Sawasdee Krab! Welcome back everyone to this weeks blog, whew what a week! I have been so busy with work I couldn’t get enough time with a capital ‘T’! 😉
Just too much stuff going on but time for a (hopefully) short blog near and dear to this Thai fanatics heart. Since my recent blog on making Pad Gra Pao worked out well I planned to write this blog with more pics and less words. Like the Miller Light beer commercial with less filling (my yap, yap, yapping) but still have that same great taste (for all things Thai!)
There are few things that I will not turn down without question such as my quailty time (again with a capital ‘T’), listening to my favorite Thai music, a good cup of coffee and last but by no means least a glass of that cool and sweet treat-Thai Ice Tea. Whenever I go out to eat at a Thai resturant here in DC I may not always order a plate of super-human spicy Pad Gra Pao (Thai beef and basil for blog ‘newbies’) but I always have to have a glass of Thai Iced Tea, or Cha Yen in Thai.
It’s the first thing I will order but I am sometimes careful about ordering it in Thai since depending on the tone you use to say it ‘Cha’ could mean ‘Tea’ or ‘Slowly’. ‘Yen’ in Thai means ‘cool’ so said correctly you will say ‘Tea Cool’ universally understood to mean ‘Thai Tea.’ If you say it with the wrong tone however you might say something weird like ‘slowly cool’ in which case your Thai waiter or waitress will just look at you strangely like your some beatnik poet with a thing for adjectives, trust me I know!
Fortunately for me however I have the answer to not only saving myself this embarrassment but also the secret to having Thai Tea anytime I want without annoying my neighborhood Thai resturant hanging around outside their door waiting for them to open just so I can get my Thai Tea fix. Since it is really simple to make I just learned to make Thai Tea myself at home, hence the topic of this weeks blog. This is the brand of Thai Tea that I use which I buy from the Thai market in Maryland I told you about before.
Most asian grocery stores would have Thai Tea leaves you can buy but if not then you can check out www.importfoods.com where you can order anything and everything online to make Thai food at home and have it shipped directly to you. I know this bends the guidelines a little to post a link to a commercial website but in this case I don’t think our webmaster Richard would mind too much, I hope!
Once you have some Thai Tea leaves you only need sugar and water everything is simple just a bit time consuming. Once you get the hang of it you can have Thai Tea made in just about 20 minutes. Recipes and methods may vary but I’m gonna give you the low down on what works for me. Ready?