Kashmiri Tea

[chappie]

Browing the adjacent store at Shalimar Restaurant in Salisbury, Md., I found a jar of Kashmiri tea with instructions on the side (I didn't have enough post-dinner cash to buy it). It said to boil the tea leaves with three glasses of water down to one, then adding more water and reboiling until it was the right shade of pink. Then there were further steps with milk, cardamom, pistachios, etc.

My question is, how or why does it turn pink? The leaves looked green like other green tea.

[v. gautam]

When green tea is steeped, depending on the provenance mode of manufacture and type of leaf, especially those from Himachal Pradesh, the liquor is not necessarily green but a pale yellowish-pink with the lightest steeping in water just under the boiling point, 200-2005F, for 3-4 minutes at sea level.

There are several different types of Kashmiri tea: some with salt, others steeped with apricot kernels,then reboiled, saffron added; steeped with aromatics like cassia, cardamom, apricot kernels, then brought to simmer before drinking.

The long steep releases some condensed tannins that form in the Indian process of making green tea, quite unlike the Japanese process of steaming and rolling. In the north Indian TRADITIONAL process, the phenoloxidases have some time to function, would be my best guess, between the bruising and cessation of enzymatic reaction. The interval would be far less than that allowed for an oolong, but more for the Japanese and some, but not all, Chinese "green" teas.

So, the Kashmiri green tea, inclding tha formerly grown in the Himachal, is yellowish, fractionally tinged pink, in liquor to begin with. Boiling and cooking releases more of the tannic fractions, the colored elements. Sometimes a pinch of soda is added, an this akaline element may depen the color. Why this is done, I have no idea. Is it to neutralize ome of the acid or some other good reason unkown to me?

There are many things in traditional recipes that make some sense in their home turf but not necesarily everywhere else. Again, some some practices, e.g. as in Indian chai, about which i do know a lot, are plain wrong-headed and better beverages can be prepared by abandoning the crude violence of the original. But Kashmiri tea is not my home turf and can only direct you to some recipes from the internet

However, I am surprised they ask you to boil, reduce and rebuild to the extent advised. That would imply a very strong and harsh liquor.

Kahva, the post-Islamic Kashmiri word for this tea, derives from the Semitic root for black [which gave the Arabic word for coffee]. Tea has ancient, pre-Islamic rootsin Kashmir, especially green, Chinese-style tea. We know that a royal prince of China was kept hostage in Kashmir by the Huna Emperor, Kanishka, 2nd century CE. Pears brought by the prince' s entourage flourished there, as a result of which pears, a new fruit to the region, were given the name "cinarajaputra" [Chineseprince] by the locals. Tea and its appreciation cannot have been missing, because if a Chinese steward bothered to bring pear trees, he would 100 times more caefully have made sure his prince would have had the luxury of tea as well!!

http://www.ellenskitchen.com/faqs/chaikash.html

http://www.angelfire.com/country/fauziaspa...ashmiritea.html

http://www.khanapakana.com/drink-recipes/kashmiri-tea.html

this one is the terror: boil boil, boil away

And yet again, from the Pakistani half, Holy cow is all i can say!!!!

"i make kashmiri chai at my home. i tell u a tip of making it pink . first of all always make it with cold water and let it boil and when it reduced to half add cold water again and keep stiring . keep adding water until its colour turned to dark and it will take 2 to 3 hours .in the end pour it in another pot and add salt or sugar depends on ur choice ( i use salt bcoz actual kashmiri tea is saltish) and milk . if u have 1 cup of kehwa use 2 cups of milk and boil it for 2, 3 min and in the end add nuts etc baking soda is the secret ingredient of the receipe but dont use too much for 2 cups only 2 pinches of soda . it will change the colour of the tea and use full cream or less fat milk and u can also make it by using mineral water .

'gul-e-nasreen' green tea..that stuff makes good kashmiir tea *tried n tested*

http://wayfarerinthekitchen.blogspot.com/2...shmiri-tea.html

A gentler tea guaranteed not to pickle your gullet:

http://www.recipezaar.com/8856

Here is an authentic Kashmiri Brahman website, food & drink, traditions predating Islam & Buddhism in Kashmir

http://www.koausa.org/Misc/Samovar.html

Some conjectures:

Refined Sugar "sharkara", rock sugar called "khanda" spread from India via the Silk Route passing through Kashmir to Central Asia to China and the Roman world. Kashmir had various examples of the samovar, fom ones carried inside one's personal overcoat to a communal one, always on the boil, like a Mongolian hotpot. So the Russian Samovar tradition likely originated within Kashmir, with its sugar, tea, and apricot kernels plus long snowy winters, continuous interaction with Tibet and Greater China. The Samovar Tradition was widespread within Tibet.

Kashmir itself exhibits both the Sweet and Salt Tea styles, AND ORIGINALLY MADE ONLY WITH GREEN TEA. Clearly, this is a region heavily under the Chinese (green) & Tibetan (not green, but salt) tea culture, adapting it to the Indian palate (sweet and/or aromatic) re-exporting the "sweet" preference outwards.