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West Africa · Volume 22, The Three Glasses, the Mullet Run and the Grain Rolled by Hand · Cooked by cue

Atay, the three glasses

Mauritania, and the Sahrawi table

Atay, Mauritanian green tea poured from a height into small glasses until it foams, three glasses on a tray by a charcoal brazier: a small enamel teapot held high pouring a thin amber stream into a small glass standing in a thick white foam, two more small glasses of foamed tea on a brass tray.

Illustration

Atay is green tea boiled, sweetened and poured between pot and glass from a height until it foams. Three small glasses per person per sitting, each sweeter than the last, the rounds up to half an hour apart, as a Mauritanian writer, Maryam Ahmad al-Mokhttar, gave it to Al-Khaleej. It is the drink with the most agreement across sources and the most weight in the culture. The saying that goes with the glasses, bitter as life, sweet or strong as love, gentle as death, varies by who tells it, and is a saying. The ten minute boil is one reporter's figure; the sugar is unmeasured by anyone, and the Mauritanian encyclopaedia says only that it varies by stage; mint is in some accounts and not in others.

As tradition built it

Serves the company. Three glasses, by cue: the foam says when.

Ingredients

Atay is made by cue: the tea poured between pot and glass from a height until foam stands in the glass, and a glass without foam is sent back. The sugar rises by the round and nobody from Mauritania has measured it for us, so none is given here.

  • Chinese green tea, gunpowder
  • as needed water
  • to taste sugar, rising by the round
  • to taste fresh mint, by some accounts
  • as needed charcoal, in a brazier

Method

  1. Put the tea in a small pot with water and set it on the charcoal to boil, about ten minutes by one account.
  2. Pour the first extract into a glass and return it to the pot, and shake the pot.
  3. Add sugar and, if the house does, mint. Pour the tea between the pot and the glasses from a height, again and again, until foam stands in the glasses.
  4. Serve the first glass, strong and dark and least sweet. Add water and more sugar to the same leaves for the second, and again for the third, which is the sweetest and palest.
  5. A glass without foam is sent back.

What a modern chef changes

The infusion staged by temperature, the foam built on purpose

Rung 1

Method

  1. Brew the first glass as a hard extraction, the leaves boiled, and the second and third as dilutions of the same leaves with fresh sugar; the three glasses are one tea in three strengths and the restaurant's tea course can say so.
  2. Build the foam by pouring from at least thirty centimetres into a narrow glass, which the Egg's embers at 200 degrees can keep the pot on; a gas ring gives a drink and not atay, as the Arabic press puts it.
  3. Weigh the sugar by the round so the second pot tastes like the first; no Mauritanian source gives the weights, so the cook keeps a note.
  4. Serve it as a course and not an afterthought; it is the dish.
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