My excuse to travel to India in 1982 was that I was studying Transcendental Meditation with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. I was also studying Indian culture, so different from American culture.
One of the street foods I enjoyed most in India was chai. The drink mixture varied from vendor to vendor and could be as simple as tea with pepper and ginger, or as complicated as tea with five or six spices. Indian chai was usually made with buffalo milk, which is creamier than cow milk.
When I got home to North America, I was unable to find chai. Years passed before it was available in cosmopolitan coffeehouses. Although it’s ubiquitous today, American chai isn’t authentic. It’s often made with a syrup and is tremendously sweet compared with real Indian chai, which is only slightly sweet.
To make my homemade chai authentic, I asked my Indian friends to share their recipes. Before you read my instructions, though, I must tell you that no single exact “recipe” exists in India. When I was taught to make chai by my Indian friends, they related ingredient amounts as a “handful,” a “pinch,” “some,” or “use your common sense.”
The following recipe is as close as I can get to the original taste I remember from my time in
