The Badawi Shai blend includes rose petals, cinnamon, chamomille flowers among other ingredients. While the blend bought from the bedouin is clean and pure, it is very difficult to source (not least because the bedouin in the Sinai peninsula are wary of outsiders)
The blend is available in some herbalist/ spice shops in Cairo and Dahab / Sharm el Sheikh. But most of the time it will need ot be cleaned. The sticks/ stems of the Marmareyya turn bitter when boiled but add bulk to packaging. So do remove these sticks before you add to boiling water.
The recipe is fairly simple.
Boil a cup of water. Add a teaspoon of the bedouin tea blend to the boiling water, cover the pot and turn off the heat.
Let the tea steep for 2- 5 minutes. Strain and serve hot.
If you ask for any tea - shai in Egypt, it will be served with "a lot" of sugar. However I like this tea plain or with a spot of honey. Hence the tea looks a lot darker in this picture (from the honey)
Its especially wonderful in the winters and monsoons (Egypt doesn't really have a monsoon season, I mean the monsoons in India).
8 comments:
Oh this looks quite exotic...would love to have it as i am a tea lover , all the plain brews actually.
Now a days it is my large mug of kahva giving me company:)
I have wondered before of the translation for bedouin...now I wonder no more. Trying to imagine the taste of the tea..might have to start searching for the ingredients here. Thanks for sharing this :)
Sangeetha, I love tea too. All kinds of black, green and white teas.
There is a green semcha tea demo at Bookwise in Shahpurjat this Tuesday morning in case you are interested.
Nancy - the flavoring for this particular tea comes from marmareyya and I haven't found that particular herb outside the Egypt/Morocco region. Although it is from the mint family, it is not the same as using fresh or dried mint - it has a unique flavor of its own.
The other ingredients are easily available in India and Indian specialty stores in US/Canada and parts of Europe
yum-yum. i tried this tea a while back, i love everything i have tried n mediterranian category, thanks for article
Looks like our own "kawaa"...
Although the color of the finished product is similar, Badawi shai is NOTHING like Kashmiri kahwa
We are a brand agency, currently studying tea drinking habits in the MENA region. Would u mind sharing some insights on this topic?
I tried this on a recent trip to Egypt in a bedwyn tent was amazing and brought some home!!!s
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