Aromatic lemonade

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.

Atomic coffee

We are in the middle of a heat wave, and the only way to fight it is with a batch of Merissa Mendoza's Atomic Coffee. I got this recipe from Merissa when I worked with her in the pastry kitchen at the Sheraton. It must sit overnight, but it has the added bonus of not requiring the application of any heat. Keep that house cool!

1 cup coffee grounds

3 cups cold water

3 cups heavy cream or half and half

6 cups milk

1 cup sugar

a generous pinch of cinnamon

a generous pinch of kosher salt

Combine the coffee grounds and cold water in a container and let it sit overnight in the refrigerator. Strain the mixture and measure your amount of coffee. The list of the remaining 3 ingredients require the addition of 3 cups of coffee. So if you haven't quite made that much, adjust the recipe accordingly. Combine coffee and milk, cream, sugar, and spice; sit and sip.

The coffee will taste even better again if you let the cinnamon mellow with the other ingredients for a time, but I bet you can't control yourself.

Lavender Iced Tea

Well it had to happen sometime. The temperature has crept up into the nineties this week. And in amongst our whinings about the upcoming summer we decided to make some Iced Tea. It's a summer treat. Something to combat the 100+ degrees when we hole up inside and draw the curtains. We're not there yet, but this will calm our anxiety about the coming inferno.

yield: 3 quarts

Tea

2 qt. water + 1 qt. added at end

10 Lipton or other black tea bags

Simple Syrup

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1 1/2 tsp dried lavender buds - roll them in your palms or fingers to crush them and release their flavour

Bring water to a boil in a large pot. Knot tea bags together for easy retrieval and when pot boils, dump them in. Turn off the heat and let steep for half hour or until mixture cools. To make the simple syrup, combine sugar and water in a sauce pot. Stir to wet all the sugar and put on low heat. At this point make sure there are no sugar crystals clinging to the edges of the pot. They will cloud the syrup. Simply wipe them off using a wet pastry brush or your finger. I'm not particular. When sugar appears to have entirely or almost entirely dissolved up the heat to medium or medium high (depending on patience). Let simple syrup come to a rolling boil for ten seconds. Turn off heat. Add lavender buds. Let steep for 10 minutes. Strain out lavender, add to tea, and add remaining quart of water. Voila!