(North Mankato, MN): I am enjoying tea prepared in the Azeri style.
In Lənkəran, a region of Azerbaijan, they grow and produce a special brand of tea, Azerçay. “Xəzər Lənkəran çayı.” Tea from Lənkəran. One reason tea may be so popular in Azerbaijan is that coffee is seen as a luxury good. It certainly was more expensive, and the need to grind coffee and have special apparatuses makes coffee brewing a bit more expensive and cumbersome.
The rules of Azerbaijani tea preparation are precise. Make sure that water is boiling, as hot as possible. Pour boiling water into a teapot with leaves. As the leaves dance and settle, let the leaves steep in the teapot for four to six minutes. Be patient. You have created a deep, dark, rich pot of tea that is probably too strong for any normal human being to drink. You have created a tea concentrate. Add the steeped brew to a glass or teacup … usually less than half the cup, and then fill rest of the glass/cup with more beyond-boiling water. This creates the most impressively hot cup of tea ever. Add more of the teapot brew to make the tea as strong as you like. Add heaping spoonfuls of sugar to stir until blended. Or hold a sugar cube between your teeth as you sip the tea through your teeth. Drink tea while you eat snacks, such as dates, candied cherries, candied orange peels, peach jam, and baklavah. Heavenly.