Watermelon drink

Since I made my cucumber agua fresca that day, I just can`t stop making fruit drinks in my kitchen. And when I got myself a book for smoothie recipes, I stepped up to add some vegetables in. I realized how rare I ate raw vegetables for my daily meals and I know that`s just not good. Not good for my skin! So I blend up carrot, cabbage, bell pepper, tomato, apple, blueberries, oranges, lemon, etc etc, you name it. The good thing is, I get to borrow the natural sweetness from the fruits and make the less sweet or rather bland vegetables more drinkable. I don`t usually eat raw vegetables due to their blandness at the first place. Anyway, I drink it everyday, usually twice at morning and night. Repeat: Everyday. To my surprise, not only I started to get used to the natural sweetness (although sometimes when it tastes too bland or weird, I add a bit of honey), I found the taste of the fruit and veg mix isn`t that bad for me.
Now this post is for what I`ve made last month, where I haven`t thought of mixing it with veggies. But still this drink is one of my favorites, next to eating the watermelon as it is. Watermelon is one of my biggest love affairs with food. I see it as a beautiful crunchy yet moist sponge full of refreshing sweetness. It`s just perfect. Even with the seeds in. If the seeds bother you, though, you might be better choose the seedless watermelon for this drink.

Chop up and put them in a blender

Aah..the cooling mint leaves. I never get enough of them.

Whiz up. Oh, lovely.
By the way, I didn`t need to add sugar or honey at all as this was sweet enough for me. 

And as always, I forgot something. Oranges.
Use a squeezer to get the juice (and pulp too if you want), pour it in to the blender and puree it again.

And since I didn`t take the picture after I added the orange juice, please pretend that you see a jar of watermelon puree with light orangeness. Thank you.
By the way, you can add water (or not) to your preference of thickness. Although the more water you add, the less sweet it would be, and the more sugar (or honey) you would likely add.

Say hello to this freshness. Happy slurping!

Ingredients:
Watermelon (seedless one, if necessary)
Orange juice
Mint leaves
Water (optional)
Sugar or honey (optional)

Pineapple and cucumber in spicy light syrup

The idea of eating fruits with chili, which is my nature by the way, never fails to bring out the puzzled looks on my Japanese friends` faces whenever I mention it. It was sort of Fruits with chili?? Really?? faces. And that was when I realized how I basically grew up  and live up chewing chili with almost any kind of food. Chocolate with chili? Tried it last year. What an interesting taste!

Anyway, the fruit drink I made here is basically a lighter and partly drinkable (or slurpable) version of Indonesian fruit salad called rujak, which is a mix of cut fruits like mango, cucumber, and pineapple dressed with sweet and spicy sauce made of dark brown, chili, and tamarind. I do love rujak the way it is, but  at the moment I need to keep the thought of eating the fruits with the thick sugar paste  (aka. more sugar less water) away. After all, slurping the cold  spicy syrup (aka. more water less sugar) with occasional fruits chewing is what I am craving for these super hot days.

I only used pineapple and cucumber here, but you`re certainly welcome to experiment with your favorite fruits. Maybe next time I`ll go with apple.

So, start with pineapple. My first time dealing with fresh pineapple was just a year ago (I know!). Having to peel off its skin was my only reason for not buying pineapple. But when I found pineapples sold with a  serving guidance tagged on them, my pineaple-less days were over.

So, if you too are intimidated by the skin like I was, I hope this guidance can be handy for you. It`s in Japanese, but I`m sure you can figure it out from the pictures.

Peel off the skin and cut up the pineapple. Oh, I love this last part of the cutting process.

Next is cucumbers. After the pineapple, they come very easy to handle with. Slice them up in any shapes you like.

Mix the cut pineapple and cucumbers in a container.

Now for those of you who are new with eating fruits with chili, here comes the challenge.
Throw in sliced chili. It depends on how much you can handle the heat, but you can  certainly use much less chili than I did. I turn crazy when it comes to chili and you don`t have to be like me.
And by the way, I used dried chili because that`s what I got here. Go with fresh chili (deseed or not, depending on your heat tolerance) whenever you can because the fresh skin are soft enough to eat. The skin of the dried ones are actually a little too hard and papery to chew, so I sometimes boil them together with the syrup. And since I said sometimes, this time I just threw them in with the fruits and let the syrup soften them a bit after several hours soaking.

Because I skipped the boiling work, I used hot water to dissolve dark brown sugar in a cup.

Add this chili powder, vinegar, and a pinch of salt. If you have tamarind in hands, use the juice instead of vinegar.

Just make the syrup thick, pour it in batches to the fruits while thinning it out with water, and adjust the taste until  the fruits are completely soaked up in the container. For me, I like it to be lightly sweet but with intense heat and sourness. For a rough measurement, I added 1 tbs sliced chili, 3 tbs brown sugar, 6 tbs of vinegar, and a pinch of salt to a total volume of 750 ml fruits and water, which was my container capacity.

Add peanuts too. You can sprinkle the peanuts later when serving for a greater crunch factor, or before soaking to make them mushy. Whichever it is, please add the peanuts. Trust me.

Close the container tightly and keep it in refrigerator for several hours before serving. The longer you soak the fruits, the more they gain the taste. Ah, heaven.

Ready for the challenge?

Ingredients:

Pineapple

Cucumbers

Dark brown sugar or palm sugar

Chili

Chili powder
Vinegar or tamarind juice

Salt

Peanuts
Water

Cucumber agua fresca

We`re currently having burning, if not smoking, hot days here. The temperature hasn`t been moving from 33 or 35 Celcius for days, and on top of that, we don`t have an air conditioner in our apartment. Do we have trees outside our building? Nope. Big fat no. I`m very sad to say that we live in an area where trees are almost invisible and where most of the buildings are equipped with air conditioners that release hot air outside and makes the ambient temperature even higher!
So, in our biggest need of refreshment, I came across on a post showing a very appealing drink recipe at Simply Recipes. Thank you, Elise! Finding out how easy to make the drink, I headed to the store that very day and got all the ingredients, except for the lime, which I substituted with lemon. Not that we don`t have limes here, but lemons are far more budget-friendly to me at the moment.

And before I continue with the step by step, you might want to prepare your glass now, because this drink will be ready in a matter of minutes!
Glass in your hand? Good.

Trim off both ends of cucumbers, cut up, and put in a blender.

Then, add this beautiful, beautiful mint leaves. Beautiful. 
Smell is really good too! Fact: I`m crazy about anything minty.

Can I say it once more? Beautiful. Thank you.

Spritz in lemon juice. I actually added the pulp too.
Oh, I feel refreshed already.

And last ingredient is, honey. Or you can just use sugar, though.
I just think that lemon and honey marry perfectly.

Oh, we`re forgetting water! Alright, last ingredient (for real), water. I don`t really add too much water because the ice cubes we`ll add later will dilute the drink and make it less concentrated. But this is always about preference, so you should have fun with adjusting the composition until you get it right.
Go whiz up. Whizzzzzzz.....whizzzzzzzzz....

Alright, now here comes the confession. In other recipes for this agua fresca including Elise`s, the puree needs to be pushed through a sieve to get a solid-free liquid, but my husband and I prefer having the whole puree that still has some crunchiness of the cucumbers.
Whichever style you`d choose, pour the drink in the glass you`ve been faithfully holding, and add some ice cubes. Or, you can do it reversely by placing the ice in the glass first before pouring the drink over.


Cheeeeeers!!!

The fresca name really comes for a reason as this drink is incredibly refreshing! And addictive too! He said he wants some more, so I made it again. Two days in a row. That`s how thirsty we are.

Ingredients:
2 medium sized cucumbers
A handful of mint leaves
Lemon juice from 1 medium sized lemon
3 tbs honey
350 ml water
Ice cubes

Hot mint chocolate

When the temperature in our house drops to 12 C, that means time for hot chocolate. So we biked to the store (it was 6 C!) and got these chocolate bar with 70% cacao content. Deep dark chocolate.

 

 I used 100 g of the chocolate bar and 500 ml of full-fat milk (his daily milk).

 Then, I remembered I have a bag of dried mint leaves, and hey, mint chocolate always sounds great!

Add some dried mint leaves and start heating the milk on low heat.

Occasionally stir the milk to avoid burning the bottom. With the heating, the milk will start turning slightly brown-green due to the mint leaves. Keep simmering for a while and turn off the heat. Let it cool for like 30 minutes. This is also to allow the mint leaves to infuse the milk longer.

When it`s cooled enough, remove the leaves through a strainer and give a squeeze (with your clean hands or spatula) to push down the remaining milk on the strainer. 

Pour back the mint-infused milk to the pot and simmer it again on low heat.
Now, the chocolate. Break the bar into smaller pieces.

Then, throw the pieces in the simmering milk.

Stir and let them melt. Time to taste. Mine was sweet enough (I didn`t need to add sugar at all), but I wanted deeper chocolate taste.

Good thing I have this cacao powder. Beautiful. I added a teaspoonful of it, stirred, tasted,  and I`m happy. So why not using the powder at the first place? Because the bars were a lot cheaper, but then I couldn`t stop my self to buy this fancy powder too. Sometimes I`m just a real spender, everyone.

Oh wait, I have other ingredients to make my hot chocolate more enjoyable. Macadamia nuts.

Chop them in a food processor and sprinkle them on the hot chocolate.

And marshmallow too. Perfectly sweet if you don`t add them too many.
So, here`s what we had for our chilly Sunday:
A cup of hot, sweet, rich, and gooey mint chocolate with light crunchiness of macadamia nuts.

 
Ingredients:
Chocolate bar/powder
Dry mint leaves
Milk
Macadamia nuts, chopped
Marshmallows

Avocado smoothie

When it comes to avocado, I can be a very annoying picky eater that you`ll regret for offering me a plate of avocado salad or avocado sushi. "I want avocado smoothie!". That`s what you will hear from me.
Perhaps this stubbornness of mine came out from 23 years living in a place where people only have avocado as smoothie. Smoothie only. ONLY.
Here in Japan, I almost choked when I was watching cooking program on TV showing avocado in salad, sushi, hamburger (hamburger!), stir-fried dishes, ....and many other dishes, but not in desserts whatsoever. At the beginning, I kept disagreeing on using that fruit (yes, my mind calls it fruit) for dishes. But now I just watch and watch and watch. No complaint, although I still think that I would love it better as smoothie. I know I should have a try on them (avocado dishes), but maybe later.

I know there`s a very little chance (probably zero chance!) that you don`t how to make avocado smoothie, but I`ll just share the recipe anyway. This smoothie is super easy and quick to make yet it has a very rewarding deliciousness.

Cut the avocado lengthwise into halves and remove the seed out.

Scoop out the flesh with a spoon.

If you use a stick blender like I do, grab a measuring cup or glass or anything your blender can fit in to nicely. Consider about the smoothie`s volume you want to get when choosing your container. In my case, I used 2 (my) palm-sized avocados and I made about 500 ml smoothies.

Place the avocado flesh into your cup, add sugar (or honey for a healthier choice), and milk.

Put in your blender and start pureeing the mixture.

Now is time to adjust the sweetness and texture. I didn`t have any avocados left so I added a very low amount of milk. That way, my smoothie won`t get too watery and in fact, it was very thick at the beginning.Then I added some more milk in batches until the texture is fine for me.

Sadly, adding more milk means more sugar as well.

Keep adjusting until you get it right.

By right I mean you touch it with your finger, lick it, and say "YUM!"

 
And this is the final touch, which is very important for me. Chocolate syrup. Or sweet condensed chocolate milk. Or melted chocolate bar. Anything liquid tastes chocolate and sweet will do fine.

 I`m drooling now.