Drinks All Around!

So the first of the two drinks that I can come up with at the moment is a recipe for Butterbeer that has become a favorite around the house, and it's pretty simple, though rather expensive, and alcoholic, so special occasions are best suited for this one.  But delicious none the less!

We found it somewhere on the internet, and it's pretty prevalent wherever alcoholic Butterbeer recipies are found.  There are also an abundance of NON alcoholic versions, but I haven't had any of these.

Butterbeer:

Cream soda of choice

Butterscotch Schnapps

Mix half and half, pretty much, till you get a feel for the balance of flavors that most suits you.  This is a very sweet drink, very butterscotchie and smoothe...  I want to drink it all the time.

But can't afford it.

And the second drink is a home made Chai recipe that I found in a cookbook called Mangos and Curry Leaves, a tome full of foods and meals from the Sub-continent, Nepal, Palestine, India ect.  A second book by the same authors is Hot Sour Salty Sweet, a fantastic life changing read focused on Southeast Asian cooking, but that will have to wait for a later entry.

ANYWAY!  The Chai...

Get some:

Water

Black tea of choice

Whole ginger root

Whole black peppercorns(with either a grinder or a mortar and pestle to make it all brokie)

Milk

Sugar

And that's it.

So I can't remember the precise recipe that was in the book, I just kind of wing it every time I make this and it usually comes out great.  Do some experimenting and you'll get it the way you like it eventually.

Start boiling that water.  Then cut up a, oh I don't know, square inch cube section of that ginger, dice it up real good, git'er nice n' fine.  You're looking for maybe about a teaspoon to half table spoon of this stuff for one cup of tea. Grind up maybe a teaspoon's worth of pepper and set both of these aside till the water's good an hot.  Or maybe do all this before you boil the water, but anyway.  Who cares what you do.

The next part I'm always kind of out to lunch on, I usually dump the stuff all in the same cup, but this lends to pepper grinds and hunks of floating ginger in your tea when you're just hankerin' fer that Chai heaven, and you'll have to wipe your lip alot.  Maybe strain out the ginger-pepper in your tea into another cup, or if you have a re-usable fabric tea bag, like the kind people use to brew Mate, those can be helpful at this point. Perhaps even, if you're using loose tea, steep the tea and the ginger-pepper together. I find tea balls to have holes too big to keep the pepper in, but do what you want.

When the water's hot, drop the ginger and pepper in the cup and pour water over if you're just going to drink it without waiting and drop a tea bag in there too. Or brew the tea and the ginger-pepper together in a bag.  Brew for like 3 to 5 minutes so the tea doesn't get too acidy(unless you like it like that).

Mix the milk and sugar after the tea and all is brewed and consume!  Adjust the ingredients to your taste, this is a spicy drink and will give you a kick if you use too much ginger or pepper, so go easy the first time.

There are more involved versions out there, but this is a good start.

I'll try and post some pictures later tonight, so.

Drink up ma hearties!

~)o(~