Lynn Strong

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Category: Chai and Cat-tales

  • Sharbat for the Shahzada

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    (One of the recipes from Chai and Cat-tales)

    This is based on several historic recipes, most particularly sharbat e badam. Sharbat and sekanjabin and ‘aqsima / oxymel are very old beverages. Similar syrups were recorded by the 11th century’s Canon of Medicine by ibn Sina (known in much of Europe as Avicenna), with further details mentioned in the Persian Zakhira-i Khwarazmshahi, written for the shah of what is now Khorasan.

    You’ll also find ‘aqsima variations in the thirteenth century Syrian Kitab al-Wusla, translated as Scents and Flavors by Charles Perry, and the fifteenth century Egyptian Zahr al-hadiqa fi ’l-atcima al-aniqa by ibn Mubarak Shah, translated as The Sultan’s Feast by Daniel L. Newman. I owe both of them a considerable debt of knowledge, both for their research and for their choice to make their books available in digital form.

    (At the time of the original book, I’d been on a failed multi-year quest to achieve legible-to-me ebook access to Nawal Nasrallah’s works. I have partly-legible access now, though I’m struggling with how the ebook edition has both mangled the diacriticals in the Roman alphabet and decided to write every bit of the Arabic backwards. The quest for truly legible access continues…)

    Most of the sharbat and ‘aqsima variants involve making sweet flavored syrup concentrate, sometimes with vinegar or acid, and later diluting to taste to serve. (Yes, in essence we’re talking about medieval Kool-aid or Ribena here.)

    This particular variant is a little fancier, as befits the table of the shahzada. In my world-building, food and drink in the God-Emperor’s court takes many of its taste and scent cues from the Ayubbid and Abbasid empires, occasionally ranging into Mughal tastes as well. The boundary between what you call perfume, what you call incense, and what you call spice for food was more flexible in the medieval Middle East than it is in most places today.

    So I’m putting together sandalwood and vetiver and other incense notes with the more familiar cardamom and almond, and of course a shahzada’s table would be graced with saffron.

    But as a disabled person who can’t stand over a stove for an hour anymore, and with friends who are vegan, I’ve also got an easy-mode variation and a no-animal-products variation.

    (Many variations use kewra or screwpine essence where I’m using sandalwood. If you have access to it and you like it, enjoy! I don’t have access outside Rooh Afza, which brings a lot of red food coloring that knocks out the saffron gold.)

    The formal version

    The formal version makes about 4-6 servings:

    Optional, to brew overnight and strain ahead:

    • A couple pieces of food grade (not blended or preservative treated) sandalwood, or about ½ tsp powder, or alternatively a few drops of kewra concentrate if you have it and like it
    • A good sized pinch of vetiver roots, or khus concentrate (ideally undyed)
    • 1 cup hot water in a container with a lid

    Cautionary note: If you have any questions at all about whether your sandalwood is food grade, don’t make tisane of it. Instead, just burn it in an incense burner while you’re sipping your wood-free sharbat e badam, because scent is its entire purpose here.

    So, once you have guaranteed food safe ingredients here:

    Make a cup of very hot water. Let the woody parts steep overnight in a covered container on your countertop. Pyrex or a mug is often good for this.

    In the morning, strain the pieces from your sandalwood and/or vetiver tisane. If you used sandalwood powder, a coffee filter or cheesecloth may help with grit removal.

    Keep the liquid.

    (Decide whether the solids will dry nicely for a second brewing or if they’ve given their all. You could also set them out in a cup to scent your room.)

    Possibly also overnight, almond milk:

    • If you have storebought almond milk, you can use that. Skip ahead to “Making the sharbat” below.
    • If you don’t have almond milk, choose whether you’re going to use almond extract or make almond milk. If you’re going to use extract, skip ahead to “Making the sharbat” below.
    • If you want to make your own almond milk: Soak about ¾ cup almonds in water overnight. (This can be scaled up if desired.) Blanched peeled almonds will be faster; if you start with regular almonds you’ll want to rub the skins off in the morning. In the morning, after draining and/or peeling the soaked almonds, blend them in a blender, adding somewhere between ¼ and 1 cup of water, to make a smooth paste. (You can make a larger batch if you want to make the finished sharbat entirely vegan.) Pour the almond milk through cheesecloth or a flour sack towel and squeeze the almonds to separate the milk from the grit. (If you like oatmeal or cereal, you can scatter the leftover almond paste into that.)

    Making the sharbat:

    • Either 1 cup of your prepared woody tisane, OR 1 cup of liquid and a nearby incense burner
    • 1/2 to 1 cup of your almond milk (or another liquid with a drop or two of almond extract)
    • 6 green cardamom pods, cracked open and black seeds extracted, OR about ¾ tsp cardamom powder
    • A pinch of saffron threads
    • About ½ cup jaggery, brown sugar, or white sugar, with about 1 tsp reserved for grinding the saffron

    In a pot, add most of your jaggery or sugar to your tisane or water and bring it up to a simmer. Save 1 tsp for grinding.

    Put the remaining 1 tsp of your jaggery or sugar in a mortar with most of the pinch of saffron, reserving a few threads to top the glasses with.

    Use the sugar to grind the saffron into fine bits and add it to the pot.

    If you have cardamom seeds extracted from the green cardamom pods, grind those well in the mortar and pestle. Then add them to the pot of sugar water too.

    Add as much of the almond milk as you like to the pot and simmer until it’s reduced by about half and is a bit thicker, likely 15-20 minutes. Keep stirring to prevent scorching.

    Remove from heat and cool.

    For each glass:

    • 2-3 Tbsp of your chilled sharbat e badam concentrate, or to taste
    • 1 cup cold milk of your choice (cow, almond, coconut)
    • A couple of saffron threads on top
    • (Optional) Light an incense burner with some sandalwood if you have it

    And, as promised, there are simpler versions.

    Simpler Sharbat e Badam (vegan friendly)

    For 4-6 servings:

    • 4-6 cups almond milk OR cow milk/coconut milk with a few drops almond extract added
    • ¾ tsp cardamom powder (or ground from pods if you have ambitions)
    • About ½ cup simple syrup, to taste (can be store-bought or can be made by melting together equal parts sugar and water and stirring until clear)
    • Optional: kewra and/or khus concentrate, to taste
    • Optional but nice: pinch of saffron and 1 tsp sugar

    The night before, or whenever you can, grind your saffron with the sugar, add a few drops warm water, and stir until the sugar dissolves and the water turns golden.

    Add the saffron sugar water, the cardamom, and any flavoring extracts to your chosen milk.

    Sweeten to taste with the simple syrup.

    Refrigerate for a while.

    When ready to serve, stir and pour as is. (No dilution needed since we didn’t make the concentrate.)

    Add a couple threads of saffron to the glass if you have them.

    Light some sandalwood if you feel like it.

  • Zulabiyya for the Eldest Archivist

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    As part of my quest to make recipe post with history notes available for all the book recipes, here’s another from the Chai and Cat-tales collection.

    This one is everything from historical to modern. Zulabiyya is one of the recipes that has the “peanut butter and jelly” problem, in that everyone assumes everyone knows how to make it so they describe it as already understood. You get consistency directions in tenth-century cookbooks that assume you already know what “the texture of zulabiyya batter” is when it’s used as a reference point for some other recipe.

    Apparently the taste for sweet fried yeast-fluffy dough drenched in even more sweet stuff is pretty long-standing, too. Zulabiyya / zalabiya have direct connections with jalebi, zlabiya, mushabbak, and (probably) funnel cakes.

    In Daniel Newman’s translation of Zahr al-hadiqa fi ’l-atcima al-aniqa, the recipe for Cairene qahiriyya is described as applying zulabiyya batter over a sun-dried almond pastry ring and then deep frying the whole thing. I have dreams of someday being functional enough to try that one out. In the meantime, though, simple is helpful when cooking while disabled.

    Zulabiyya generally come in three shapes depending on the region and the chef’s tradition. Some of them are lattice-style, some are little round balls, and some of them are pillowy beignet-shaped bites of deliciousness. (The featured image here looks like it contains both the beignet-type and the funnel-cake-type variations on zulabiyya, so I was happy to find Raju Alam’s photo.)

    Old school:

    If you’d like a look at the historic version, Daniel Newman shows a video of himself making yeast-leavened and saffron-dyed zulabiyya on the Durham University YouTube channel.

    Simpler version, pillow style:

    My mother made a fast no-rise variation that’s similar to the Egyptian beignet-like fluffy pillow style, when we were young and she was busy and premade yeast dough was a time-saver:

    She’d buy ready-made yeast biscuits in a tube, snip them into quarters, and deep-fry them while simmering up the hot sugar syrup to dunk them in.

    Simpler version, lattice/funnel cake style:

    If you’d like to make your own but don’t feel confident with yeast, a box of pancake mix (mixed to a suitable consistency with water; leave aside the eggs and oil) will get you a self-rising sweet dough that responds nicely to frying. You could add almond extract, rosewater, orange blossom water, or anything else that pleases you before you cook it.

    If you feel like saffron, grind it up with a teaspoon of sugar before stirring it into the batter; it will distribute more thoroughly that way.

    For the latticed version, you’ll want to make the batter a bit thinner than for the pillow version. If you have a coconut shell handy, it provides both measurement and drizzling. (Funnels are fine too, of course!)

    For the ball or pillow version, you’ll want it a bit thicker and something like a scoop or ladle to measure dollops into the oil with.

    Once they’ve fried golden brown, fetch them out with a slotted spoon and set on wire racks or paper towels to drain until you’re ready for the sugar syrup.

    Sugar syrup:

    You can use half and half sugar and water, or you can heat up honey until it’s thin enough to drizzle.

    (A splash of rosewater and a pinch of cardamom in the syrup makes it even more delicious in my book.)

  • Warm comfort: Golden milk and chai

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    This was the second roughest holiday season of my life, and my plans for 3 weeks mostly of writing and editing… the universe said Ha, and kept laughing. I’m… probably not okay. But I need to keep impersonating it, because there isn’t a good alternative. When you grow up undiagnosed autistic with complex trauma and then become a theater major on top of that, are some things you learn about the functional value of masks that keep you together somehow when the show absolutely has to go on.

    I also realized that I made fundamental mistakes trusting WordPress’s defaults 3 years ago. But the amount of time and work needed to correct them is time that won’t go into writing new books.

    So here’s my patch between what I didn’t know about WordPress three years ago and what I can hopefully sustain going forward: the new Recipes section, collected by book, which I hope to add to gradually, reusing content that’s already written in the books and cutting down on the volume of paper needed in paperback editions. (If only in focus photos were not my nemesis!)

    Chai and Cat-tales has the least-intimidating collection of gaps to fill, so I’m going to start there.

    And, really, I’m willing to bet a fair number of folks are in need of some warm and soothing comfort lately.

    Golden Milk and Golden Chai

    Haldi doodh, turmeric milk, is an ancient drink from India. I can’t give you anything resembling a date, though. Every reference I’ve found has said Ayurvedic medicine has used it for “thousands” of years, and while I wouldn’t be surprised to learn it’s in the Manasollasa or Lokopakara manuscripts, I don’t have legible access to either of them.

    So in this case I’m blending history with a twist of modern knowledge: cucurmin’s bioavailability goes up dramatically in the presence of pepper and fat, and cinnamon and ginger and many other spices are potent anti-inflammatories (as well as being delicious). And if you’re adding chai masala as well, the difference between golden milk and golden chai comes down to whether you also simmer in some tea.

    The resemblance between dry chai masala, medieval poudre douce, and pumpkin spice is striking. I have a whole rant about the historical intersections between pumpkin pie spice and chai masala and poudre douce, with tangents through “things women are regularly mocked for enjoying, with or without pepper,” “things megacorporations time-limit and access-control,” and “things I want to enable more people to enjoy for themselves whether or not it is corporate-and-or-patriarchy-approved.” But that rant is not so cozy!

    Personally, it took me a while to warm up to turmeric drinks. In my quest for inflammatory symptom relief that wasn’t NSAIDs, most of the turmeric tisanes I’d tried tasted like I was licking my ochre art pigments. But once I found a concentration I liked, it got easier. And also tastier. 

    I’ve seen modern recipes going from “a pinch” to “a tablespoon” (!) of turmeric per cup of milk. My own balance point hits around a quarter to half teaspoon in my big 24 ounce mug, because on bad days I want to just make it once and sip on it for hours. 

    On a bad day, I’m also not going to be up for freshly hand grinding every spice. So I pregrind my chai masala. Then I use about ½ tsp chai masala to ¼ tsp turmeric, or sometimes half and half when I need extra ouch-fighting power.

    If you’re fond of skim milk or you’re using a fat free nut milk, you’ll likely want to either add a bit of coconut oil to the hot liquid or sip a spoonful of olive oil on the side. 

    I know some people enjoy “bulletproof coffee” with butter in it. And I’ve made and drunk Tibetan tea with butter and salt. But both of those strike my own taste buds as “We’ve crossed the beverage-versus-soup threshold here.” So I don’t suggest blending olive oil into your turmeric and milk, or you may find yourself wondering where the rest of your dal makhani ingredients are.

    Some useful dry chai masala / poudre douce variants 

    Easy mode: Get something already fine ground like pumpkin spice and add extra cardamom and black pepper.

    Easier mode: Use something like the Blue Lotus chai powder mentioned below, though it includes powdered tea so you will get some caffeine.

    Handcrafted for storage:

    • A couple dozen green cardamom pods, cracked and with the black seeds crushed. (Or 1 Tbsp powdered)
    • 3-4 cinnamon sticks, preferably Ceylon cinnamon, bashed up enough to fit in a spice grinder. (Or ½ Tbsp powdered) 
    • 1-2 tsp black peppercorns (or long pepper if you can find it)
    • 1-2 tsp dried ginger (not crystallized or fresh here; powder keeps longer)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp nutmeg, ideally fresh grated
    • If you can find them:
      • ½ tsp grains of paradise
      • A couple chunks of galangal
      • ½ tsp mace

    If they’re already powdered, mix them up.

    If they’re still whole, grind them all up together. 

    If you enjoy the brewing process, it doesn’t need to be ground too fine. 

    If you don’t want to have to strain it, make sure to remove the green hulls from the cardamom pods and extract the seeds before grinding. Then grind all the spices as finely as possible.

    Put the ground spices in an airtight jar and date it so you know how fresh it is. (Best within a few months; it won’t go off, it just won’t be as fragrant or as potent.)

    When you’re ready to drink:
    • 1 or 2 cups hot milk from cows or plants
      • (If skim, add a bit of coconut oil or a sliver of unsalted butter) 
      • (If you want it to be chai rather than hot milk, simmer some CTC black tea like PG Tips or Jivraj in there too)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp turmeric (to taste)
    • ¼ to ½  tsp chai masala / poudre douce above, OR pumpkin spice plus cardamom and pepper (to taste) 
    • 1 to 2 tsp honey, jaggery, or sugar (to taste)

    Simmer for 15 minutes or so, strain if needed, and serve warm.

    Scale up or down based on the size of your mug.

    Ready to drink easy mode: 

    When I’m having a bad day, my super-fast, get-it-done, not-sure-I-won’t-burn-the-milk-today version goes:

    • 1 or 2 cups hot water (not boiling)
    • ¼ to ½ tsp turmeric (to taste)
    • Half a container of Orgain’s vegan vanilla meal shake (brings enough fat for bioavailability, a lot of creaminess, a lot of vitamins, and enough sugar that I don’t add more)
    • Your chai masala / poudre douce equivalent of choice:
      • ¼ tsp your home blend, if you ground it finely enough not to need to strain it
        OR
      • ¼ tsp something like Blue Lotus original chai masala per cup
        OR
      • ¼ tsp pumpkin spice plus ⅛ tsp cardamom and several grinds of pepper per cup

    If I’m out of meal shakes I swap in 1 Tbsp milk powder and 1 tsp sugar per cup.