SHARED TRADITIONS
By Marilyn Michael
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My grandparent’s kitchen was the
hub of their small house. Taking up a whole house end, it had an
amazing-to-a-child trap door that led to a musty dirt-walled basement lined
with shelves of canned peaches, and pears, dill pickles, apricot preserves and
other assorted jellies and jams. The kitchen’s window looked out on a full city
lot sized garden from which my Grandfather would emerge with corn to be husked,
shiny fat pea pods to be shelled and other fresh food like my Grandmother’s
favorite-turnip greens. By the time I was old enough to store memories, the
wood and coal stove had given way to electric and the icebox was now a
refrigerator, but my Grandmother still had eggs and cream delivered by a local
farmer.
Every Christmas of my childhood
was spent in this simple, inviting house in walking distance from my own. There
were family traditions, often involving food. Christmas Eve was a buffet and
always included my two favorite dishes, brown beans and ham bone and Grandma’s
potato salad. We opened our presents that night and Christmas day was spent
enjoying them and preparing a traditional feast of turkey, ham and all the
trimmings.
One Christmas Eve tradition was a
treat but always seemed a bit odd for my family. No one drank alcohol and milk
was something had ice cold with a meal or plate of cookies. On that night every
year, though, they made Tom and Jerry’s all around. A rare bottle of whiskey
would appear for the adults and the kids would enjoy vanilla poured straight
into the hot milk thickened with a powdered sugar and egg batter. A dusting of
nutmeg gave it an exotic taste as it went down smooth and warm. I’d savor the
smells of the nutmeg and vanilla and wonder why we had this yummy drink only
once a year. It just didn’t occur to my family that the Christmas Eve tradition
of this sweet, hot milk drink could be enjoyed at other times.
As an adult, I stayed close to
middle class culinary roots and never tried hot milk drinks outside of a couple
Christmas Eve attempts at Tom and Jerry’s. When coffee became a culture
declaring basic drip passé, I began drinking mochas. The steaming hot milk and
sweetness of chocolate brought memories of the creamy milk drink of my
Christmas Eves. The presence of coffee, though, somehow made it different. But,
it was comforting and exotic in a similar way. And, they even had freshly grated
nutmeg on the counter.
When a new libation called Chai
began appearing in coffee shops I never tried it. Not having been raised on
tea, I had never developed a taste for it. I vaguely remember my Aunt Mame
sipping tea from china cups, but she was an anomaly in my coffee-fanatic
family. We had sturdy percolators that sat on stovetops with little glass
toppers for a view of the perking brew. Dad had an odd-seeming habit from his
farm family upbringing of sometimes adding a few eggshells in the coffee grounds
to “take the bitterness out”. We were definitely coffee people. Even after
retiring, my father kept the tradition of morning and afternoon coffee breaks,
usually with a sweet treat, often pie.
As an adult, two women who had
grown up in India became my close friends and offered to teach me to make some
of their traditional dishes. Developing a taste for this cuisine opened my mind
to food traditions other than the basic comfort foods of my youth. I was eager
to try it all. I learned to make Tandoori marinades, vegetable dahls, meat and
vegetable curries, rice-based pulaos, coconut sauces for fish, spicy chutneys
and I discovered a store that made heavenly garlic Nan, a delicious flatbread
to accompany the dishes.
One day a new friend from Pakistan
shared that his favorite food memory was the Chai his mother would always have
for them. He offered to make it for me. Though concerned the element of tea
would preclude my enjoyment of this libation, I looked forward to trying it. He
used loose black tea that came in half-inch strings, not the powder filled tea
bags that characterized, for me, a cup of tea. Into the boiling water went the
tea, and then brown sugar, whole cloves, chunks of cinnamon sticks, and small
rounds of fresh ginger. When the milk and cardamom powder were added to the
boiling aromatic brew, it foamed up impressively. Then, his Mom’s secret,
several fifteen-second removals of the pot from the heat and reboiling.
The aromas grabbed me. This was
clearly not the watery, tepid brown drink I thought of as tea. He strained it
and poured me a steaming cup. I was in love. Cupping my hands around the mug I
was transported to exotic lands and at the same time back to my Grandma’s
kitchen on Christmas Eve. It was lightly sweet and creamy smooth. And, beyond
the nutmeg and vanilla of my Tom and Jerry memories, its spice blend was exotic
and yet comforting. How lucky he had been. He’d enjoyed this amazing treat year
around. It was his favorite food memory; I’m sure in a similar way that I look
back fondly on those Christmas Eve cups of hot sweet milk and nutmeg.
Sam Khurshid’s
Chai Recipe
Makes 5 cups
Ingredients:
3 cups water
2 cups milk
5 rounded teaspoons black tea (one per cup or
1 tea bag
per cup)
5 whole cloves (for ten cups he used 15,
traditionally it’s two cloves per cup)
5 - ½ cinnamon sticks (one per cup)
5 teaspoons brown sugar (one per cup) or to taste
5 - 1/4 inch
thick slices of 1” round fresh ginger,
unpeeled
(one per cup)
1/2 teaspoon cardamom powder (just 1/2 teaspoon
for the
entire batch.)
Instructions:
Bring water to a boil. Add black tea. cinnamon, brown
sugar, cloves, and ginger. Boil for 2
minutes then add milk and cardamom. (It expands in pot, watch it.) Bring back
to boil, take off heat for 15 seconds return it to heat and boil. Do this
twice more. Strain off the spices and tea. Serve. (This can be made with
equal parts water and milk or all milk.)
