It's hot out there. I know it is. Here in Boston our third story apartment is sweltering. When the temperature gets this high I love making unusual icy cool things to drink. The following is based on a wonderful recipe for lemonade that I found online. I've made some suggestions for playing around with it. As long as you maintain the basic water to lemon juice to simple syrup and salt ratio you can have fun with it and use your imagination.
not my photo
2 cups lemon juice
1 qt. water
1 cup simple syrup*
1 tsp salt
Create the simple syrup with one cup sugar and one cup water. Combine in a pot and bring to a boil. Allow it to bubble for thirty seconds. Turn off and cool, if you like, with an ice cube.
Combine ingredients and add flavours from the following list.
One orange, quartered
15 whole peppercorns
2 sprigs of rosemary (about 4" long)
3/4 tsp lavender
1 pt. strawberries
30 mint leaves
1 vanilla bean (split lengthwise)
As with many infusions, the flavours improve if you can let them get to know each other overnight. But I know at my house we find that very hard.
