Watermelon Breeze-Summer Soother

Every season has its own charm and even though Summers have been dreadful this time, there are few good things about it like the arrival of watermelon and mangoes amongst other fruits and vegetables.

This year I had a special yearning to try out Summer Coolers and decided to do an Instagram series on the same. You may check it out here. 

I have made a list of many other Summer coolers but ain't sure how many I will be able to try. 

The watermelon breeze needed to be tried for sure since I  first had in a restaurant called Hakuna Matata on Park Street. It was such an amazing drink, such a soother and yummy cooler. It hardly takes 5 minutes to assemble it and is so fresh and healthy. 

Soother yourself this Summers with this simple, healthy and refreshing drink. 

Ingredients :

• 1 cup Coconut water
• 2 cups Watermelon chunks, deseeded
• mint leaves

Procedure : 

Take watermelon chunks in a blender and blend well.

Add coconut water and blend again.

Pour in glass of your choice and chill it in the refrigerator.

Sprinkle with mint leaves and serve.

Bel Sherbet

I have never been a fan of experimenting with beverages hot or cold. In Summers I love my ready made sherbets and find comfort in adding them to my glass of water. The maximum I go is making a glass of lemonade. So you get the picture, it has never been beyond all that. No wonder I have almost no recipes under that section in my blog.

But this year, something happened and I do not know what but I am suddenly super interested in Summer coolers. I have been making a new one every day and am so enjoying it that I decided to do an Instagram series on the same. You may check by clicking on this link .

Frankly speaking, I have never liked the Bel sherbet much. I remember my Chachaji who I have always fondly called 'Uncleji' used to bring this fruit every Summers and make the sherbet at home. I must have tasted it but never liked it. As we grow old, a lot of things change. Our perspectives, our ideas, our tastes, they all keep evolving and so perhaps I had the desire to experiment with it. Both Vishal and me enjoyed the prominent woody flavor of the sherbet. While Vishal hates any salt in his juices/sherbet, I enjoyed mine with a sprinkle of rock salt.


Ingredients :

• 1 Bel/bael/wood apple
• 1 cup water or more
• 1-2 tbsp sugar (adjust according to the sweetness of the fruit)
• rock salt, optional

Procedure :
Crack open the hard shell of the bel fruit.
Scoop out the inside with a spoon and take it out in a bowl.
Put some water in it and let it sit or 5-10 minutes.
Squeeze the pulp with your hands or a spoon.
Strain the mixture.
Add sugar and adjust water, adding more if required.
Add rock salt and stir well.
Chill it before serving.

Happy Bel sherbet relishing

Amrita

Gond Katira(गोंद कटीरा) -Summer Cooler

Summers have hit us with a big bang. Calcutta has never seen such scorching Summers with temperature soaring to 40 degrees almost everyday. Schools have changed their timings so that little ones do not have to bear the brunt of the harsh Summer wave. We are constantly hydrating ourselves with water and sherbets. AC has become inevitable and we are trying to spend maximum time indoors.

The Summers of my childhood wasn't so unbearable. Summers meant extra bath times, eating ice creams everyday, drinking water from the earthen ware called the  तौड़ा in Punjabi, stealing ice from the freezer, wearing those white malmal super soft frocks and  the one that I fondly remember-lying under the fan with mom's wet dupatta on top (coz we did not have or require AC then) The air that would pass the wet dupatta would become little cold and soothe us. Summers also meant travelling to Punjab for vacations where the heat was much more  and enjoying the cooler culture there. How I would love the smell of the wet khuskhus sheet behind the coolers.

Summers have changed now or perhaps we have become less tolerant. We are getting used to depending too much on gadgets and technology and forgetting the nature's way of dealing with things. Too much tampering with the nature is causing the present environmental crisis all over. We can only hope and pray that we are able to control it before it is all lost.

 

Coming back to Summers, this time I have been extra interested in the drinks that cool us. Come to think of it, every region has their specific drink to beat the heat. Punjab is a state which bears extreme Summers and Winters and therefore has food specific to beat it . For Summers, we have the Lassi's, both salty and sweet and an interesting drink called Gond Katira. In English it is called Tragacanth Gum which is basically a natural gum obtained from the dried sap of several species of Middle Eastern legumes. It has both cooling and heat producing properties to the body. When soaked in water, it is an excellent coolant whereas when fried in oil, it has heat producing characteristics. It is used extensively in Panjiri which is given to women post delivery for internal healing. In Summers it is soaked in water overnight which swells to three times its volume and is then used as a drink to cool down the body.



 

Ingredients : For individual serving

• 1 tsp Gond katira/ Tragacanth gum 
• a glass of chilled milk
• 1-2 tbsp rose syrup
• Sugar as required(optional)

Procedure : 

Soak gond katira in water overnight.

It will swell up to almost three times.

Wash it well with water and strain it. You may keep it in fridge till further use.

Take rose syrup in a non stick pan and reduce it on low flame for few minutes till it gets thick.
Dip the rim of the glass of choice on the thickened rose syrup.
Swirl the remaining rose syrup inside the glass on the edges all around.

Take 2 tbsp of soaked gond katira in the glass and pour cold milk over it.
Sugar can be added to the milk before pouring, in case you want it sweeter otherwise the sweetness from the rose syrup should be enough.
Garnish with some chopped rose petals.
Serve chilled.

Happy Summer beating with Coolers

Amrita

Roasted Beetroot Chaas

Summers is not really my favourite month but Summers have a lot of sweet memory attached to it and remind me of the fun filled and careless childhood days. Summers then meant packing up our bags and traveling by the Sleeper class for 2 nights and reach our heaven haven in Punjab. The Summer vacations was spent running out and playing in the scorching sun and enjoying yummy delicacies made by Nani and Masi's. In those days we had no distraction from the television or the internet and enjoyed our silly games with all cousins. Summer Vacations will truly be the best days of my life!

With Vaanya, my daughter, growing up and soon to join a school, I look forward to give Vaanya a truly wonderful and memorable Summer vacation experience. I hope when she grows up, she will fondly recollect her best days of life with equal enthusiasm.

Summers are also synonymous with cool drinks. Being a Sikh, Lassi was a drink that was always ready at home. My grandmother would ensure that she uses enough milk to set homemade curd which was used generously in Summers. While I always loved my Lassi sweet and thick, others at home loved to gulp down a salty and thin version along with lunch. My grandmothers 'Madhani' was always ready to churn up a yummy cooling Lassi. 

My grandmother also made homemade white butter which now my mother continues to make very diligently. The top layer on milk called 'Malai' collected for a few days was churned to get the pristine white unsalted butter. The water remaining while churning butter was used in her salty lassi which I learnt later is called 'Chaas' in Hindi. Extremely popular esp in the northern part of the country because of its scorching heat in Summers, Chaas is a drink that is not only loved for its taste but for its health benefits too as it cools the body.

This chaas is normally made with boiled beetroot puree but the Baker in me made me experiment with a roasted beetroot version.

Recipe source : Adapted from GoodFood magazine 

Ingredients : For 3-4 servings

• 1 small beetroot, peeled and quartered
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• salt and pepper to taste
• 1 cup curd (I used homemade)
• 2 cups water (or more)
• 1 tsp oil
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• few curry leaves 8-10
• 1/4 tsp grated ginger
• 1 green chilly chopped (optional)
• salt to taste

Procedure : 

Preheat oven to 180 degree Celsius. Take a baking tray and line it with aluminium foil. 

Toss the quartered beetroots with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. 

Place on the baking tray and loosely cover with the foil. Let the beetroots roast for 30 minutes. 

Take them out carefully and allow to cool.

When they have cooled down, pulse them in the mixer to make a smooth paste.

Whisk curd and water in a bowl to make a thin chaas. 

Add the beetroot paste to it and mix it well.

Heat 1 tsp oil in a pan and add the mustard seeds. As they splutter, add curry leaves, grated ginger and chopped green chilly. Cook for a minute and then add this to the chaas.

Refrigerate the chaas and serve chilled. 

Notes : 

• You can use buttermilk in place of curd and water.
• You may boil the beetroot in boiling water or pressure cook it, peel the skin and puree it. 

This recipe is part of the exciting ongoing event at Kolkata Food Bloggers called 'Beat the Heat'.

 Enjoy Summers
Amrita 

Gulab (Rose) Sherbat and Winners of our Giveaway

''The world is a rose, smell it and pass it to your friends.''Persian Proverb

Sherbat/Sharbat/Sherbet!!
What's in a name, that which we call a Rose, by any other name would smell as sweet..Shakespeare's famous quote holds so true. 
Called by different names in different regions, Sharbat (thats how I like to call it) is the world's first Soft drink! It is made from fruit juices or extracts of flowers or herbs and combined with sugar and water. Traditionally served on a hot day, Sharbat is a natural coolant for the body.
Making Rose Sharbat at home has been an old family custom for us. Though nowadays, it is easier to buy a bottle of readymade Sharbat with so much variety in the market, this year my mother decided to give in to the tried, tasted and tested homely method. Though not bright red as the market ones, our homemade Rose Sharbat was certainly far better in taste than the bought one. And do I even need to compare the price difference...The bought one 700mL bottle costs around Rs 100/ whereas in the same amount we made 2L bottles of Sharbat!!! And all that with the promise of home hygiene and loads of fun!!

Ingredients:For 2 litres of Sharbat concentrate

• 1.5 litres of water
• 100 gms dried rose petals(you can use fresh rose petals too)
• 1 kg sugar
• 1 tsp red food colour
• 1 tsp rose essence

 

Procedure:
Pressure cook dried/fresh rose petals with 1/2 amount of water for 3-4 whistles.
Strain and let it cool. (I discarded the cooked rose petals but you may try and keep some aside to use in the Sharbat to have some petals in the drink)
Put the strained liquid in a large pan and add sugar. Put the pan on Gas stove and cook stirring continuously till the sugar melts and the mixture thickens. This should take about 15-20 mins. 
Let this cool.
Add red food colour and rose essence once the mixture is cooled completely. Mix well.

Note 

• This is a concentrate, and needs to be diluted with water before serving.
• Another way of having it is adding with milk and soda for a Soda milk shake.
• Use it also as a syrup to drizzle over ice creams/sorbets/deserts.   
• If you saved cooked rose petals, add them in the end.
• Check colour by adding water to some concentrate and then adjust colour and essence to your liking. 
• This concentrate stays good in the refrigerator for several months.

The winners of our Giveaway books are
Bright Red(Minu)
Sayantani Mahapatra
Namita Tiwari
Please send us your shipping addresses asap on amritavishal127@gmail.com. Since all three books have become our fav, we will do a lucky draw to choose who gets which book, in all fairness.
 
Thank you all for supporting and loving us. Hoping for many more years of enjoying learning and sharing great food.

Happy Sharbat drinking!!
Amrita