Chai cappuccino

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I have a thing for chai tea. I love it. I bought a packet of it from the excellent Samovar Tea House in Ely.

At home, I thought about how best to make it. I put some in a teapot; it was nice, but it could be better. I thought its chunky nature might make it do well in an espresso pot.

I put some water and chai tea in the espresso pot, and set it on the hob to do its thing, along with some milk in my milk-frothing jug.

Meanwhile, I prepared the cup: I put some demerara sugar in it.

Once the espresso pot had done its thing, I poured it into the cup. From the colour and the aroma, it seemed like the espresso pot had been one of my better ideas.

The milk was done, so I frothed it up. The jug is made of glass, and it goes directly on the hob. I’ve always been a bit wary of this – I’m afraid it will shatter, but it hasn’t yet. I’ve used it on an electric coil hob, a gas hob and now an electric halogen hob. Once the milk is hot, and hopefully before it boils over, the jug comes off the heat and put on its very own heatproof coaster. Then the lid goes on. The lid is a bit like the lid of a cafetière, but instead of plunging once, the knob is pumped up and down repeatedly to aerate the milk and froth it up. It’s pretty good.

I poured the frothy milk onto the chai tea in the cup. I didn’t have any nutmeg or ground cinnamon to sprinkle on the top. This would have been a cosmetic addition to help with the appearance, though: neither the aroma nor the flavour needed an extra boost.

On tasting, the tea was aromatic, flavoursome, warm, sweet, spicy, frothy: exactly what I look for in a cup of chai. I’ll be making my chai like that again.