SHAY NA‘NA‘

mint tea

Middle Eastern hospitality is famous around the world. Even merchants in the souks will offer potential customers a cup of tea or coffee—perhaps to make the sale easier—but it’s still a welcome gesture. In some countries, the drink will be tea; in others it will be coffee. In North Africa, mint tea is the drink of choice.

Tea making follows a ritual, with the man of the house always in charge. Traditionally, the tea is sweetened with pieces of sugar hacked from a cane sugar loaf that comes wrapped in gorgeous purple tissue paper, and the sugar is added to the pot rather than to the individual cups. If you prefer your tea without sugar, just omit it or decrease the quantity suggested. You can also use artificial sweetener. Tunisians often drop a few pine nuts into the tea glass—across North Africa tea is served in small beautifully decorated glasses—before pouring the tea. I love how the pine nuts soften as they sit in the hot tea, tasting as if they were fresh by the time you finally get to eat them.

SERVES 4

4 cups [960 ml] boiling water

2 tsp green tea leaves

3 Tbsp organic cane sugar

2 cups [50 g] fresh mint leaves

1 Tbsp pine nuts (optional)

Rinse a teapot with ¹/₄ cup [60 ml] of the boiling water, pour off, and add the tea leaves. Add ¹/₂ cup [120 ml] boiling water and swirl it around a little before pouring the water out. (This was done in the old days to rinse the dust off the tea leaves. Although this step is unnecessary nowadays, I like the ritual so I still do it.)

Fill the pot with the remaining 3¹/₄ cups [780 ml] boiling water and stir in the sugar. Crush the fresh mint a little with your hands, and add to the pot. Push the mint down into the liquid with a spoon. Leave to infuse for a few minutes. Serve in traditional tea glasses or teacups, dropping a few pine nuts into each glass if desired.

tea and coffee

Tea and coffee are the first sign of the legendary Middle Eastern and North African hospitality. In Iran, Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria, the people drink mostly tea, while in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, coffee is the drink of choice. In Turkey and Gulf countries such as Qatar and the Emirates, both are imbibed. Turks grow tea in the Black Sea region but import their coffee; mostly from Yemen, whose coffee is favored not only by Turks but also by all Arab coffee drinkers. Gulf hosts serve both simultaneously for people to choose which they prefer, or even have one after the other. Whichever it is, great attention is paid to buying the beans or the tea leaves and to preparing the beverages.

While the people of the Maghreb (Morocco, Tunisia, and Algeria) favor green tea—imported from China and flavored with mint leaves, or absinthe in the winter—Iran and Turkey like black tea and grow their own.

The late shah’s father was instrumental in switching his countrymen from coffee to tea drinkers. He strove to discourage coffee houses and their activities, which he deemed to be not so “innocent,” and he imported new strains of tea from China together with families of farmers to oversee tea cultivation in Iran. He was successful in his endeavor to the point that Iran has now become a predominantly tea-drinking country with lush tea plantations in the north in the Caspian littoral. Iranians flavor their tea with cinnamon or dried rose petals for formal entertaining. The only time they drink coffee nowadays is at funerals or other solemn occasions.