We first came into contact with the ritual called 'drinking mint tea' in Morocco. In all towns and villages we went to there was always at least one coffee shop filled with men drinking mint tea or sometimes coffee. In restaurant we would get served mint tea after the meal. The waiter would skillfully pour the tea into a small glass using a silver tea kettle. Once this is done the tea is put back into the kettle and then poured again. This procedure gets repeated three times. Then finally the tea is ready to be enjoyed. But watch out, it is bound to be very, very sweet!
Since we liked this mint tea so much and the restaurant really only serve small portions and not the liters of tea Khim drinks every day, we tried to figure out how to make this mint tea ourselves on our camp stove. Here is the recipe of how this is done:
2 tablespoons of Gun Powder tea
1 handful of fresh mint leaves (use dried ones if you are going to be on the
road a while, but fresh ones work better)
1 tea billy fresh water (1lt)
as much or as little sugar as you like (Khim uses three lumps per cup, I use
none)
Put the gun powder tea in a cup. Boil the water and pour some of the boiling water over the gun powder tea in the cup. Let that sit for three minutes. In the meantime fill the billy back up (almost to the top) and add the mint leaves letting this simmer. Once the three minutes are up, strain the tea out of the cup back into the billy, simmer for two more minutes.Add sugar if you like and voilà your mint tea is ready!
All Material is ©2010 by Khim Rojas and Fernweh Adventures