In Algeria tea is atay, and it is less a drink than a small ceremony of welcome. Green gunpowder tea arrived in North Africa with British traders in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the habit of brewing it with mint spread east from Morocco, through Algeria and deep into the Sahara, where the Tuareg made it their own. Across the south the tea is famously served in three rounds, each a little different from the last, and leaving before the third is something of a statement.

The method is simple once you know its two tricks. A quick rinse of the leaves in boiling water washes off dust and some bitterness, and pouring from a height, glass to pot and back again, mixes the sugar, cools the tea a touch and raises the foam that marks a well made glass. Serve it after couscous, with something sweet in the afternoon, or whenever a race needs a pause.

The tea

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon (about 6 g) gunpowder green tea
• 3 1/2 cups (840 ml) water
• 1 large bunch fresh spearmint
• 1/4 cup (50 g) sugar

Method

1. Bring all of the water to a full boil in the kettle.
2. Put the tea in the teapot and pour in about 1/2 cup (120 ml) of the boiling water. Swirl the pot for 20 seconds, then pour this water away, holding the leaves back with the lid or the strainer.
3. Pour the remaining boiling water over the rinsed tea, then push the bunch of mint into the pot and add the sugar. Set the teapot on the stove over low to medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes, until it just comes back to a simmer. Take it off the heat as soon as it starts to bubble.
4. Pour a glass of tea, then tip it back into the teapot. Repeat two or three times. This dissolves the sugar and mixes the brew without crushing the mint.
5. Hold a glass on the table and pour the tea into it, starting low and slowly raising the teapot to about 12 inches (30 cm) above it, then lowering it again before you stop. Fill each glass about three quarters full, through the strainer if needed.

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