Noon Chai

Noon chai — also called Kashmiri chai, sheer chai, gulabi ("rosy") chai or simply pink tea — is a salted milk tea from the Kashmir Valley whose defining feature is its striking rose-pink colour, coaxed not from any dye but from a chemical trick: a green-tea leaf brewed long and hard, whipped with cold water and a pinch of baking soda, then reddened by air. Where most milk teas are sweet, noon chai is savoury — "noon" is the Kashmiri and wider Persianate word for salt — and it drinks warm, creamy, gently salty and faintly nutty, usually strewn with crushed pistachios and almonds and often perfumed with cardamom. It is the everyday, all-day comfort drink of Kashmiri households, poured from the ever-simmering samovar with breads like girda and kulcha at breakfast and again through the day.