Tea, coffee, honey, warmed wine, invigorating herbal decoction… Life-giving warmth, poured into mugs and awakening our inner energy, is necessary for every person who is familiar with the concept of “dank autumn” firsthand.
Hot drinks in autumn and winter are not a luxury or exotic: any person born in a temperate or cool climate will confirm this. Strong tea, fragrant punch or spicy sbiten not only warm and restore fluid balance, but also tone our body, supplying it with new strength to fight cold and dampness. Almost every culinary tradition of Eurasia offers its own versions of hot drinks, as diverse and dissimilar as the cultures that gave birth to them are dissimilar. Depending on the region, they can be based on wine, tea, strong alcohol, honey, coffee, chocolate, herbal decoction, milk, or combinations thereof. Today, tea and coffee are the most popular in Russia, as well as mulled wine, which many people brew at home or order in coffee houses and restaurants.
However, this state of affairs is the result of total (including culinary) globalization of recent decades. Until the end of the century before last, sbiten remained the main Russian warming drink, the very first recipe of which is contained in the famous “Domostroy” of the priest Sylvester (XVI century). Foreigners who visited Russia during the time of Peter the Great wrote that sbiten merchants with voluminous samovars, “sacks” wrapped in warm blankets, walk the streets of Moscow and other large cities, and sell their goods to everyone for a moderate fee. The most famous recipe for sbitnya is given in his book “Kitchens of the Slavic Peoples” by the domestic culinary historian William Pokhlebkin. He suggests boiling, skimming often, 150 g of honey with one glass of water, prepare 100 g of sugar in the same way, combine both mixtures and boil over low heat until a homogeneous mixture is formed. Separately, in one and a half liters of water, prepare a spicy decoction, for which St. John’s wort, mint, ginger, black peppercorns, ground cinnamon and cloves are suitable. Having diluted honey-sugar syrup with the resulting liquid, we get an authentic drink.
In Central Asia, tea has become the foundation for most hot drinks. In northern India, special masalas (spice mixtures) are prepared for tea. They include dried ginger, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg, black pepper and cinnamon, which are used at the rate of a pinch of spices per cup. The famous Tibetan tea is prepared as follows: pu-erh or any other highly fermented tea is brewed directly in milk on the smallest fire, after which a little salt, butter and grated ginger are added to it. This procedure allows you to fully reveal the taste of tea and activate its healing properties.
Central, Western and Northern Europe, which today has almost completely switched to coffee, until relatively recently unanimously preferred a variety of mulled wines. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, when spices were literally worth their weight in gold and were available only to the upper strata of society, local herbs were used for their preparation: oregano, thyme, thyme, rosemary … Frequent rains (the climate of Germany or, say, Hungary is less suited to viticulture and winemaking than Italy or the south of France) led to the emergence of significant stocks of wine, almost undrinkable. It was this sour drink that became the basis for mulled wine: herbs were brewed in it, and then, mixed with honey or molasses, they were drunk hot. These ancient traditions are preserved in Germany, the Czech Republic and Poland, where in autumn and winter, right on the city streets, you can meet sellers of warm wine and herbal drink. However, there are some tricks in the preparation of “modern” mulled wine: try adding a couple of stars of star anise to it, and replace the ground cinnamon with a cinnamon stick – you will feel that the drink has acquired an unusual and very pleasant aroma, and in addition, get rid of the sediment that they give crushed spices.
Whatever the ingredient in the hot drink, the principle of action of sbitn, mulled wine or Viennese coffee remains the same: invigorating energy, combined with the idea of coziness, are designed to help us survive the darkest, dampest and most gloomy period of the year.
Mongolian tea
For 4 persons. Cooking time: 15 minutes.
- 1,5 st. l. assam black tea
- 500 ml of water
- 20 g butter
- 30 g flour
- 250 ml of milk
- salt and black pepper to taste
Crush the tea in a mortar into powder, put in a refractory kettle, pour water and bring to a boil, then remove from heat and cover with a blanket or a special heating pad. Melt the butter in a deep saucepan, brown the flour in it for a few minutes, then, stirring constantly, pour in the milk. Dilute the resulting thick cream with tea infusion (before that it must be filtered), add salt and black pepper and serve in shallow bowls.