How to make masala chai

Chai means tea, and in most of India tea means this: leaf boiled hard with milk, sugar and spice until it is the colour of a biscuit. It is not a delicate drink and it is not brewed; it is cooked, in a pan, on a flame. The recipe here is the one Dishoom, the Bombay-café restaurants in London, published, and it makes about a litre and a half.

What you need

2 tablespoons of loose Assam or Darjeeling leaf, or 3 teabags. 1 litre of water. 12 slices of fresh ginger. 1½ teaspoons of black peppercorns. 12 cardamom pods. 2 cinnamon sticks. 5 cloves. 50 grams of sugar. 500 millilitres of whole milk. A saucepan and a sieve.

The method

Put the water in the pan with the ginger, peppercorns, cardamom, cinnamon and cloves, bring it to the boil and simmer ten minutes, so the spices give up their flavour before the tea goes in. Add the tea, then the milk and sugar, bring it back to the boil and boil for ten more minutes, watching it, because milk tea climbs the pan. It will reduce and darken. Strain into cups or glasses and drink hot.

What it should taste like

Sweet, hot with ginger and pepper, scented with cardamom, and strong enough from the Assam that the milk does not make it bland. The twenty minutes of boiling is the point: a chai that is brewed like English tea and has spices added tastes of neither.

Adjusting it

Less sugar is the usual change, and the recipe survives it. More ginger makes it the chai of a Bombay street stall; a few fennel seeds make it the chai of Gujarat. Keep the Assam, which is the leaf with the strength to stand up to twenty minutes on the heat.

When to drink it

Mid-morning and mid-afternoon, in small glasses, the way it is sold on the street. It is a drink for a break rather than a meal, and it keeps in the pan over a low flame for an hour without harm.