recipes
thethanni & shaah
Bringing you another winter necessity, tea. For all those cold days, you need a cuppa to make you warm. But before that, a little (linguistic) history, fun fact?
Did you know that the words we use in modern English (or any language today) to describe this drink “tea” or “chai” originated from China?
The Chinese character for tea, 茶, is pronounced different across different Chinese languages. In Mandarin and Cantonese, it is pronounced as cha and in Min dialects along the Southern coast of China and in Southeast Asia pronounce it like teh. These two pronunciations have made their separate ways into other languages around the world.
Teh is from Hokkien in southern Fujian. The ports of Xiamen (Amoy) and Quanzhou were points of contact with Western European traders like the Dutch. The Dutch may have taken this from Fujian or indirectly via Malay traders in Java.
In fact, in Sri Lanka, or rather in Tamil, tea is called thethanni – meaning thee (tea in dutch) + thanni (water in tamil). Similarly in Singapore, we call it teh tarik (pulled tea) in Malay (which explains the trick to great tea!). (and a little shoutout to all the dutch colonies!) Teh gave rise to English “tea” and similar words in other languages.
Cha is from Cantonese and the ports of Hong Kong and Macau which had major points of contact with the Portuguese who spread it to India in the 16th century. Chai is likely to have come from Persian where the Chinese pronunciation of cha was passed overland to Central Asia and Asia and Persia before passing on to Russian, Arabic, Turkish.
We were very shocked to see “tea” spelt as “čaj” in menus in Montenegro and Czech, now it all makes sense!
thethanni / teh tarik
ceylon/southeast asia-inspired
This is how tea is made at home, how amma and ammamma make it, and how we’ve always known. But only when we grew older we realised it’s actually the same as Teh Tahrik – the drink you get in plastic bags and a straw in Singapore hawkers. At home, amma serves it in a huge mug because, amma.
shaah / chai
somalia-inspired
Our sweet-toothed homie, Asiyo, made this shaah, similar to masala chai, but with her own spice spin, at our first ever social event and it was a crowd pleaser. So, here’s the lowdown on how to make it!
thethani / teh tarik
the stuff
3 tbsp tea leaves
1 cup water
2-3 tsp condensed milk
the method
- In a milk pan, add tea leaves and water and wait till it boils and the tea juices soak in .
- Add condensed milk as per your taste and stir till the spoon is clean.
- Now for the “tarik”, heh. Pour the tea into a stainless steel jug or pot, then pour into a mug or tea glass. The trick is to pour it from as tall a height as possible.
- Repeat pouring from pot to mug until tea is frothy (this is what they mean by pulling tea heh).
- Enjoy on its own or your favourite tea time snack.
shaah / chai
the stuff
3 tbsp tea leaves
mint leaves
2-3 cardamom
ginger, grated
1 cup water
1/2 cup milk
sugar (as you like)
the method
- Grind the cardamom in a mortar and pestle (or you can drop them in whole).
- In a milk pan, add tea leaves, ground or whole cardamom, mint leaves and grated ginger.
- Add a cup of water and bring to boil.
- When its boiling, pour in a cup of milk and let it boil.
- Stir as it boils and add sugar (as you like).
- Continue stirring and boiling , until you get a nice caramel brown colour.
- Pour the tea into a stainless steel jug or pot and into a mug.
- Feel the heat from the spice as you sip on that.