Homemade Chai Latte

Lately I’ve been really into herbs and spices. I have nowhere near enough tupperware to house all the strange types I’ve bought, so they’re just stashed in my cupboard!  My obsession has moved from traditional Middle Eastern cuisine, into Indian, and now into drinks. This weekend I experimented with two new drinks- homemade iced tea (no sugar added), and homemade chai tea (also no sugar).

The no sugar thing is because we’ve been reading/listening about the effects sugar has on our body, but I’ll talk more about that another time.

Homemade chai tea (and then chai latte) is a lot easier then you’d think. And on a sweltering hot day like today, an iced chai latte was the perfect relief!

Image Source

Ingredients:

* 5 cups water

* 2 teaspoon fresh ginger (chopped into 1cm pieces- approx 3)
* 1 whole star anise
* Sliced orange peel (approx 1/4 of a SMALL orange)
* 4 pieces cinnamon bark; 1 1/2 inch
* 1 teaspoon cardamom seeds
* 10 whole cloves
* 5 whole peppercorns

* 1/4 cup black tea leaves
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1/4 cup honey
* 3 cups milk

Process:

Put your water in a small saucepan. Add the ginger, star anise, orange, cinnamon, cardamon, cloves and peppercorns to the water and bring to a simmer.

Once it’s simmering, add the tea leaves. Simmer again for 15 minutes. Take off the heat and add the vanilla and honey. Use your personal judgement with the amount of honey. I actually found 1/4 cup too much honey, so add part then keep adding it.

This is basically your chai tea. You can add this concentrate to water to have a herbal tea, or keep following the recipe for the chai latte.

For a hot chai latte, bring your milk to a simmer, and add the concentrate. Serve.

I recommend making the concentrate, and storing it in the fridge. Then on a hot day, use it in a similar manner to a cordial- add a bit to your cup (a bit less then cordial), fill with milk, add ice. Also, if you wanted it as a hot drink at night, make it the same way, and instead of putting ice in it, stick it in the microwave for a few minutes!

Lamb Kofte for Australia Day

Happy Australia Day for yesterday! I totally mean to post this on January 26th-Australia Day, the day we get to celebrate this beautiful country we live in! Alas, it’s not so easy to cook, film, edit, upload and post whilst fitting in various other activities, all in the one day! I hope you all enjoyed this (HOT) summer day by eating some Australian food, and hanging out with your friends!

We celebrated the day by eating this delicious lunch, and I even cooked a sponge!

This recipe video is also being entered into the Nuffnang/Barossa competition. I’d love to see what you come up with, and you can entere here.

The Barossa wine I chose was Peter Lehmann’s Barossa Blonde, and the Barossa ingredient I chose was Maggie Beer’s Barossa Tomato Sauce. Like I say in the video below, I specifically chose a meal, and wine that might not traditionally go together to show off the versatility of the beautiful wine from the Barossa! Also, using the tomato sauce as an accompaniment to the kofte, and also as the main flavour of the dressing really is a stroke of genius (if I do say so myself). Even Luke, who is NOT a huge fan of ‘regular’ salads (read: garden salad), which this basically was, ate this salad happily and even said ‘yum’! Here’s the video, and the written recipe is below. Enjoy!

Barossa Magic from Talia Carbis on Vimeo.

Lamb Kofte:

INGREDIENTS:

500g lamb mince

1 grated onion

3 cloves garlic (minced)

1 tsp cumin

1 tsp papper

1 tsp salt

1 tsp allspice (I used chinese five spice)

1 tsp cayene papper or chilli

1 tsp sweet paprika

1 egg

PROCESS:

Mix it all together in a bowl.

Dvivide into 6 equal clumps. Put one clump into a metal skewer. Repeat for 5 more skewers.

Serve with Maggie Beer’s Barossa Tomato Sauce, caramalised onions, and salad.

Salad

INGREDIENTS:

Mixed salad leaves

Cherry tomatos

Good quality parmassen cheese

DRESSING INGREDIENTS:

Maggie Beer’s Barossa Tomato Sauce

Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Freshly ground black pepper

PROCESS:

Mix sauce, oil and pepper together. Whisk so it’s combinced.

Add salad leaves, halved cherry tomatos, and shaved parmassen into bowl. Add dressing liberally.

We ate this with Peter Lehmann’s 2009 Barossa Blonde.

Cherry Ripe Cupcakes

Ingredients:

1/3 cup Cocoa

1/2 cup Self Raising Flour

2/3 cup Plain Flour

1/2 tsp bi-carb

125g Butter

1 1/4 cups Caster Sugar

3 Eggs

1 tsp Vanilla

1/2 cup Milk

4 regular Cherry Ripe Bars

Method:

1. Sift fry ingredients into a bowl then add all remaining ingredients

2. Mix until combined

3. Chop up 3 of the cherry ripes into small pieces (about 14 pices per bar), add to the batter and stir.

4. Divide mixture eveningly into patty pans. If your patty pans are kind of squashed then put them into a muffin tin, this will help them keep their shape so you don’t have flat cupcakes!

5. Cook for 60-70 minutes on 170ºC.

It should make about a dozen cupcakes.

Once they’re cooked and cooled ice with your favourite icing (I love 1 1/2 packets of cream cheese + 4 tbs icing sugar + vanilla), and then cut your last cherry ripe up to decorate the top of the cupcake.