Thai Iced Tea (Cha Yen)

Walk down any street in Bangkok and you'll see vendors pulling this drink together with practiced speed. Orange tea streaming from a cloth strainer into a plastic bag of ice, a flourish of condensed milk, a rubber band to seal it. Five baht. Ten seconds. A flavor that haunts you for years.

Thai iced tea is an artifact of the tea trade routes that passed through Southeast Asia. The base is Ceylon black tea, but the Thai version adds star anise, tamarind seed, and sometimes vanilla or orange blossom. That electric orange color comes from food coloring, added decades ago to make the drink stand out in crowded markets. Purists may object, but authenticity includes this particular shade of sunset.

The technique is simple but unforgiving. Steep too briefly and the tea lacks backbone. Skip the condensed milk integration while hot and the drink separates. Use small ice and you're drinking flavored water by the halfway point. Get it right, though, and you'll understand why this drink has conquered the world from food courts to fine dining rooms.