FЯESH LEMONAID 10¢

Driving along through this or that neighborhood, you spot something on the sidewalk.  A lemonade stand.  Manned by couple of kids.  Me, I always stop.

There’s not much that’s more refreshing than a nice, tall glass of lemonade on a hot summer day.  It’s easy peasy to make, too — water, sugar and lemons.

And what’s better than lemonade?  Grown-up lemonade with booze in it!  (We’ll get back to that in a bit.)

You know how to make lemonade, right?  I would imagine that you do, but let’s assume that your mom always made it for you, and that hers was so good and so perfect that you never really got around to making any for yourself.  It really couldn’t be easier, but as with most drinks it helps to have a method. Before you start squeezing, though, here are some tips to maximize your juice output.

1. Don’t use lemons right out of the fridge.  Cold lemons yield less juice.

2. Even better than using room temperature lemons is putting your lemons in a hot water bath for several minutes.

3. Roll your lemons under the palm of your hand on the cutting board before squeezing.  This helps to liberate the juice.

4. Oh, and don’t pay 79¢ each for your lemons at a major chain supermarket.  I see these prices and it makes me want to yell at someone.  If you can, find a small, local, mom-and-pop produce market or Latin or other ethnic supermarket, where the lemons will likely be a more reasonable 99¢ a pound.

Better yet, plant a lemon tree in your yard, and then they’ll be free. (My favorite price!)

I also recommend straining the fresh-squeezed juice.  You don’t want seeds, of course, and lemon pulp tends to adhere to the glassware and makes it more difficult to clean.

I like to press some lemon zest (only the yellow zest, not the white pith) with a muddler to extract the lemon oils too, which gives an extra depth of flavor.  This is an optional step if, like me, you occasionally are afflicted with laziness. A sharp vegetable peeler is ideal for removing the zest.

SIMPLE, PERFECT LEMONADE

1 cup fresh squeezed lemon juice
3/4 to 1 cup rich (2:1) simple syrup, to taste
Zest of 1 lemon
3 cups water or sparkling water

Combine the juice and syrup in a pitcher.  Add the zest and press with your biggest muddler, getting as much oil out as you can.  Add the water (or a bit more) to taste, depending on how concentrated you like it.

See? Easy peasy. (But you knew that.)

Now let’s have a go at making a single serving of lemonade.  Get a nice tall glass.  Fill it with ice, preferably nice big cubes.  Add an ounce of lemon juice and 3/4 ounce of simple syrup (as above, a whole ounce if you like it sweeter).  Fill it with fizzy water and you have a lovely, summery fizzy lemonade, but … hmm.  This also sounds like … wait a minute, it’s missing something … oh yeah!  Two ounces of gin.  (London dry, Plymouth or Old Tom, like the drink’s namesake.)  Then that glass of fizzy lemonade becomes a Tom Collins.  Well, heck-ola.  Now it’s a cocktail!  (Hold that thought.)

Let’s start playing around with this basic lemonade.  I’ve been attending the Jazz and Heritage Festival in New Orleans for many years, and perhaps the single tastiest and most refreshing beverage on the entire Fair Grounds is Strawberry Lemonade.  The weather tends to be hot and humid, and this drink is bright, sweet, tart, fruity and oh-so-wonderful.  As you’ll notice, the technique is very similar to what I described above.   I never managed to get the exact recipe from the folks who make it at Jazzfest but again, it’s pretty easy stuff and yields spectacular results.   Here’s Emeril Lagasse’s recipe (the man knows New Orleans).

STRAWBERRY LEMONADE

2 cups sugar
1 cup water
1 tablespoon finely chopped lemon zest
1 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 pint strawberries, hulled and halved
2 cups cold water or sparkling water

Bring the water and sugar to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Add the zest and juice, stir the mixture and remove from heat.  Let cool, then strain into a pitcher.

Puree the strawberries in a blender then add to the pitcher with the lemon juice mixture.  Stir to combine and chill thoroughly.

To serve, add the water or sparkling water and stir well.  Pour over ice into tall glasses and garnish with a whole strawberry and a mint sprig.

Did I say that there’s not much that’s better than lemonade?  Well, one of those things would be strawberry lemonade.  Now … think about adding a shot of reposado tequila to that.  Limonada por mi Amante, anyone?  Use this as a launching point — you can use raspberries, blackberries or pretty much any fruit that tastes good with lemons (which would be almost all of them).  Also, that aforementioned Tom Collins?  Instead of building it in the Collins glass start it out in a mixing glass, throw in a few raspberries, muddle them with the gin, lemon juice and simple, then double-strain that into your ice-filled Collins glass and fill with soda.  Nice berry garnish.  Ta-daa!  Raspberry Collins.  Or any other Somethingberry Collins you care to make.  So simple, but believe me, your guests will rave about it.

Let’s take another direction — instead of adding fruit, let’s start experimenting with the syrup.  For another dimension of flavor, try making a lemongrass syrup instead of simple.  Take a cup of water and a cup of sugar (two if you want it rich), plus two sliced lemongrass stalks (center only), bruised slightly.  Bring to a simmer for 10 minutes, then let cool.  Strain and bottle — it’s helpful to add a splash of vodka as a preservative.  Make your lemonade with this as the sweetener, maybe muddling a few kaffir lime leaves or some Thai basil or cilantro, and you’ve got some nicely exotic southeast Asian flavors going too.  (The syrup also makes delicious iced tea sweetener, an idea I stole from Crook’s Corner in Chapel Hill, NC.)

I suspect you see where we’re going with this.  By taking a basic lemonade recipe, varying it by adding booze and/or fruit and/or flavored sugar syrups, you have a range of cocktail before you that’s limited only by your imagination, and what’s in season.

Here’s one I really like — sophisticated, herbal, floral, yummy.

LAVENDER LEMONADE

1-1/2 ounces Plymouth gin.
1 ounce lavender syrup (see below).
1 to 1-1/2 ounces lemon juice (to taste, as to your tartness preference).
Sparkling water.

In a tall Collins glass filled with ice cubes, build first three ingredients, add fizzy water and stir.  Garnish with a sprig of fresh lavender if you have it, a lemon slice if you don’t.

To make the lavender syrup bring 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar and the zest of one lemon to a boil, then lower to a simmer and stir to dissolve sugar.  Remove from heat, then add 1/2 cup lavender blossoms.  Let steep overnight, then strain and bottle.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that this is basically a Tom Collins, but with a flavored syrup instead of muddled fruit.  Try a syrup with basil, lemon verbena, thyme … go to the herb section of your local farmer’s market and go nuts.

Now let’s do something unusual with the basic lemonade recipe.  I came across this a while back and although I don’t make it as often as I’d like (due to my aforementioned lazy bastardness), it is filled with deliciousness and in its way reminds me of the beloved sno-balls I grew up with in New Orleans, thanks to a Secret Ingredient.

In Brazil they take a different approach toward making lemonade, whizzing together not only juice but skin and even pith.  (Plus, there’s that Secret Ingredient.)  Brazilian lemons are also quite a lot like limes, so for this recipe we’ll be using the largest limes we can find.  I usually have an easy time finding them in local Latin or other ethnic markets or supermarkets; otherwise use one-and-a-half to two smaller limes for one big one.

BRAZILIAN LEMONADE

4 large or 6-8 small limes
1 cup simple syrup
5 cups cold water
3 ounces sweetened condensed milk (i.e., The Secret Ingredient)

Unless you have a really huge blender, you’ll need do this first step in two batches as described.

Wash the limes well.  Trim the ends off the limes, then cut into eighths.

Place half of the limes, simple syrup and water into the blender and give it five one-second pulses. Pour into a large fine-mesh strainer over a pitcher and strain the mixture, stirring and pressing with a wooden spoon to squeeze all the liquid out of the resulting pulp.  (Discard the pulp.)  Repeat wtih the other half.

Add the sweetened condensed milk, and serve in tall glasses over ice.

Now … add a jigger of good cachaça or white rum to that.  Oba!

You can also make your lemonades into more complex cocktails by adding more ingredients, such as liqueurs or bitters.  Ted “Dr. Cocktail” Haigh, who is a not-so-mild-mannered graphic designer for movies when he’s not in his not-so-secret identity as our planet’s pre-eminent cocktail archaeologist, has created a number of superb cocktails in his day.  One of these was in honor of the author Daniel Handler, specifically in his guise as Lemony Snicket, creator of the series of children’s books A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Doc was the graphic designer on the film version of the first couple of books, and created the Lemony Snicket Cocktail using gin, lemon juice, limoncello and yellow Chartreuse.  While cogitating over my lemonade article, I thought this powerful but tasty cocktail might make a nice lemonade-based tall drink too.

THE FIZZY SNICKET, or THE SNICKETY FIZZ
(unfortunately adapted by Chuck from Ted’s original)

1-1/2 ounces Beefeater gin.
1 ounce fresh lemon juice.
1/2 ounce limoncello.
1/2 ounce yellow Chartreuse.
1/4 ounce simple syrup (optional, if you like it sweeter).
Sparkling water.

Build in a Collins glass over ice, adding the soda last.  Give it a brief stir and garnish with a shrunken head, or a lemon slice if the former is not handy.

(By the way, to make Ted’s original Lemony Snicket cocktail, up the gin to 2-1/2 ounces, lower the lemon juice to 1/2 ounce and omit the simple and fizzy water.  Garnish with a curly lemon twist.)

I think by now you’ve got a good idea where you can go with this, which is almost anywhere.  Before we finish I’ll toss out one more lemonade (actually, technically a limeade) that I came up with a few years ago, with two slightly different versions.

SCHMILSSON

2 ounces white rum or cachaça.
1 ounce fresh lime juice.
3/4 ounce rich Demerara syrup.
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters.
3 ounces coconut water.

Build in a Collins glass over ice and stir.

Or, if you don’t have coconut water handy …

NILSSON FIZZ

2 ounces white rum or cachaça.
1 ounce fresh lime juice.
1 ounce coconut syrup.
2-3 dashes Angostura bitters.
Sparkling water.

Build first four ingredients in a Collins glass over ice, top with fizzy water and stir.

If only they made sparkling coconut water.  I’m tempted by put some into my soda siphon and charge it up and see how that works, using the first recipe, and then we’d have just one Nilsson Fizz.  Both of these drinks are named for that great singer and songwriter who put de lime in de coconut and drank ‘em both up.  (It relieve de bellyache.)

Enjoy!  And have a bitchin’ summer!

Tagged as: lemonade lemon gin vodka cachaca