There is a particular hawker stall near my office which uses very good tea dust and a good brand of evaporated milk, and so their Teh-C (tea with evaporated milk) is very popular with my colleagues. I have tried and often failed to make a similarly good tasting Teh-C with Red Dust here in the office. Somehow, the fragrance of the milk either was not present or did not gel well with the tea.

Today, I took out the last bit of evaporated milk from the office fridge and sniffed it. I could not tell if it was still ok, so I decided to put it in the microwave to warm it up. If it had soured, I would be able to smell it then. Fortunately it was still good, and I poured it into my tea. Amazingly this time the tea tasted very close to what the hawker stall made.

I then recalled that the hawker stall (like most tea and coffee making stalls in Singapore) had a huge metal sink, almost a cabinet, constantly full of hot water, so that the stall owner can easily scoop up the required amount of water to make his orders. The evaporated milk tins were kept just above this sink, which meant that the evaporated milk was always kept warm.

So a good idea for making fragrant Teh-C: warm your evaporated milk!