The only thing better than a good recipe? When something's so easy to make that you don't even need one. Welcome to It's That Simple, a column where we talk you through the process of making the dishes and drinks we can make with our eyes closed.
I consider chai to be a perfect beverage—an inviting, not-too-caffeinated start to my day that I can sip cozily on the couch while reading the morning news. Traditionally, it’s made by letting tea, milk, water, and spices boil away in a pot until the liquid thickens up and the spices have so intensely imprinted themselves onto the tea that the whole room smells like cardamom and cinnamon. After it’s strained, what remains is a slightly creamy, intensely aromatic concoction is all that remains.
But it’s a leisurely process. They say now is the time to take on those painstaking project recipes. I’m all for making bread, or finally learning to laminate dough, but chai just isn’t one of those activities I want to spend a long time on. Now is the time when I’d love to get straight to the comfort. And that’s where my simpler, shortcut cardamom chai comes in.
It’s a method that my mom developed on the days when she came home from work and really, really needed her chai fast. It strips away the mildly annoying parts of the process (dirtying a pot, cleaning out a strainer, measuring out a bunch of different kinds of spices) and streamlines it to involve one mug and just one spice. When things were more normal, and I actually lived in my apartment in New York, I incorporated this tradition into my daily routine.
Now that I’m quarantining at my parents’ place in Dallas, I get to enjoy the ritual alongside my mom. It usually happens around 3 p.m., when I am starting to feel zonked from the hours spent staring at my computer, and the low-level dread over the fact that I literally live with my parents starts to set in. My mom yells, “Chhotu, chai?” from downstairs and I yell back in the affirmative. I bound to the kitchen, and we lean over the kitchen island, sipping from our favorite mugs (hers: the skinny, floral one, mine: the wide, fat one printed with a photo from a family hiking trip). It’s a quick break, but one of the most important parts of my day—it feels like coming up for air after holding your breath underwater.
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