September 2, 2022 • 38 mins
This now nearly ubiquitous beverage developed out of a very specific blend of cultural influences. Anney and Lauren dip into the history of masala chai.
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, and welcome to Saber production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we
have an episode for you about Massali Chai. M hm
m hmmm. I am excited and nervous about this one. Yeah,
this one is very very very large and unwieldy, UM,
(00:30):
because it touches on on so many it's one of
those products, or not products. It's not a dish, it's
it's one of those things. It's one of those things
that we humans have created and consumed. UM. That really
represents a bringing together of a whole bunch of different
cultural histories. Um. And also it came together in a
(00:54):
place that I am not from, neither of us are from,
and uh did not personally grow up with. And so
you know, like we're we did a whole lot of
reading and we hope that we don't mess it up. Yes,
as always, but you know, listeners, we love hearing your
feedback and input, especially if you're from these areas, because
(01:15):
it just gives so much context understanding, and we love
that we can read it in a listener mail segment
and we would love it so. Yes, I always put
that out there was there any particular reason this was
on your mind. I think I think it's been on
our list for a very long time, and I got
(01:35):
really confident a couple of weeks ago, and I was like,
I was like, you know, let's do some of these
difficult ones that have been on our list for a
really long time. Like we're up to it, Like we
can do it, not thinking about the fact that the
next couple of weeks, these past couple of weeks, we're
going to be bonkers. Um do they were and continue
to be? Yeah, So I I have no one to
(01:58):
blame but myself. However, I'm glad that we're doing it
because I A I love Massala chi Um, and B
it has been so interesting trying to to to tease
out the important details in these readings. Yes, Um, I
also love Massalichai. But as I've mentioned in previous episodes,
(02:24):
I'm not allergic to tea, but I have some intolerance
or something where essentially, to me, it feels like when
I drink tea that I am a desiccated sponge who
has been left out on the beach and I'm out
of reach of water and I'm just about to crumble. Basically,
I get like really dry mouth and nauseous. I guess yeah,
(02:48):
I and right, and you do kind of the same
thing with mint, right, I do. So it sounds like
some kind of like tannin sensitivity or something. I believe
that's what the Internet tells me. I also, as I've
mentioned previously, think that I just oversteep tea and I
think I could have some tease if I didn't oversteep them. Yeah,
(03:10):
it's really only like three minutes, especially for a lot
of black teas, so which is my favorite. I love
black tea, and also you enjoy the flavor. You just
don't Yes, oh I love Um, I can't, but it's
like it feels like I can't swallow. And eventually my
(03:30):
friends kind of had an intervention. You've got to stop
doing this for yourself. Also, you've got to get rid
of mint. And in fact, recently, i'm my birthday, somebody
bought me a cocktail and it came with mint, and
she was like absolutely not fine, no, no, no, no, no,
I'm not having this. Um, but I did. I loved
(03:55):
and still love just feel like I can't drink massala chai.
And when I was in college ledge I had a
friend who knew I loved it, and we were in
a college organization and you know, pulling those all nighters
or whatever. She would always get me one. And because
it was like her tree and she was so excited
about it, I felt like I couldn't tell her, you know,
(04:16):
I don't know why. Yeah, And it was like such
a difficult conversation for me to eventually face hers, one
of those like social interactions that shouldn't have been that stressful.
It's like I've got to build myself up and tell
her this whole time, I've really appreciated it, I loved it,
but I can't do it anymore. I got to stop
(04:41):
m and she did, and she didn't care because she
was a human person who was my friends. So she
was like, okay, yeah, of course she was like, oh
my bad, I cool. Huh yeah. Um. So you can
see our episode on I would say bober te um
(05:03):
horge chata a little bit, okay, yeah, And then our
episode on tea time that we did with Dr Julius Skinner,
who has a book coming out called Our Fermented Lives. Yeah, yes, oh,
always always delightful to catch up with with Julia and
um oh yeah, and our fermented lives. Sounds like it's
(05:23):
going to be incredible, super looking forward to that. Um,
we have to have our back on the show at
some point, okay um. Also for a bit more on
related families of spice blends. Um, perhaps our episode on
Tika Masala or our interview with mir Jan or Ronnie
(05:43):
Yes from our Asheville series. Yeah, m hmmm, who is
going to come back up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah he is. Uh.
He is a chef in the proprietor of restaurants like
Chaipani and Boda Walla. Yes, m m mmmm, Well, I
guess the spring says to question, massalichi what is it? Well, uh,
(06:10):
massali schi is a tea brood with a blend of
warming spices, often served hot and with milk and sweetener added.
The tea is usually a strong black variety. The spices
can include cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger uh and
other stuff. The milk is usually cow milk, the sweetener
(06:32):
usually white granulated sugar. But that being said, massalii just
means tea with a spice blend added. Um. And it's
one of those things where like the exact recipe varies
from region to neighborhood to household to personal preference. UM.
(06:53):
And that is in places where this is a traditional drink. UM.
The meaning has expanded pretty wildly around the world. But
that base of spiced tea is so flavorful and creamy
and warming and comforting but like also invigorating. Um. It's
the same feeling you get from like a really good
(07:14):
conversation where maybe the perspectives or personal reference points of
everyone going in are different, but it just flows and
leaves see you feeling recharged. Yeah, okay, Laura, that's a
great description. It's like a meshing of things. Yeah, comforting things. Yeah,
(07:38):
I mean it literally is that too? Getting into that
in the history section, but okay, yes, so um, so
let's break all of this down a little bit. Your tea, UM,
it can be loose leaf or powdered or bagged um.
A sum, which is a strong black variety is common. Um.
But you can also find green teas being used for
massala chi and Kashmir for example, or you know, like
(08:01):
pre bagged blends with Oolong and American tea shops or whatever. Uh.
Your spices can be whole or ground, toasted or not toasted. Uh.
The ginger can be fresh, grated or dry ground. Although
a note here, UM, if you're going to create fresh
ginger into your massala chie, do not add it to
cold milk. Um. That's because fresh ginger contains curdling enzymes
(08:25):
or enzymes that will curdle. I don't think that's there,
like their specific purpose in nature, But they do that, UMU,
and they d nature or stop working. M above like
seventy degrees celsius and or a hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit.
So either add fresh ginger to the steeping water with
time to come to temperature before you add your milk,
(08:47):
or after you've added the milk and let it come
to temperature, or you drug ground ginger. I can't tell
you what to do. True. In addition to the sort
of base level stuff that I mentioned at the top
of this section, you know cardamom and cloves and cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg,
black pepper, um. You might have mint, tulsi, phennel, star
(09:08):
a nie, white peppercorn, rose petals, lemon, grass or saffron
in there or other things. Um. And because you are
using a bunch of strongly flavored elements, chi massala blends
um that missologist means a spice blend. Chi again means
tea um chi Massala. Blends can be a little tricky
(09:30):
to balance correctly um or to balance to taste, and
are therefore sometimes family secrets. Ah, you know, we love that.
Uh your milk. Most modern recipes that I've read call
for whole dairy milk cow milk, because that's become the
(09:52):
most available in most places. But use whatever you like
and use it in whatever proportion you like. To the water,
maybe you don't use any water. I don't know, I know, right. Uh.
Sweetener choice is similar Again, it's usually white sugar, but
people use whatever type in whatever proportion. Preferences range from
(10:13):
like a super creamy and sweet like lots of milk,
lots of sugar like almost a liquid dessert situation, to
something um like lighter, focusing more on the tea and
or the spices. Generally, in order to make masalachi, the
recommendation is to simmer your tea and spices in water
on the stove, um, and then add the milk and
(10:35):
sweetener and bring everything to temperature and serve it hot
like no matter what the weather is like outside. Um.
But again, recipes and preferences and practices do vary. It
might be made by the pot at home, or ladled
out of a larger vat at shops or stands, or
served by the cup in restaurants. But yes, you can
(10:57):
buy prepackaged tea bags that contain the spices. Uh. You
can find uh pre made liquid mixtures like concentrates that
you either reconstitute with water or milk. Maybe you just
drink it straight. I don't know your life. Um. It
can be served iced or like blended with ice, or
with a shot of espresso in it, or like doused
(11:19):
in vanilla syrup. Uh, however you drink it, though, it
sounds real silly when you call it chi tea because
chi means tea. Mm hmm. Try try not to do that. Yeah,
let that sink in for a moment. Yes, chi means tea.
You're if you say chi te you're saying t t Yeah.
(11:43):
Which yeah, different thing. Well what about the nutrition? Oh,
it depends so much on how you make it? Um,
you know as always, Um, sugar is a treat. Treats
are nice. Um. You know you can you can have
a good uh, a good caloric punch, um fat and
(12:04):
a little bit of protein from the dairy that you
put in there. That's that's nice. It is t T
has been investigated for for many different potential effects. We're
not really going into that today, no, mm hmm not.
I do have some numbers for you, okay. Um. Tracking
(12:26):
down like the global consumption of massalichi specifically is a
little bit difficult, um because a in many places it
is such a homemade thing, like people are assembling the
ingredients and making it by the pot in their own house.
Um so so on that level, I can't really tell
you how much massalachi is consumed around the world. Um.
(12:50):
But the numbers that I have for you are from
a heck and Guinness record. Okay, the Guinness record were
the largest cup of massalaschi or karak shai karachi um
as it's called in Dubai where this cup was made. Um.
(13:10):
The record is from and okay, it was five thousand
liters of tea. No, that's like one thousand, three hundred
and twenty gallons um Uh. It was prepared by a
(13:30):
hundred and thirty eight chefs working at seventy stations starting
at nine in the morning one day, producing batches that
were added to this cup that was three point seven
meters tall, that's twelve feet tall. Um. The cup had
(13:54):
a heating coil inside to keep the mixed warm. Um.
And if you want to know how much chai and
how much massalah went into this um all right, it
was a hundred and fifty five kilos of tea powder,
three hundred kilos of milk powder, three hundred and eighty
kilos of sugar, hundred and fifty five kilos of ginger,
(14:16):
forty seven kilos each of cinnamon sticks and carnamon powder,
and seven point five kilos of cloves. I just can't
fathom it more. I can't fathom. It's a lot. It's
uh that I can agree with you. It's a lot
(14:42):
that is that is like like like a hot tub
to swimming pool size massala chi. What a world out there?
You know? My goodness? Well, um, let me shake this
as mentioned our friend or I like I'll call him friend. Yeah.
(15:07):
Chef Marijuan Rani, the founder and executive chef at Chipani
Restaurant Group, who also offers multiple chai seasonings under the
Spicewalla brand. He said for Indians, drinking chai is rarely
a solitary event. It's an act something you do with others,
a moment enhancer with friends, or shared experience with strangers.
It's a catchphrase to denote classic Indian hospitality. It's slang
(15:32):
for a quick snack and also means a small briber tip,
just enough to cover the cost of a snack and
a cup of chi. I could think of no more
perfect name than this. Oh huh, that's such a great quote.
Oh that's lovely. Heck, I miss that guy. What a
good guy. What a good guy. And the Spicewalla you
can yeah, you can find these chai mixes on their
(15:55):
recommend Oh. Absolutely, Yeah. Spicewalla is a really good resource,
not a sponsor, just humans who we like, um, doing
good stuff. Yeah. They They've got a whole bunch of
different massala uh spice blends and for all kinds of
different purposes into different tastes and so yeah, it's it's
super fun. You can order stuff online from them. Check
(16:16):
them out. Spice Walla. Yeah, spice Walla. Well, we've got
quite a bit of history to go through. Oh my heck,
we do um and we are going to get into
that as soon as we get back from a quick
break forward from our sponsors and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
(16:40):
thank you, so yeah. Legends abound about the origins of
massala chi. Yes. One popular one is that it was
invented five thousand years ago by a king and what
is now India. Historically it has been used medicinally. Um.
And this may have been how it starts. Did herbs
(17:00):
and spices with believed healing properties like cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, ginger,
and cloves, seeped in water and served either hot or cold.
Legend has it that the king would drink this tea
to stay alert on long days in court, and that
it may have been offered to guess. But that word
(17:21):
t is kind of in scare quotes right here, right
because in these early days, the predecessors to missoloch I
didn't contain any caffeine because they didn't have any tea leaves. Yeah, um,
region to region. Um. And remember that India is a
very large multicultural place. Um. Uh. What went into these
(17:41):
semi medicinal drinks varied, of course, um. You know. The
base might be just herbs or maybe fermented millet or
rice or lentils. The spices differed and where water, buffalo
or cow milk was available. It might be added, I
think the terms for these brewis are in the north
kada um and in the south um kasha yam or kashia. Yeah, yes, yeah, um.
(18:10):
And that is not to say that there was not
tea growing in India then, um, right, because it grew
in the wild in some parts of India, and as
early as the twelfth century, indigenous people's drink tea made
from wild leaves for the health benefits and the energy um.
Frequently the dry and toasted tea leaves would be packed
into a bamboo cane and then smoked. UM. Later, a
(18:34):
few records indicate that people drink tea in cities that
did a lot of trade with Europe, the Middle East
and China. Makes sense, um. An English traveler to India
wrote in nine that people drink it quote with some
hot spice, with sugar candy, or by the more curious,
with some conserved lemons. It sounds delightful. I know that
(18:56):
sounds so good. I like I like a I like
a concern lemon, I like lemon and tea. Okay, Well, anyway,
you're coming out strong. I know people have strong preferences
about tea and lemon and anything to do with tea.
I like it. I like it by the ways. I
like it with tea. I like I like it with tea.
I like my tea with tea. Good sentence, Lauren, Um,
(19:17):
I like with lemon, I like it with cream. I
I am picky, but not about that. I love. I
like my tea with tea, is what I'm going to
say from now on. I don't know. I like my
tea with tea, but not overly steeped. Okay. So black
tea didn't find its way into Masoli Chai until British
(19:39):
colonizers arrived to India sometime in the eighteen thirties. At
the time, the British already had a love of tea,
which we did talk about in Julia's episode she did
about tea time UM. Britain consumed a whopping forty million
pounds per year of tea, but China pretty much held
a monopoly on its production at this time UM and
(20:00):
when the Chinese raised prices on t the British decided
they needed to control their own supply and established the
first tea plantation in India in eighteen thirty two. This
was the first of many with Europeans, Indians, and indigenous
peoples from this region competing to control the tea industry
in India. The explosion in this industry was so great
(20:22):
that it was a struggle to find workers and outsiders,
especially hired migrant workers, many of whom were trapped by
disease or debt, while the indigenous folks revolted. The mortality
rate on these plantations neared fifty percent. Yeah. Part of
what was fueling the creation and conditions of these plantations
(20:44):
was the fact that the British Empire outlawed slavery in
the eighteen thirties, which sounds great, but it led to
UH these these alternate places and ways to exploit workers. UM.
It also led to the talking about about migrant workers.
(21:05):
It led to the migration of a lot of Indian
workers to other places in the world. That's like sort
of different episodes, mostly UM because one of the effects
that might have had was to have UM strengthened, like
the multicultural inclusion of specific spices into massala um for example,
(21:27):
in Chaia Massala cinnamon um from Sri Lanka, which is
one of those places that saw a lot of Indian migration. Yes,
and we have an episode on cinnamon Yeah, where we
talked about that a little bit, so we can check
that out. Um. The British stoked tea production and consumption
in the nineteen hundreds in India in part because of
(21:47):
the British established Indian Tea Association. Thanks to these efforts,
t did grow in popularity in India and um it
was one of their top exports at the time. How For,
tea was still fairly expensive there. Um it was linked
with acceptance of the British and wasn't widely drank across India. UM.
(22:09):
People who did drink it were in the Indian upper
class UH, serving it in these like special specialty tea
wears with milk and sugar. To counter that, the Association UH,
the Indian Tea Association Forever now known as the Association UH,
launched marketing campaigns across the country that painted these beautiful
(22:30):
pictures of tea drinking, coupled with tips on how to brew.
The Association pressured places like textile mills and factories to
introduce a tea time where discounted tea was made available
for sale. UM. Side note, we are experiencing a little
bit of thunderstorm activity here in Atlanta during this recording session. UM.
(22:53):
So if you heard a giant peel of thunder when
Annie started talking about the Indian Tea Association and we
didn't add that, I'm not going to say it's inappropriate.
It felt right. It felt right, UM, And that was
just nature chiming in um at any rate, okay um. Yes,
so all of this was going on and and then UM,
(23:17):
sometime around or perhaps just after World War One, UM,
chai Wala's, the people who were selling um this tea
from from kind of like like like that sort of
situations UM, around places like like mills and factories, chai
Wala's began adding massala to their teas. Yes. Um. And
(23:42):
this was in part inspired by a drink of milk
flavored with massal spices, popular as an after breakfast beverage
in two states of India where UM quality spices and
quality milks were available. Yeah, and also those right those
other uh quasi medicinal beverages that we're talking about earlier. Um.
It was also inspired by the fact that, like the
(24:07):
tea that the Indian Tea Association was pushing wasn't all
that high quality, especially early on in the campaign. It
took it took um plantations there a minute to UM
to kind of catch up to Chinese technology for for
processing tea in a way that the British found acceptable. Um.
And of course what they were giving out to the
(24:28):
general Indian population was not going to be as high
quality as what they were saving for themselves. UM. So
it was a complicated process to arrive at massolid shi
as we know it um. Like at first, the association
also didn't really approve of the adding of spices because
they were afraid that it would prompt people to use
(24:50):
less tea leaves in their blends. And you know, they
were trying to push those tea leaves. Um. They were
also trying to push British culture and this was kind
of anti British um. So yeah, it was really really
a push and pull among these different cultural and uh
financial influences in the area. Yeah. UM. Also a note
(25:16):
on milk here. Um. Although there were like a lot
of water buffalo and cattle around various parts of India,
always um and milk and other dairy products were consumed
locally where available. There wasn't really like a formalized dairy
industry until the nineteen hundreds UM, starting with push from
(25:37):
British colonists during World War One and leading through what
is legitimately named Operation Flood in the nineteen seventies UM,
which transformed India into the largest dairy producer in the world. UM.
This is also all very complicated, UM, and it's right
important to remember that India is like big UM and multicultural.
(26:00):
But suffice it to say that during the nineteen hundreds,
availability of milk four products like massalchi boomed, right. But
then UM, there was a great depression in the nineteen
thirties that coincided happened to coincide with this like huge
yield among tea plantations in India. UH. Sales of tea
(26:22):
in Britain and the US and Europe at large dropped precipitously.
So to increase tea consumption, the Tea Board launched a
massive marketing campaign to get more people across all demographics
to drink tea in India. UM salesman traveled across the
country promoting tea, held public demonstrations. UH. They advertised it
(26:45):
as healthy and energizing, this alternative to alcohol that people
could drink yeah yeah. Uh. Meanwhile, at the same time
that the depression hit um, technological innovation in tea production
was developed in assam Um. It's called cut tear curl um.
This is a mechanized process that creates a really fine
(27:08):
grind of tea leaves um that can be used to
brew a strong tea quickly. Mm hmmm uh and then uh.
India's relationship with tea grew increasingly complicated during the thirties
and forties as the calls for independence grew louder. Hotma
Gandhi urged citizens of India to boycott British products, even
(27:30):
specifically calling out tea plantations and the indentured labor and
minimal wages that they relied on. Um. Many tea workers
went on strike or abandoned the industry altogether. Tea advertisers
fought back in attempts to co opt the independence movement,
swapping out imagery around colonialism with messaging around nationalism, painting
(27:51):
tea as a beverage of Indian national identity and unity.
In fact, when India declared independence from Britain in n
several tea marketers released a statement claiming that tea was
a unifying drink for India and tea plantations largely sold
to Indian owners. They were really leaning into this. Oh
(28:13):
yeah yeah. Um. Also yeah, the the the history of
indentured labor on tea plantations um uh in Indian, perhaps
especially in a psalm, has had effects that ripple through
to labor practices today. Um. In the past few years,
there have been strikes. It's it's a whole thing. Uh.
(28:36):
That's a little bit outside the scope of this episode, right. Um.
In the nineteen sixties, massolo chi became even more affordable
with the invention of a mechanized tea production system. Yeah.
This was an industrialized version of the CTC production process,
allowing it to scale up just a whole bunch. And
(28:56):
as missolo Chi became more accessible in India, people experimented
with all sorts of recipes and methods, mixing up the
type of milk use, the type of tea, the spices,
the sweeteners. All over the country, tea shop owners called
chai wallas yes open to businesses in places like train
stations and began brewing the drink in large amounts, selling
(29:17):
it in these clay pots. And it didn't take long
for these establishments to solidify their importance as social meeting places,
and then yeah, misologized popularity grew and spread the world over.
This this partially aligns with patterns of immigration out of
India and Pakistan and what's now Bangladesh. Um that increased
(29:38):
in a few waves across the nineteen hundreds, starting with
independence and separation in the late nineteen forties, right um
increasing again in the late nineteen sixties with a bunch
of political changes that we're going on and continuing through
to today. It also dovetails with the American interest in
certain aspects of South Asia culture, especially in like the
(30:02):
sixties and seventies with the development of um Ashram and
yoga practices and stuff like that. Here in the States
mm hmm uh. The first American company selling prepared massala
chai was out of Santa Cruz, California in eight and
it was called the Massala Chai Company mm hmmm. And
(30:23):
then later in the US Massala and spiced was dropped
from the name, with many vendors just calling it chai
or chi t uh huh uh. Further, Americanized chis might
be made with syrups or non dairy milks, or often
a pre sweetened concentrate that is then added to steamed milk. Yeah.
(30:45):
One big influencer there is the brand Oregon Chai UM,
which makes yeah, concentrates and powdered mixes. UM. They opened
shop in and their line includes stuff like vanilla chai
and salted caramel chai and perhaps most confusingly, spiced chi uh.
(31:06):
But yeah, these these are all these are all blends
that they offer that are called chi te lattes. Okay,
all right. And then also looking at you Starbucks, which
did really popularize chai here in the U s. And
they you can find plenty of articles, but definitely the
(31:29):
like concentrated syrup. Oh yeah, a very very big thing here. Yeah.
But right, if you weren't around for all of this,
or if or if you weren't paying attention, which is fair,
um uh, it was, it was a whole thing. It
was this really wild boom. Like this article that I
found from in South Florida's Sun Sentinel newspaper said, quote,
(31:53):
shai is suddenly the hottest sip in America. UM. At
that time, the owner of Massala Chai Company told the
Sun Sentinel, up, the market for chai has gone berserk.
We had a market share ten years ago and now
we have ten to fifteen percent, but our business is
four times as big. Wow yeah, massive growth, massive growth. Right. Um.
(32:20):
Then I couldn't find any data about it, but I
would say anecdotally that two thousand eight UM Film Awards
studded film Slum Dog Millionaire, which is a British made
movie about this poor chai wala dude working in an
Indian call center. UM, winning the Indian equivalent of Who
(32:42):
Wants to Be a Millionaire? UM, got very popular. Um.
It brought like a bit more global attention to massala
chai and shi culture. Mum and yeah, the for better
or worse. I guess that shai latte scare quotes trend
um of like ready to drink beverages containing spiced tea,
(33:06):
sugar and some kind of creamy element has really gone global. Um.
Around twenty fifteen, shy Latte's went pretty big in Europe,
I guess specifically in Germany. I listeners right in if
you have personal experience with those, yes, yes, um, any
and all of this, yeah, yeah, because I would love
(33:29):
to know. I would just love to know what's going
on in the rest of the world. Yeah, always, always,
always right. It's um. It's always so I mean and
I and I love looking into um dishes and products
and drinks like this that that right are from this
very specific blending of cultures in this very specific time
(33:50):
and place, um, that have gone so big and gotten
so different. And you know that like have been like
a normal daily part of people's lives now for a
century or so, but that are just being extrapolated upon
in infinite ways outside of the right. Um, and this
(34:10):
is weird culture. It's weird. Humans are weird. What's up
with that? What's up with that? Is a different podcast,
not for us today, but you know, I think that's
what we have to say about Missolichi now. It is UM.
We do have some listener mail for you though, and
(34:30):
we are going to get into that as soon as
we get back from another quick break for a word
from our sponsors. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
thank you, and we're back with I always felt like
(34:54):
massolitch I was like warm, like sitting around a warm
fire with good friends. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's it's
like a it's like a hug that that that doesn't
like calm me down. It kind of like perks you
up exactly exactly it m M, well, I hope that
came through musically. Yeah, that yes, that's what I was
(35:19):
trying to capture. Heck, yeah, neither of us are musicians.
I don't know if you could tell. I played some instruments,
but yeah, chorus wise, no, no, definitely, Tyler wrote. So
I listened to the baked beans episode. When I listened
to it, I just had to tell you about my
(35:40):
beans experience. Oh no, my mom bought some bushes, maple
and cured bacon beans. It was a roough time. My
mom and I were tooting like crazy, more so than
with regular baked beans. I even boasted on Facebook as
a warning to my friends about these beans. They were good,
(36:01):
but the tooting was not fun. Oh heck, I love
your annunciation there, Annie, that was really good. Tooting is
such a fun word. It's comical immediately, Yeah, it's it's
very evocative goodness. Uh yeah, you never know what's some
(36:23):
with some packaged products. You know, there's just I like,
you know, you've got to make notes of these things
you do, you do for future reference in other people. Absolutely, um,
I mean that dog in the marketing is real cute.
But you know, but behind the cuteness of chaos, so much,
(36:47):
so much much tooting goodness. M Victoria wrote, here are
some pictures of sure bit bowls I got from my
mom when she downsized her dinnerware collection. I'm currently enjoying
snow cones in them and have made wild blueberry syrup,
pomegranate syrup, lemon syrup, and mango syrup to which I
can have by themselves or mix up the flavors. The
(37:09):
photo has pomegranate and mango. It looks beautiful. Ah Mm hmm.
That's that's delightful. I love you got all these syrups
mix and match and also sherbet bowls, dedicated sherbet bowls. Yeah,
and I love I love like a solid um uh
(37:31):
vintage table where situation UM agreed. Yeah yeah, lovely all around,
lovely all around. Which thanks to both of these listeners
for writing in um. If you would like to write
to us that you can. Our email is Hello at
(37:51):
sabor pod dot com. We are also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saber pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor It is production of I Heart Radio for more
podcasts from my Heart Radio. You can visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan
Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(38:13):
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Saber production of I Heart Radio.
I'm Annie Reese and I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we
have an episode for you about Massali Chai. M hm
m hmmm. I am excited and nervous about this one. Yeah,
this one is very very very large and unwieldy, UM,
(00:30):
because it touches on on so many it's one of
those products, or not products. It's not a dish, it's
it's one of those things. It's one of those things
that we humans have created and consumed. UM. That really
represents a bringing together of a whole bunch of different
cultural histories. Um. And also it came together in a
(00:54):
place that I am not from, neither of us are from,
and uh did not personally grow up with. And so
you know, like we're we did a whole lot of
reading and we hope that we don't mess it up. Yes,
as always, but you know, listeners, we love hearing your
feedback and input, especially if you're from these areas, because
(01:15):
it just gives so much context understanding, and we love
that we can read it in a listener mail segment
and we would love it so. Yes, I always put
that out there was there any particular reason this was
on your mind. I think I think it's been on
our list for a very long time, and I got
(01:35):
really confident a couple of weeks ago, and I was like,
I was like, you know, let's do some of these
difficult ones that have been on our list for a
really long time. Like we're up to it, Like we
can do it, not thinking about the fact that the
next couple of weeks, these past couple of weeks, we're
going to be bonkers. Um do they were and continue
to be? Yeah, So I I have no one to
(01:58):
blame but myself. However, I'm glad that we're doing it
because I A I love Massala chi Um, and B
it has been so interesting trying to to to tease
out the important details in these readings. Yes, Um, I
also love Massalichai. But as I've mentioned in previous episodes,
(02:24):
I'm not allergic to tea, but I have some intolerance
or something where essentially, to me, it feels like when
I drink tea that I am a desiccated sponge who
has been left out on the beach and I'm out
of reach of water and I'm just about to crumble. Basically,
I get like really dry mouth and nauseous. I guess yeah,
(02:48):
I and right, and you do kind of the same
thing with mint, right, I do. So it sounds like
some kind of like tannin sensitivity or something. I believe
that's what the Internet tells me. I also, as I've
mentioned previously, think that I just oversteep tea and I
think I could have some tease if I didn't oversteep them. Yeah,
(03:10):
it's really only like three minutes, especially for a lot
of black teas, so which is my favorite. I love
black tea, and also you enjoy the flavor. You just
don't Yes, oh I love Um, I can't, but it's
like it feels like I can't swallow. And eventually my
(03:30):
friends kind of had an intervention. You've got to stop
doing this for yourself. Also, you've got to get rid
of mint. And in fact, recently, i'm my birthday, somebody
bought me a cocktail and it came with mint, and
she was like absolutely not fine, no, no, no, no, no,
I'm not having this. Um, but I did. I loved
(03:55):
and still love just feel like I can't drink massala chai.
And when I was in college ledge I had a
friend who knew I loved it, and we were in
a college organization and you know, pulling those all nighters
or whatever. She would always get me one. And because
it was like her tree and she was so excited
about it, I felt like I couldn't tell her, you know,
(04:16):
I don't know why. Yeah, And it was like such
a difficult conversation for me to eventually face hers, one
of those like social interactions that shouldn't have been that stressful.
It's like I've got to build myself up and tell
her this whole time, I've really appreciated it, I loved it,
but I can't do it anymore. I got to stop
(04:41):
m and she did, and she didn't care because she
was a human person who was my friends. So she
was like, okay, yeah, of course she was like, oh
my bad, I cool. Huh yeah. Um. So you can
see our episode on I would say bober te um
(05:03):
horge chata a little bit, okay, yeah, And then our
episode on tea time that we did with Dr Julius Skinner,
who has a book coming out called Our Fermented Lives. Yeah, yes, oh,
always always delightful to catch up with with Julia and
um oh yeah, and our fermented lives. Sounds like it's
(05:23):
going to be incredible, super looking forward to that. Um,
we have to have our back on the show at
some point, okay um. Also for a bit more on
related families of spice blends. Um, perhaps our episode on
Tika Masala or our interview with mir Jan or Ronnie
(05:43):
Yes from our Asheville series. Yeah, m hmmm, who is
going to come back up? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah he is. Uh.
He is a chef in the proprietor of restaurants like
Chaipani and Boda Walla. Yes, m m mmmm, Well, I
guess the spring says to question, massalichi what is it? Well, uh,
(06:10):
massali schi is a tea brood with a blend of
warming spices, often served hot and with milk and sweetener added.
The tea is usually a strong black variety. The spices
can include cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg, and ginger uh and
other stuff. The milk is usually cow milk, the sweetener
(06:32):
usually white granulated sugar. But that being said, massalii just
means tea with a spice blend added. Um. And it's
one of those things where like the exact recipe varies
from region to neighborhood to household to personal preference. UM.
(06:53):
And that is in places where this is a traditional drink. UM.
The meaning has expanded pretty wildly around the world. But
that base of spiced tea is so flavorful and creamy
and warming and comforting but like also invigorating. Um. It's
the same feeling you get from like a really good
(07:14):
conversation where maybe the perspectives or personal reference points of
everyone going in are different, but it just flows and
leaves see you feeling recharged. Yeah, okay, Laura, that's a
great description. It's like a meshing of things. Yeah, comforting things. Yeah,
(07:38):
I mean it literally is that too? Getting into that
in the history section, but okay, yes, so um, so
let's break all of this down a little bit. Your tea, UM,
it can be loose leaf or powdered or bagged um.
A sum, which is a strong black variety is common. Um.
But you can also find green teas being used for
massala chi and Kashmir for example, or you know, like
(08:01):
pre bagged blends with Oolong and American tea shops or whatever. Uh.
Your spices can be whole or ground, toasted or not toasted. Uh.
The ginger can be fresh, grated or dry ground. Although
a note here, UM, if you're going to create fresh
ginger into your massala chie, do not add it to
cold milk. Um. That's because fresh ginger contains curdling enzymes
(08:25):
or enzymes that will curdle. I don't think that's there,
like their specific purpose in nature, But they do that, UMU,
and they d nature or stop working. M above like
seventy degrees celsius and or a hundred and sixty degrees fahrenheit.
So either add fresh ginger to the steeping water with
time to come to temperature before you add your milk,
(08:47):
or after you've added the milk and let it come
to temperature, or you drug ground ginger. I can't tell
you what to do. True. In addition to the sort
of base level stuff that I mentioned at the top
of this section, you know cardamom and cloves and cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg,
black pepper, um. You might have mint, tulsi, phennel, star
(09:08):
a nie, white peppercorn, rose petals, lemon, grass or saffron
in there or other things. Um. And because you are
using a bunch of strongly flavored elements, chi massala blends
um that missologist means a spice blend. Chi again means
tea um chi Massala. Blends can be a little tricky
(09:30):
to balance correctly um or to balance to taste, and
are therefore sometimes family secrets. Ah, you know, we love that.
Uh your milk. Most modern recipes that I've read call
for whole dairy milk cow milk, because that's become the
(09:52):
most available in most places. But use whatever you like
and use it in whatever proportion you like. To the water,
maybe you don't use any water. I don't know, I know, right. Uh.
Sweetener choice is similar Again, it's usually white sugar, but
people use whatever type in whatever proportion. Preferences range from
(10:13):
like a super creamy and sweet like lots of milk,
lots of sugar like almost a liquid dessert situation, to
something um like lighter, focusing more on the tea and
or the spices. Generally, in order to make masalachi, the
recommendation is to simmer your tea and spices in water
on the stove, um, and then add the milk and
(10:35):
sweetener and bring everything to temperature and serve it hot
like no matter what the weather is like outside. Um.
But again, recipes and preferences and practices do vary. It
might be made by the pot at home, or ladled
out of a larger vat at shops or stands, or
served by the cup in restaurants. But yes, you can
(10:57):
buy prepackaged tea bags that contain the spices. Uh. You
can find uh pre made liquid mixtures like concentrates that
you either reconstitute with water or milk. Maybe you just
drink it straight. I don't know your life. Um. It
can be served iced or like blended with ice, or
with a shot of espresso in it, or like doused
(11:19):
in vanilla syrup. Uh, however you drink it, though, it
sounds real silly when you call it chi tea because
chi means tea. Mm hmm. Try try not to do that. Yeah,
let that sink in for a moment. Yes, chi means tea.
You're if you say chi te you're saying t t Yeah.
(11:43):
Which yeah, different thing. Well what about the nutrition? Oh,
it depends so much on how you make it? Um,
you know as always, Um, sugar is a treat. Treats
are nice. Um. You know you can you can have
a good uh, a good caloric punch, um fat and
(12:04):
a little bit of protein from the dairy that you
put in there. That's that's nice. It is t T
has been investigated for for many different potential effects. We're
not really going into that today, no, mm hmm not.
I do have some numbers for you, okay. Um. Tracking
(12:26):
down like the global consumption of massalichi specifically is a
little bit difficult, um because a in many places it
is such a homemade thing, like people are assembling the
ingredients and making it by the pot in their own house.
Um so so on that level, I can't really tell
you how much massalachi is consumed around the world. Um.
(12:50):
But the numbers that I have for you are from
a heck and Guinness record. Okay, the Guinness record were
the largest cup of massalaschi or karak shai karachi um
as it's called in Dubai where this cup was made. Um.
(13:10):
The record is from and okay, it was five thousand
liters of tea. No, that's like one thousand, three hundred
and twenty gallons um Uh. It was prepared by a
(13:30):
hundred and thirty eight chefs working at seventy stations starting
at nine in the morning one day, producing batches that
were added to this cup that was three point seven
meters tall, that's twelve feet tall. Um. The cup had
(13:54):
a heating coil inside to keep the mixed warm. Um.
And if you want to know how much chai and
how much massalah went into this um all right, it
was a hundred and fifty five kilos of tea powder,
three hundred kilos of milk powder, three hundred and eighty
kilos of sugar, hundred and fifty five kilos of ginger,
(14:16):
forty seven kilos each of cinnamon sticks and carnamon powder,
and seven point five kilos of cloves. I just can't
fathom it more. I can't fathom. It's a lot. It's
uh that I can agree with you. It's a lot
(14:42):
that is that is like like like a hot tub
to swimming pool size massala chi. What a world out there?
You know? My goodness? Well, um, let me shake this
as mentioned our friend or I like I'll call him friend. Yeah.
(15:07):
Chef Marijuan Rani, the founder and executive chef at Chipani
Restaurant Group, who also offers multiple chai seasonings under the
Spicewalla brand. He said for Indians, drinking chai is rarely
a solitary event. It's an act something you do with others,
a moment enhancer with friends, or shared experience with strangers.
It's a catchphrase to denote classic Indian hospitality. It's slang
(15:32):
for a quick snack and also means a small briber tip,
just enough to cover the cost of a snack and
a cup of chi. I could think of no more
perfect name than this. Oh huh, that's such a great quote.
Oh that's lovely. Heck, I miss that guy. What a
good guy. What a good guy. And the Spicewalla you
can yeah, you can find these chai mixes on their
(15:55):
recommend Oh. Absolutely, Yeah. Spicewalla is a really good resource,
not a sponsor, just humans who we like, um, doing
good stuff. Yeah. They They've got a whole bunch of
different massala uh spice blends and for all kinds of
different purposes into different tastes and so yeah, it's it's
super fun. You can order stuff online from them. Check
(16:16):
them out. Spice Walla. Yeah, spice Walla. Well, we've got
quite a bit of history to go through. Oh my heck,
we do um and we are going to get into
that as soon as we get back from a quick
break forward from our sponsors and we're back. Thank you sponsor, Yes,
(16:40):
thank you, so yeah. Legends abound about the origins of
massala chi. Yes. One popular one is that it was
invented five thousand years ago by a king and what
is now India. Historically it has been used medicinally. Um.
And this may have been how it starts. Did herbs
(17:00):
and spices with believed healing properties like cinnamon, cardamom, black pepper, ginger,
and cloves, seeped in water and served either hot or cold.
Legend has it that the king would drink this tea
to stay alert on long days in court, and that
it may have been offered to guess. But that word
(17:21):
t is kind of in scare quotes right here, right
because in these early days, the predecessors to missoloch I
didn't contain any caffeine because they didn't have any tea leaves. Yeah, um,
region to region. Um. And remember that India is a
very large multicultural place. Um. Uh. What went into these
(17:41):
semi medicinal drinks varied, of course, um. You know. The
base might be just herbs or maybe fermented millet or
rice or lentils. The spices differed and where water, buffalo
or cow milk was available. It might be added, I
think the terms for these brewis are in the north
kada um and in the south um kasha yam or kashia. Yeah, yes, yeah, um.
(18:10):
And that is not to say that there was not
tea growing in India then, um, right, because it grew
in the wild in some parts of India, and as
early as the twelfth century, indigenous people's drink tea made
from wild leaves for the health benefits and the energy um.
Frequently the dry and toasted tea leaves would be packed
into a bamboo cane and then smoked. UM. Later, a
(18:34):
few records indicate that people drink tea in cities that
did a lot of trade with Europe, the Middle East
and China. Makes sense, um. An English traveler to India
wrote in nine that people drink it quote with some
hot spice, with sugar candy, or by the more curious,
with some conserved lemons. It sounds delightful. I know that
(18:56):
sounds so good. I like I like a I like
a concern lemon, I like lemon and tea. Okay, Well, anyway,
you're coming out strong. I know people have strong preferences
about tea and lemon and anything to do with tea.
I like it. I like it by the ways. I
like it with tea. I like I like it with tea.
I like my tea with tea. Good sentence, Lauren, Um,
(19:17):
I like with lemon, I like it with cream. I
I am picky, but not about that. I love. I
like my tea with tea, is what I'm going to
say from now on. I don't know. I like my
tea with tea, but not overly steeped. Okay. So black
tea didn't find its way into Masoli Chai until British
(19:39):
colonizers arrived to India sometime in the eighteen thirties. At
the time, the British already had a love of tea,
which we did talk about in Julia's episode she did
about tea time UM. Britain consumed a whopping forty million
pounds per year of tea, but China pretty much held
a monopoly on its production at this time UM and
(20:00):
when the Chinese raised prices on t the British decided
they needed to control their own supply and established the
first tea plantation in India in eighteen thirty two. This
was the first of many with Europeans, Indians, and indigenous
peoples from this region competing to control the tea industry
in India. The explosion in this industry was so great
(20:22):
that it was a struggle to find workers and outsiders,
especially hired migrant workers, many of whom were trapped by
disease or debt, while the indigenous folks revolted. The mortality
rate on these plantations neared fifty percent. Yeah. Part of
what was fueling the creation and conditions of these plantations
(20:44):
was the fact that the British Empire outlawed slavery in
the eighteen thirties, which sounds great, but it led to
UH these these alternate places and ways to exploit workers. UM.
It also led to the talking about about migrant workers.
(21:05):
It led to the migration of a lot of Indian
workers to other places in the world. That's like sort
of different episodes, mostly UM because one of the effects
that might have had was to have UM strengthened, like
the multicultural inclusion of specific spices into massala um for example,
(21:27):
in Chaia Massala cinnamon um from Sri Lanka, which is
one of those places that saw a lot of Indian migration. Yes,
and we have an episode on cinnamon Yeah, where we
talked about that a little bit, so we can check
that out. Um. The British stoked tea production and consumption
in the nineteen hundreds in India in part because of
(21:47):
the British established Indian Tea Association. Thanks to these efforts,
t did grow in popularity in India and um it
was one of their top exports at the time. How For,
tea was still fairly expensive there. Um it was linked
with acceptance of the British and wasn't widely drank across India. UM.
(22:09):
People who did drink it were in the Indian upper
class UH, serving it in these like special specialty tea
wears with milk and sugar. To counter that, the Association UH,
the Indian Tea Association Forever now known as the Association UH,
launched marketing campaigns across the country that painted these beautiful
(22:30):
pictures of tea drinking, coupled with tips on how to brew.
The Association pressured places like textile mills and factories to
introduce a tea time where discounted tea was made available
for sale. UM. Side note, we are experiencing a little
bit of thunderstorm activity here in Atlanta during this recording session. UM.
(22:53):
So if you heard a giant peel of thunder when
Annie started talking about the Indian Tea Association and we
didn't add that, I'm not going to say it's inappropriate.
It felt right. It felt right, UM, And that was
just nature chiming in um at any rate, okay um. Yes,
so all of this was going on and and then UM,
(23:17):
sometime around or perhaps just after World War One, UM,
chai Wala's, the people who were selling um this tea
from from kind of like like like that sort of
situations UM, around places like like mills and factories, chai
Wala's began adding massala to their teas. Yes. Um. And
(23:42):
this was in part inspired by a drink of milk
flavored with massal spices, popular as an after breakfast beverage
in two states of India where UM quality spices and
quality milks were available. Yeah, and also those right those
other uh quasi medicinal beverages that we're talking about earlier. Um.
It was also inspired by the fact that, like the
(24:07):
tea that the Indian Tea Association was pushing wasn't all
that high quality, especially early on in the campaign. It
took it took um plantations there a minute to UM
to kind of catch up to Chinese technology for for
processing tea in a way that the British found acceptable. Um.
And of course what they were giving out to the
(24:28):
general Indian population was not going to be as high
quality as what they were saving for themselves. UM. So
it was a complicated process to arrive at massolid shi
as we know it um. Like at first, the association
also didn't really approve of the adding of spices because
they were afraid that it would prompt people to use
(24:50):
less tea leaves in their blends. And you know, they
were trying to push those tea leaves. Um. They were
also trying to push British culture and this was kind
of anti British um. So yeah, it was really really
a push and pull among these different cultural and uh
financial influences in the area. Yeah. UM. Also a note
(25:16):
on milk here. Um. Although there were like a lot
of water buffalo and cattle around various parts of India,
always um and milk and other dairy products were consumed
locally where available. There wasn't really like a formalized dairy
industry until the nineteen hundreds UM, starting with push from
(25:37):
British colonists during World War One and leading through what
is legitimately named Operation Flood in the nineteen seventies UM,
which transformed India into the largest dairy producer in the world. UM.
This is also all very complicated, UM, and it's right
important to remember that India is like big UM and multicultural.
(26:00):
But suffice it to say that during the nineteen hundreds,
availability of milk four products like massalchi boomed, right. But
then UM, there was a great depression in the nineteen
thirties that coincided happened to coincide with this like huge
yield among tea plantations in India. UH. Sales of tea
(26:22):
in Britain and the US and Europe at large dropped precipitously.
So to increase tea consumption, the Tea Board launched a
massive marketing campaign to get more people across all demographics
to drink tea in India. UM salesman traveled across the
country promoting tea, held public demonstrations. UH. They advertised it
(26:45):
as healthy and energizing, this alternative to alcohol that people
could drink yeah yeah. Uh. Meanwhile, at the same time
that the depression hit um, technological innovation in tea production
was developed in assam Um. It's called cut tear curl um.
This is a mechanized process that creates a really fine
(27:08):
grind of tea leaves um that can be used to
brew a strong tea quickly. Mm hmmm uh and then uh.
India's relationship with tea grew increasingly complicated during the thirties
and forties as the calls for independence grew louder. Hotma
Gandhi urged citizens of India to boycott British products, even
(27:30):
specifically calling out tea plantations and the indentured labor and
minimal wages that they relied on. Um. Many tea workers
went on strike or abandoned the industry altogether. Tea advertisers
fought back in attempts to co opt the independence movement,
swapping out imagery around colonialism with messaging around nationalism, painting
(27:51):
tea as a beverage of Indian national identity and unity.
In fact, when India declared independence from Britain in n
several tea marketers released a statement claiming that tea was
a unifying drink for India and tea plantations largely sold
to Indian owners. They were really leaning into this. Oh
(28:13):
yeah yeah. Um. Also yeah, the the the history of
indentured labor on tea plantations um uh in Indian, perhaps
especially in a psalm, has had effects that ripple through
to labor practices today. Um. In the past few years,
there have been strikes. It's it's a whole thing. Uh.
(28:36):
That's a little bit outside the scope of this episode, right. Um.
In the nineteen sixties, massolo chi became even more affordable
with the invention of a mechanized tea production system. Yeah.
This was an industrialized version of the CTC production process,
allowing it to scale up just a whole bunch. And
(28:56):
as missolo Chi became more accessible in India, people experimented
with all sorts of recipes and methods, mixing up the
type of milk use, the type of tea, the spices,
the sweeteners. All over the country, tea shop owners called
chai wallas yes open to businesses in places like train
stations and began brewing the drink in large amounts, selling
(29:17):
it in these clay pots. And it didn't take long
for these establishments to solidify their importance as social meeting places,
and then yeah, misologized popularity grew and spread the world over.
This this partially aligns with patterns of immigration out of
India and Pakistan and what's now Bangladesh. Um that increased
(29:38):
in a few waves across the nineteen hundreds, starting with
independence and separation in the late nineteen forties, right um
increasing again in the late nineteen sixties with a bunch
of political changes that we're going on and continuing through
to today. It also dovetails with the American interest in
certain aspects of South Asia culture, especially in like the
(30:02):
sixties and seventies with the development of um Ashram and
yoga practices and stuff like that. Here in the States
mm hmm uh. The first American company selling prepared massala
chai was out of Santa Cruz, California in eight and
it was called the Massala Chai Company mm hmmm. And
(30:23):
then later in the US Massala and spiced was dropped
from the name, with many vendors just calling it chai
or chi t uh huh uh. Further, Americanized chis might
be made with syrups or non dairy milks, or often
a pre sweetened concentrate that is then added to steamed milk. Yeah.
(30:45):
One big influencer there is the brand Oregon Chai UM,
which makes yeah, concentrates and powdered mixes. UM. They opened
shop in and their line includes stuff like vanilla chai
and salted caramel chai and perhaps most confusingly, spiced chi uh.
(31:06):
But yeah, these these are all these are all blends
that they offer that are called chi te lattes. Okay,
all right. And then also looking at you Starbucks, which
did really popularize chai here in the U s. And
they you can find plenty of articles, but definitely the
(31:29):
like concentrated syrup. Oh yeah, a very very big thing here. Yeah.
But right, if you weren't around for all of this,
or if or if you weren't paying attention, which is fair,
um uh, it was, it was a whole thing. It
was this really wild boom. Like this article that I
found from in South Florida's Sun Sentinel newspaper said, quote,
(31:53):
shai is suddenly the hottest sip in America. UM. At
that time, the owner of Massala Chai Company told the
Sun Sentinel, up, the market for chai has gone berserk.
We had a market share ten years ago and now
we have ten to fifteen percent, but our business is
four times as big. Wow yeah, massive growth, massive growth. Right. Um.
(32:20):
Then I couldn't find any data about it, but I
would say anecdotally that two thousand eight UM Film Awards
studded film Slum Dog Millionaire, which is a British made
movie about this poor chai wala dude working in an
Indian call center. UM, winning the Indian equivalent of Who
(32:42):
Wants to Be a Millionaire? UM, got very popular. Um.
It brought like a bit more global attention to massala
chai and shi culture. Mum and yeah, the for better
or worse. I guess that shai latte scare quotes trend
um of like ready to drink beverages containing spiced tea,
(33:06):
sugar and some kind of creamy element has really gone global. Um.
Around twenty fifteen, shy Latte's went pretty big in Europe,
I guess specifically in Germany. I listeners right in if
you have personal experience with those, yes, yes, um, any
and all of this, yeah, yeah, because I would love
(33:29):
to know. I would just love to know what's going
on in the rest of the world. Yeah, always, always,
always right. It's um. It's always so I mean and
I and I love looking into um dishes and products
and drinks like this that that right are from this
very specific blending of cultures in this very specific time
(33:50):
and place, um, that have gone so big and gotten
so different. And you know that like have been like
a normal daily part of people's lives now for a
century or so, but that are just being extrapolated upon
in infinite ways outside of the right. Um, and this
(34:10):
is weird culture. It's weird. Humans are weird. What's up
with that? What's up with that? Is a different podcast,
not for us today, but you know, I think that's
what we have to say about Missolichi now. It is UM.
We do have some listener mail for you though, and
(34:30):
we are going to get into that as soon as
we get back from another quick break for a word
from our sponsors. And we're back. Thank you, sponsor, Yes,
thank you, and we're back with I always felt like
(34:54):
massolitch I was like warm, like sitting around a warm
fire with good friends. Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's it's
like a it's like a hug that that that doesn't
like calm me down. It kind of like perks you
up exactly exactly it m M, well, I hope that
came through musically. Yeah, that yes, that's what I was
(35:19):
trying to capture. Heck, yeah, neither of us are musicians.
I don't know if you could tell. I played some instruments,
but yeah, chorus wise, no, no, definitely, Tyler wrote. So
I listened to the baked beans episode. When I listened
to it, I just had to tell you about my
(35:40):
beans experience. Oh no, my mom bought some bushes, maple
and cured bacon beans. It was a roough time. My
mom and I were tooting like crazy, more so than
with regular baked beans. I even boasted on Facebook as
a warning to my friends about these beans. They were good,
(36:01):
but the tooting was not fun. Oh heck, I love
your annunciation there, Annie, that was really good. Tooting is
such a fun word. It's comical immediately, Yeah, it's it's
very evocative goodness. Uh yeah, you never know what's some
(36:23):
with some packaged products. You know, there's just I like,
you know, you've got to make notes of these things
you do, you do for future reference in other people. Absolutely, um,
I mean that dog in the marketing is real cute.
But you know, but behind the cuteness of chaos, so much,
(36:47):
so much much tooting goodness. M Victoria wrote, here are
some pictures of sure bit bowls I got from my
mom when she downsized her dinnerware collection. I'm currently enjoying
snow cones in them and have made wild blueberry syrup,
pomegranate syrup, lemon syrup, and mango syrup to which I
can have by themselves or mix up the flavors. The
(37:09):
photo has pomegranate and mango. It looks beautiful. Ah Mm hmm.
That's that's delightful. I love you got all these syrups
mix and match and also sherbet bowls, dedicated sherbet bowls. Yeah,
and I love I love like a solid um uh
(37:31):
vintage table where situation UM agreed. Yeah yeah, lovely all around,
lovely all around. Which thanks to both of these listeners
for writing in um. If you would like to write
to us that you can. Our email is Hello at
(37:51):
sabor pod dot com. We are also on social media.
You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
saber pod and we do hope to hear from you.
Savor It is production of I Heart Radio for more
podcasts from my Heart Radio. You can visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our superproducers Dylan
Fagin and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and
(38:13):
we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
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Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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