Mat-Cha!

I suddenly craved for milk tea.  It's 30 minutes before 12 midnight and I am home sweet home in Malolos where milk tea cafes do not exist.  With some stocks at home I attempted to do my own version.  Surprisingly it does taste like those Taiwan milk teas.

Here is my own version of mat-cha:

• Simple syrup 1:1 cup of sugar and water. 
• 4 tea bags of Oolong tea  boiled in one liter of water
• skim milk dissolved from a portion of still warm brewed tea
• grass jelly an alternative sinkers since I don't have tapioca pearls

I used my beer mug to create my concoction :-) filling half of it with still warm freshly brewed Oolong tea.  Then I mixed in about 3 tablespoon of skim milk and about 4 tablespoon of simple syrup.  I don't have a shaker so I just stirred it well before adding the grass jelly and ice until the glass is almost filled.

I am calling it mat-cha - 맛차 short for 맛있다 (mashitta) + 차 (cha).  In Korean, mashitta means delicious and cha is tea so mash-cha would mean delicious tea.

Fast facts:  Koreans are fond of combining two words to coin a new one.  Namchin is from the word 남자 (namja) + 친구 (chingu).  Namja is man and chingu is friend where 'namchin' is coined to mean boyfriend.  So with 여자 (yoja) meaning woman, 여친 (yochin) therefore is girlfriend.