Green tea with Mint and Lemon

Here's a recipe to refresh your tastebuds. All you need to know is how to brew green tea in the proper manner and you are on your way to enjoy the most beneficial of teas you may find:

• Green Tea - 1 tea bag / 1 teaspoon (loose tea)
• Sugar - to taste
• Mint (Pudina) - 4 or 5 leaves
  
• Lemon - few drops

Boil water until it starts bubbling. Add mint leaves and keep a lid ready. Switch off the stove, throw in the tea bag and quickly cover with a lid. Let the tea infuse in this manner for 2 minutes. Add lemon and sugar. Serve.

Kashmiri Kehwa

This is my most favorite of teas. I fell in love with it when I was in college and had a very sweet kashmiri roommate. She would make this tea for us while we would be up all night studying and I remember how refreshed we would get immediately.

Last summer, when we went to Kashmir for a visit and stayed at an aunt's place, I learnt how to make the perfect kehwa from her. I brought back a huge bag of kahmiri green tea from there when I returned. :) It's quite simple to brew actually...

• Green tea - 2 tsp
• 1 cinnamon stick, 3 cm long
• 4 cardamom pods, split open partially
• 1 pinch saffron
• 6-7 almonds

Boil 4 cups of water, add the cardamom, cinnamon and almonds. Allow it to reach boiling point and add the saffron and green tea. Remove from stove and cover. The aroma and flavour of the saffron and tea gets released when the water is at the right temperature, which is just below boiling point. Let the tea infuse for a minute and turn off the stove. Strain the tea, quickly skin the almonds, chop them up and add them to the tea cups. Serve immediately.

Serves 4.