Summer Tonics

By Joel Denker

“The pharaohs used to drink this a lot.” Hassan Aziz, a counterman at Jolt ‘N Bolt, the Adams-Morgan coffee house, was initiating me into the glories of hibiscus tea, the drink made from the flowering plant so dear to his culture. The Egyptians called it karkadeh. I was searching for a hot weather tonic, but I hardly expected the trail would lead to Egypt.

Karkadeh, which is grown commercially in Upper Egypt, in Aswan and Luxor, flourishes in the blazing climate of the region, near the border with Sudan. The “small, elegant shrub,” as botanist George Watt calls it, bears little pink flowers.

Hassan poured me a large glass of steaming crimson tea. Even with a little sweetening, its tart intensity was pleasing. The full bodied flavor set it apart from thinner brews. The tea strainer bled vividly on my napkin.

Hot tea was an antidote to warm, sticky weather. Egyptian doctors, Hassan remarked, advise against drinking iced tea in hot, dry weather.

Despite medical recommendations, Egyptians relish chilled karkadeh on torrid days. Cafes and tea houses are common settings where the sociable refreshment is enjoyed.

On another day, Hassan chilled the tea for me. It revived me just as much as the hotter drink had.

Hassan continued to spin out hibiscus lore. As I listened, I wondered how much was fable, how much was fact. But the stories were so tantalizing that it almost didn’t matter.

Invoking a perhaps legendary past, Hassan explained how the pharaohs used the liquid from the plant to dye the walls of their temples. They liked karkadeh because of its “natural color.” The lovely “naturalness” of hibiscus—this was a constant refrain in Hassan’s hymn to the plant.

The tea, he insisted, must be prepared “naturally” from fresh hibiscus. Syrup or concentrate would diminish its powers.

In contemporary Egypt, karkadeh is woven into the fabric of everyday life. Families lay it out on sheets on their roofs to dry, Hassan said, “using the sun’s rays.”

The tea is essential to holiday ritual. “In the holy month of Ramadan all the families are serving this drink to break the fast,” he pointed out.

Karkadeh, he continued, had health giving properties. It would “calm down blood pressure” and calm a “terrible stomach.”

Hibiscus, I learned, was just one of an array of Egypt’s inventive drinks. The evocatively named ‘Amar-Al-Din is an apricot tonic prepared from sheets of dried apricot paste. This “apricot leather” is soaked in cold water until the juices suffuse it. The drink is sweetened and garnished with mint.

The Egyptians adore asab, the green sugar cane juice, and crave yansoon, a tea made from an infusion of aniseeds. I tried preparing yansoon by boiling water with a half to one teaspoon of the spice for each cup of liquid and with two teaspoons of sugar. It was ideal for settling my stomach.

The juice vendor was a familiar figure of Egyptian street life. E.W. Lane, the early nineteenth century English chronicler of Egypt, describes Cairo’s sellers of “erksoos,” a licorice drink: “The ‘erk-soosee’ (or seller of this beverage) generally carries a red earthen jar of the liquid on his left side, partly supported by a strap and chain, and partly by his left arm: the mouth having some leef (or fibers of the palm tree) stuffed into it. He also carries two or more brass or china cups which he knocks together….”

My interest whetted, I was eager to gain a more detailed understanding of hibiscus. From what part of the plant was the tea extracted? Where was it first grown?

Since most hibiscus devotees I questioned were stronger on folklore than hard facts, I turned to works by botanists and food specialists for answers. My informants had told me variously that the flower, the bud, or the leaf was the source of the ruby-colored drink.

It is, in fact, the calyx of the plant that we should focus on. The calyx is the sheath in which the flower bud is wrapped. The red calyx becomes swollen, bursting with acidic juices. After it is dried, it is steeped in hot water and sweetened to make tea. Rich in vitamin C, the calyx also imparts its hues to Celestial Seasoning’s Red Zinger tea.

Hibiscus, anthropologist G.P. Murdock argues, was originally cultivated in Western Sudan. It is so associated with the North African country that the drink is sometimes known as “Sudan tea.” Would this truth, I wondered, offend Hassan’s Egyptian pride?

Hibiscus seems also to have migrated to India and Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, botanist I.H. Burkill reports, it was called, appropriately, “asam sucur” or sour relish. The “succulent” calyx, scholar J.F. Caius notes, enriches Indian jellies, chutneys, and curries.

Hibiscus arrived in the Americas from Africa with the slave trade, according to botanist P.M. Smith. It was brought first to Brazil in the seventeenth century and then to Jamaica in the eighteenth century.

Sorrel, as the Jamaicans called it, is served as a hot or cold tea and made into jellies and jams. Since the plant ripened around Christmas, it developed into a celebratory drink fragrant with cloves or cinnamon.

I returned to my exploration and stopped off at the Khartoum Restaurant, an Arabic luncheonette with a decidedly Sudanese accent on Florida Avenue, a short walk from Jolt ‘N Bolt. Karkadeh and apricot juices coursed through the jet spray machines, no doubt reminding customers of more carefree days in their homelands. I sipped a hibiscus drink, which needed more sourness to overcome its sugary taste, and possibly some cinnamon.

I walked up 18th Street to a small grocery crammed with Arabic products. Alaaeldin Mustafa, the proprietor of the Khartoum Grocery, tells me his country, Sudan, is “famous” for hibiscus. He showed me a bag of dried calyces, a package of the powdered tea, and a bottle of Scrumpy Hibiscus Tea manufactured in Jamaica. He touted karkadeh‘s curative powers. “It can help with any problem in the chest. It can give you energy.” For Mustafa, food and drink were elixirs. “All of our things have two sides. One is taste. One is medicine.”

I chatted with White Joshua Walla, a customer at the counter. Still searching for the secret appeal of hibiscus, I asked his opinion. “It has a natural taste,” he said, echoing Hassan. Why, I probed, was its sour taste so pleasurable? “Because of the weather,” he answered, leaving me with another puzzle to ponder.

 

Originally published in The InTowner: http://intowner.com/food-in-the-hood/