Bal

MarraMamba's Note:

A Kyrgyzstan "tea" made from honey and spices

• Total Time: 15 mins
• Prep Time: 5 mins
• Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients:

Yield: 1 liter

• 100 g honey
• 25 g black pepper
• 25 g bay leaves
• 5 g ginger
• 25 g cinnamon
• 1 liter water
• 20 g cloves

Directions:

1. Bring water to boil, add ginger, cinnamon, cloves, pepper, a bay leaf to it and then bring to boil again.
2. In 5-10 minutes stir in honey and strain.

Reviews

[Debbwl]

Sorry no photo as made just before bed. Cut back to serve two, had to kind of guess a little at some of the amounts as they did not look correct between cut back and switching to ounces. Fallow BabyKato's lead and for two cups used 2 bay leaf, 12 pepper corns, 1/8 teaspoon ginger, 1 cinnamon stick, 6 cloves and 1 spoon honey per cup. Worked out well as we both found it very comforting and relaxing. Thanks for the post.

[Baby Kato]

What a lovely spiced tea. I scaled it down for one person...it worked great. I used a large bay leaf from my garden, 5 pepper corns, a chunk of ginger, and I added 1/2 a cinnamon stick and 3 cloves. I didn't use milk but did add the honey. I will make this again. Thanks for sharing Marra.

[Susiecat too]

This is Chai tea!!! I never could figure out the spice combination to make chai before, but this is it. I'm guessing that with the large amounts of bay leaves, the original recipe must have intended for the leaves to be fresh. My whole container of dried bay leaves was only 5 grams, and surely one liter of water doesn't need 5 containers of dried bay leaves???!!! So, into about 1 1/2 liters of water, I used three dried bay leaves, a half-dozen or so good grinds of the pepper mill, about 10 mL of dried powdered ginger, about double that of cinnamon, and about 10 mL of ground cloves. Then honey was just poured in from the jar, but I would guess about 125 mL. I added a little bit of milk, too. And I strained the whole thing by pouring through a coffee filter. YUMMMMMY!!! And caffeine free, too. Delicious! Thanks, Marra!