy of a 5/5 rating.