Egyptian Lemongrass - Cut Dried Leaves

This is the leaf, not the stalk. The lemongrass sold in supermarkets for Thai cooking is the pale woody base of the plant, sliced or bruised into curries. What goes into a glass in Egypt is the blade - the long grey-green leaf above it, cut and dried. Same plant, Cymbopogon citratus, but a different part of it, and the two are not interchangeable. The stalk is for the pot. The leaf is for the pot of tea.

It smells and tastes of lemon without containing any. The compound doing the work is citral, which also dominates lemon peel oil, and it is the reason a dry grass can produce something that reads as citrus. What it does not have is acid. There is no sourness, no bite, nothing that curdles milk or makes you reach for sugar the way a squeeze of lemon does. The result is bright and clean and faintly sweet, with a green, hay-like note underneath that lemon itself never has.

Ours is grown in Egypt. Lemongrass takes to the climate - it wants heat, sun and water, all of which the Nile valley and the Delta supply - and it is cut through the warm months, then dried and cut down to a brewing length. Buying it here means buying it close to where it was cut, which for an aromatic leaf matters more than it does for a seed or a bark.

We sell it cut rather than powdered or in bags. Cut leaf gives the water something to work on: enough surface to release the oil in a few minutes, without the dust that makes a cloudy, flat cup. It also lets you see what you bought. Good dried lemongrass is grey-green and slightly silvery, not brown, and it should still smell sharply of lemon through the pouch when you press the air out of it.

To brew: a tablespoon per cup, water just off the boil, five to seven minutes, covered. Covered matters more here than with most infusions, because the aroma you want is volatile and leaves with the steam. It is also more forgiving than mint or chamomile - it will take ten minutes without turning bitter, so a pot left on the table stays drinkable.

It blends better than it stands alone, and Egyptian tea habits already know this. A pinch of it in karkade cuts the tartness of the hibiscus. With dried mint it makes something more complicated than either. With a few slices of fresh ginger and a spoon of honey it becomes the standard winter glass in a great many kitchens. Over ice with a strip of orange peel it beats most things sold as iced tea.

Cooks use it too, and mostly do not. The dried leaf will perfume a poaching liquid for chicken or fish, or a rice pot, if you tie it in cloth and pull it out afterwards - the blade is far too fibrous to eat. That is roughly the limit. This is a tea leaf that happens to work in a broth, not a cooking herb.

In Egypt a glass of it is usually drunk in the evening, after food, and it has a long history of traditional use as an everyday infusion. That is offered here as a description of the custom rather than as a health claim or medical advice.